20th-century international relations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Introduction

 The roots of World War I, 1871–1914

 World War I, 1914–18

 Peacemaking, 1919–22

 A fragile stability, 1922–29

 The origins of World War II, 1929–39

 World War II, 1939–45

 The coming of the Cold War, 1945–57

 Total Cold War and the diffusion of power, 1957–72

 Dependence and disintegration in the global village, 1973–87

 The end of the Cold War

 The quest for a new world order, 1991–95

 Toward a new millennium

20th-century international relations, history of the relations between states, especially

the great powers, from approximately 1900 to 2000.

The history of the 20th century was shaped by the changing relations of the world’s great

powers. The first half of the century, the age of the World Wars and the start of the Cold War,

was dominated by the rivalries of those powers. The second half saw the replacement, largely

through the agency of those wars, of the European state system by a world system with many

centres of both power and discord. This article provides a single integrated narrative of the

changing context of world politics, from the outbreak of World War I to the 1990s. Because

domestic affairs figure heavily in the analysis of each state’s foreign policies, the reader should

consult the histories of the individual countries for more detail.

For discussion of the military strategy, tactics, and conduct of the World Wars, see World War I

and World War II.

THE ROOTS OF WORLD WAR I, 1871–1914

Forty-three years of peace among the great powers of Europe came to an end in 1914, when an

act of political terrorism provoked two great alliance systems into mortal combat. The South

Slav campaign against Austrian rule in Bosnia, culminating in the assassination of the Habsburg

heir apparent at Sarajevo, was the spark. This local crisis rapidly engulfed all the powers of

Europe through the mechanisms of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, diplomatic

arrangements meant precisely to enhance the security of their members and to deter potential

aggressors. The long-term causes of the war can therefore be traced to the forces that impelled

the formation of those alliances, increased tensions among the great powers, and made at least

some European leaders desperate enough to seek their objectives even at the risk of a general
war. These forces included militarism and mass mobilization, instability in domestic and

international politics occasioned by rapid industrial growth, global imperialism, popular

nationalism, and the rise of a social Darwinist worldview. But the question of why World War I

broke out should be considered together with the questions of why peace ended and why in

1914 rather than before or after.

THE BISMARCKIAN SYSTEM, 1871–90

THE ERA OF THE GREAT POWERS

The European map and world politics were less confused in the decades after 1871 than at any

time before or since. The unifications of Italy and Germany removed the congeries of central

European principalities that dated back to the Holy Roman Empire, while the breakup of

eastern and southeastern Europe into small and quarreling states (a process that would yield

the term balkanization) was not far advanced. There the old empires, Russian, Austro-

Hungarian, and Ottoman (Turkish), still prevailed. The lesser powers of Europe, including some

that once had been great, like the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain, played little or no role in

the affairs of the great powers unless their own interests were directly involved. Both physical

size and the economies of scale important in an industrial age rendered smaller and less

developed countries impotent, while the residual habits of diplomacy dating from the Congress

of Vienna of 1815 made the great powers the sole arbiters of European politics.

In the wider world, a diplomatic system of the European variety existed nowhere else. The

outcome of the U.S. Civil War and Anglo-American settlement of the Canadian border ensured
that North America would not develop a multilateral balance-of-power system. South and

Central America had splintered into 17 independent republics following the final retreat of

Spanish rule in 1820, but the new Latin American states were inward-looking, their centres of

population and resources isolated by mountains, jungle, and sheer distance, and disputes

among them were of mostly local interest. The Monroe Doctrine, promulgated by the United

States and enforced by the British navy, sufficed to spare Latin America new European

adventures, the only major exception—Napoleon III’s gambit in Mexico—occurring while the

United States was preoccupied with civil war. When the United States purchased Alaska from

the Russian tsar and Canada acquired dominion status, both in 1867, European possessions on

the American mainland were reduced to three small Guianan colonies in South America and

British Honduras (Belize). North Africa east of Algeria was still nominally under the aegis of the

Ottoman sultan, while sub-Saharan Africa, apart from a few European ports on the coast, was

terra incognita. The British had regularized their hold on the Indian subcontinent after putting

down the Indian Mutiny of 1857–58, while the Chinese and Japanese empires remained

xenophobic and isolationist. Thus, the cabinets of the European great powers were at the

zenith of their influence.

Europe itself, by 1871, seemed to be entering an age of political and social progress. Britain’s

Second Reform Act (1867), the French Third Republic (1875), the triumph of nationalism in Italy

and Germany (1871), the establishment of universal manhood suffrage in Germany (1867),

equality for the Hungarians in the Habsburg monarchy (1867), emancipation of the serfs
in Russia (1861), and the adoption of free trade by the major European states all seemed to

justify faith in the peaceful evolution of Europe toward liberal institutions and prosperity.

International peace also seemed assured once Otto von Bismarck declared the new German

Empire a satisfied power and placed his considerable talents at the service of stability. The

chancellor knew Germany to be a military match for any rival but feared the possibility of a

coalition. Since France would never be reconciled to her reduced status and the loss of Alsace-

Lorraine imposed by the treaty ending the Franco-German War, Bismarck strove to keep France

isolated. In 1873 he conjured up the ghost of monarchical solidarity and formed

a Dreikaiserbund (Three Emperors’ League) with Austria-Hungary and Russia. Such a

combination was always vulnerable to Austro-Russian rivalry over the Eastern Question—the

problem of how to organize the feuding Balkan nationalities gradually freeing themselves from

the decrepit Ottoman Empire.

After the Slavic provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina rebelled against Ottoman rule in 1875 and

Russia made war on the Ottoman Empire two years later, the Dreikaiserbund collapsed.

Bismarck achieved a compromise at the Congress of Berlin (1878), but Austro-Russian amity

was not restored. In 1879, therefore, Bismarck concluded a permanent peacetime military

alliance with Austria, whereupon the tsarist government, to court German favour, agreed to a

renewal of the Dreikaiserbund in 1881. Italy, seeking aid for her Mediterranean ambitions,

joined Germany and Austria-Hungary to form the Triple Alliance in 1882.

The next Balkan crisis, which erupted in Bulgaria in 1885, again tempted Russia to expand its

influence to the gates of Constantinople. Bismarck dared not oppose the Russians lest he push

them toward an alliance with vengeful France. So instead he played midwife to an Anglo-

Austro-Italian combination called the Second Mediterranean Entente, which blocked Russian

ambitions in Bulgaria while Bismarck himself concluded a Reinsurance Treaty with St.

Petersburg in 1887. Once more the Eastern Question had been defused and Germany’s

alliances preserved.

THE NATURE OF THE GERMAN STATE

The generation of peace after 1871 rested on Germany’s irenic temper, served in turn by

Bismarck’s statesmanship. Should that temper change, or less adept leadership succeed

Bismarck, Germany had the potential to become the major disrupter of European stability. For

the constitution drafted by Bismarck for the Second Reich was a dysfunctional document

designed to satisfy middle-class nationalism while preserving the power of the Prussian crown

and the Junker class (the Prussian landed aristocracy). Apparently a federal empire, Germany

was in fact dominated by Prussia, which was larger in area and population than all the other

states combined. The king of Prussia was kaiser and chief warlord of the German armies; the

prime minister of Prussia was the federal chancellor, responsible, not to a majority in the

Reichstag, but only to the crown. Furthermore, Prussia retained a three-class voting system

weighted in favour of the wealthy. The army remained, in Prussian tradition, virtually a state

within the state, loyal to the kaiser alone. In sum, Germany remained a semi-autocratic military

monarchy even as it blossomed into an industrial mass society. The lack of outlets for popular
dissent and reform was especially damaging given the cleavages that continued to plague

Germany after unification: Protestant North versus Catholic South, agriculture versus industry,

Prussia versus the other states, Junkers versus middle-class liberals, industrialists versus the

(increasingly socialist) working class. Bismarck manipulated the parties and interests as he did

foreign powers. But toward the end of his tenure, even he realized that German politics might

someday reduce to a choice between surrender of privilege by the old elites or a coup d’état

against the liberal and socialist groups he labeled Reichsfeinde (enemies of the Reich).

Austria-Hungary and Russia, still overwhelmingly agrarian, faced different challenges by the end

of the 19th century. Most acute for Austria-Hungary was the nationality question. An heir to

the universalist vision of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria-Hungary was a multinational empire

composed not only of Germans and Magyars but also of (in 1870) 4,500,000 Czechs and

Slovaks, 3,100,000 Ruthenes, 2,400,000 Poles, 2,900,000 Romanians, 3,000,000 Serbs and

Croats, about 1,000,000 Slovenes, and 600,000 Italians. Thus, the Habsburgs faced the

challenge of accommodating the nationalism of their ethnic minorities without provoking the

dissolution of their empire. In British, French, and, increasingly, Russian opinion, Austria-

Hungary was simply out of step with the times, moribund, and, after Turkey, the most despised

of states. Bismarck, however, saw Austria-Hungary as “a European necessity”: the organizing

principle in an otherwise chaotic corner of Europe, the bulwark against Russian expansion, and

the keystone in the balance of power. But the progress of nationalism gradually undermined

the legitimacy of the old empires. Ironically, Austria existed from 1815 to 1914 in a symbiotic

relationship with her ancient enemy, the Ottoman Empire. For as the Balkan peoples gradually
pulled free from Constantinople, they and their cousins across the Habsburg frontier inevitably

agitated for liberation from Vienna as well.

Russia was also a multinational empire, but with the exception of the Poles her subject peoples

were too few compared to Great Russians to pose a threat. Rather, Russia’s problem in the late

19th century was backwardness. Ever since the humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, tsars

and their ministers had undertaken reforms to modernize agriculture, technology, and

education. But the Russian autocracy, making no concession to popular sovereignty and

nationality, was more threatened by social change even than the Germans. Hence the dilemma

of the last tsars: they had to industrialize in order to maintain Russia as a great power, yet

industrialization, by calling into being a large technical and managerial class and an urban

proletariat, also undermined the social basis of the dynasty.

In sum, the decades after 1871 did not sustain the liberal progress of the 1860s. Resistance to

political reform in the empires, a retreat from free trade after 1879, the growth of labour

unions, revolutionary socialism, and social tensions attending demographic and industrial

growth all affected the foreign policies of the great powers. It was as if, at its pinnacle of

achievement, the very elements of liberal “progress”—technology, imperialism, nationalism,

cultural modernism, and scientism—were inviting Europeans to steer their civilization toward

calamity.

THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALISM AND IMPERIALISM

PATTERNS OF POPULATION

European demographic and industrial growth in the 19th century was frantic and uneven, and

both qualities contributed to growing misperceptions and paranoia in international affairs.

European population grew at the rate of 1 percent per year in the century after 1815, an

increase that would have been disastrous had it not been for the outlet of emigration and the

new prospects of employment in the rapidly expanding cities. But the distribution of Europe’s

peoples changed radically, altering the military balance among the great powers. In the days of

Louis XIV, France was the most populous—and also the wealthiest—kingdom in Europe, and as

late as 1789 it numbered 25 million to Britain’s 14.5 million. When the French Revolution

unleashed this national power through rationalized central administration, meritocracy, and a

national draft based on patriotism, it achieved unprecedented organization of force in the form

of armies of millions of men.

The French tide receded, at the cost of more than a million deaths from 1792 to 1815, never to

crest again. Population growth in France, alone among the great powers, was almost stagnant

thereafter; by 1870 her population of 36 million was nearly equal to that of Austria-Hungary

and already less than Germany’s 41 million. By 1910 Germany’s population exploded to a level

two-thirds greater than France’s, while vast Russia’s population nearly doubled from 1850 to

1910 until it was more than 70 percent greater than Germany’s, although Russia’s

administrative and technical backwardness offset to a degree her advantage in numbers. The

demographic trends clearly traced the growing danger for France vis-à-vis Germany and the
danger for Germany vis-à-vis Russia. Should Russia ever succeed in modernizing, she would

become a colossus out of all proportion to the European continent.

Population pressure was a double-edged sword dangling out of reach above the heads of

European governments in the 19th century. On the one hand, fertility meant a growing labour

force and potentially a larger army. On the other hand, it threatened social discord if economic

growth or external safety valves could not relieve the pressure. The United Kingdom adjusted

through urban industrialization on the one hand and emigration to the United States and the

British dominions on the other. France had no such pressure but was forced to draft a higher

percentage of its manpower to fill the army ranks. Russia exported perhaps 10 million excess

people to its eastern and southern frontiers and several million more (mostly Poles and Jews)

overseas. Germany, too, sent large numbers abroad, and no nation provided more new

industrial employment from 1850 to 1910. Still, Germany’s landmass was small relative to

Russia’s, her overseas possessions unsuitable to settlement, and her sense of beleaguerment

acute in the face of the “Slavic threat.” Demographic trends thus helped to implant in the

German population a feeling of both momentary strength and looming danger.

INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY, AND TRADE

Industrial trends magnified the demographic, for here again Germany was far and away the

fastest growing economic power on the Continent. This was so not only in the basic industries

of coal and iron and steel but also in the advanced fields of electricity, chemicals, and internal

combustion. Germany’s swift development strained the traditional balance of power in her own
society and politics. By the end of the century Germany had become a highly urbanized,

industrial society, complete with large, differentiated middle and factory proletariat classes, but

it was still governed largely by precapitalist aristocrats increasingly threatened by demands for

political reform.

Industrialization also made possible the outfitting and supply of mass armies drawn from the

growing populations. After 1815 the monarchies of Europe had shied away from arming the

masses in the French revolutionary fashion, and the events of 1848 further justified their fear of

an armed citizenry. But in the reserve system Prussia found a means of making possible a rapid

mobilization of the citizenry without the risk to the regime or the elite officer corps posed by a

large standing, and idle, army. (In Austria-Hungary the crown avoided disloyalty in the army by

stationing soldiers of one ethnic group on the soil of another.) After Prussia’s stunning victory

over France in 1871, all the great powers came sooner or later to adopt the German model of a

mass army, supplied by a national network of railways and arms industries coordinated in turn

by a general staff. The industrialization of war meant that planning and bureaucracy,

technology and finance were taking the place of bold generalship and esprit in the soldier’s

craft.

The final contribution to the revolution in warfare was planned research and development of

weapons systems. Begun hesitantly in the French navy in the 1850s and ’60s, command

technology—the collaboration of state and industry in the invention of new armaments—was

widely practiced by the turn of the century, adding to the insecurity that inevitably propelled
the arms races. The demographic, technical, and managerial revolutions of the 19th century, in

sum, made possible the mobilization of entire populations and economies for the waging of

war.

The home of the Industrial Revolution was Great Britain, whose priority in the techniques of the

factory system and of steam power was the foundation for a period of calm confidence known

(with some exaggeration) as the Pax Britannica. The pound sterling became the preferred

reserve currency of the world and the Bank of England the hub of international finance. British

textiles, machinery, and shipping dominated the markets of Asia, South America, and much of

Europe. The British Isles (again with some hyperbole) were “the workshop of the world” and in

consequence from 1846 led the world in promoting free trade. British diplomacy, proudly

eschewing alliances in favour of “splendid isolation,” sought to preserve a balance of power on

the Continent and to protect the routes to India from Russian encroachment in the Middle East

or Afghanistan.

The Pax Britannica could last only as long as Britain’s industrial hegemony. But that hegemony

very naturally impelled other nations somehow to catch up, in the short term by imposing

protective tariffs to shield domestic industries and in the longer term by granting government

subsidies (for railroads and other national development work) and the gradual replication of

British techniques. First Belgium, France, and New England, then Germany and other states

after 1850 began to challenge Britain’s industrial dominance.

France (1860), Prussia (1862), and other countries then reversed earlier policies and followed

the British into free trade. But in 1873 a financial panic, attributed by some to overextension in

Germany after receipt of France’s billion-franc indemnity, ended the period of rapid growth. In

the depression of 1873–96 (actually years of slower, uneven growth) industrial and labour

leaders formed cartels, unions, and lobbies to agitate for tariffs and other forms of state

intervention to stabilize the economy. Bismarck resisted until European agriculture also

suffered from falling prices and lost markets after 1876 owing to the arrival in European ports

of North American cereals. In 1879 the so-called alliance of rye and steel voted a German tariff

on foreign manufactured goods and foodstuffs. Free trade gave way to an era of neo-

mercantilism. France, Austria, Italy, and Russia followed the new (or revived) trend toward tariff

protection. After 1896 the volume of world trade rose sharply again, but the sense of

heightened economic competition persisted in Europe.

Social rifts also hardened during the period. Challenged by unrest and demands for reforms,

Bismarck sponsored the first state social insurance plans, but he also used an attempt on the

kaiser’s life in 1878 as a pretext to outlaw the Social Democratic Party. Conservative circles,

farmers as well as the wealthier classes, came gradually to distrust the loyalty of the urban

working class, but industrialists shared few other interests with farmers. Other countries faced

similar divisions between town and country, but urbanization was not advanced enough in

Russia or France for socialism to acquire a mass following, while in Britain agriculture had long

since lost out to the commercial and industrial classes, and working-class participation in

democratic politics was on the rise (male suffrage was still dependent upon property
qualiifications, but the Second Reform Act [1867] had extended the vote to many workingmen

in the towns and cities). The social divisions attending industrialization were especially acute in

Germany because of the rapidity of her development and the survival of powerful precapitalist

elites. Moreover, the German working class, while increasingly unionized, had few legal means

of affecting state policy. All this made for a series of deadlocks in German politics that would

increasingly affect foreign policy after Bismarck’s departure.

THE NEW IMPERIALISM

The 1870s and ’80s, therefore, witnessed a retreat from the free market and a return to state

intervention in economic affairs. The foreign counterpart to this phenomenon was the New

Imperialism. The great powers of Europe suddenly shook off almost a century of apathy toward

overseas colonies and, in the space of 20 years, partitioned almost the entire uncolonized

portion of the globe. Theories postulating Europe’s need to export surplus capital do not fit the

facts. Only Britain and France were capital-exporting countries in 1880, and in years to come

their investors preferred to export capital to other European countries (especially Russia) or the

Western Hemisphere rather than to their own colonies. The British remained free-trade

throughout the era of the New Imperialism, a booming home economy absorbed most German

capital, and Italy and Russia were large net importers of capital. Once the scramble for colonies

was complete, pressure groups did form in the various countries to argue the economic

promise of imperialism, but just as often governments had to foster colonial development. In

most cases, trade did not lead but followed the flag.
Why, then, was the flag planted in the first place? Sometimes it was to protect economic

interests, as when the British occupied Egypt in 1882, but more often it was for strategic

reasons or in pursuit of national prestige. One necessary condition for the New Imperialism,

often overlooked, is technological. Prior to the 1870s Europeans could overawe native peoples

along the coasts of Africa and Asia but lacked the firepower, mobility, and communications that

would have been needed to pacify the interior. (India was the exception, where the British East

India Company exploited an anarchic situation and allied itself with selected native rulers

against others.) The tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito—bearers of sleeping sickness and

malaria—were the ultimate defenders of African and Asian jungles. The correlation of forces

between Europe and the colonizable world shifted, however, with the invention of shallow-

draft riverboats, the steamship and telegraph, the repeater rifle and Maxim gun, and the

discovery (in India) that quinine is an effective prophylactic against malaria. By 1880 small

groups of European regulars, armed with modern weapons and exercising fire discipline, could

overwhelm many times their number of native troops.

The scramble for Africa should be dated not from 1882, when the British occupied Egypt, but

from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The strategic importance of that waterway cannot

be overstated. It was the gateway to India and East Asia and hence a vital interest nonpareil for

the British Empire. When the khedive of Egypt defaulted on loans owed to France and Britain,

and a nationalist uprising ensued—the first such Arab rebellion against the Western presence—

the French backed away from military occupation, although with Bismarck’s encouragement

and moral support they occupied Tunis in 1881, expanding their North African presence from
Algeria. Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, otherwise an adamant anticolonialist, then

established a British protectorate in Egypt. When the French reacted bitterly, Bismarck further

encouraged French colonial expansion in hopes of distracting them from Europe, and he then

took his own country into the fray by claiming four large segments of Africa for Germany in

1884. In that year the king of the Belgians cast his eye on the entire Congo basin. The Berlin

West Africa Conference of 1884–85 was called to settle a variety of disputes involved in

European colonial occupation, and over the next 10 years all the great powers of Europe save

Austria and Russia staked out colonies and protectorates on the African continent. But

whatever the ambitions and rivalries of military adventurers, explorers, and private empire

builders on the scene, the cabinets of Europe came to agreements on colonial boundaries with

surprising neighbourliness. Colonial wars did ensue after 1894, but never between two

European colonial powers.

It has been suggested that imperial rivalries were a long-range cause of World War I. It has also

been said that they were a safety valve, drawing off European energies that might otherwise

have erupted in war much sooner. But the links between imperialism and the war are more

subtle. The heyday of the New Imperialism, especially after 1894, created a tacit understanding

in the European elites and the broad literate classes that the days of the old European balance

of power were over, that a new world order was dawning, and that any nation left behind in

the pursuit of world power would sink into obscurity. This intuition must surely have fed a

growing sense of desperation among Germans, and one of paranoia among Britons, about

trends in global politics. A second point, subtler still, is that the New Imperialism, while it did
not directly provoke World War I, did occasion a transformation of alliances that proved

dangerous beyond reckoning once the great powers turned their attention back to Europe.

Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, and within a decade popularizers had

applied—or misapplied—his theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest to

contemporary politics and economics. This pseudoscientific social Darwinism appealed to

educated Europeans already demoralized by a century of higher criticism of religious scripture

and conscious of the competitiveness of their own daily lives in that age of freewheeling

industrial capitalism. By the 1870s books appeared explaining the outcome of the Franco-

German War, for instance, with reference to the “vitality” of the Germanic peoples by

comparison to the “exhausted” Latins. Pan-Slavic literature extolled the youthful vigour of that

race, of whom Russia was seen as the natural leader. A belief in the natural affinity and

superiority of Nordic peoples sustained Joseph Chamberlain’s conviction that an Anglo-

American–German alliance should govern the world in the 20th century. Vulgar anthropology

explained the relative merits of human races on the basis of physiognomy and brain size, a

“scientific” approach to world politics occasioned by the increasing contact of Europeans with

Asians and Africans. Racialist rhetoric became common currency, as when the kaiser referred to

Asia’s growing population as “the yellow peril” and spoke of the next war as a “death struggle

between the Teutons and Slavs.” Poets and philosophers idealized combat as the process by

which nature weeds out the weak and improves the human race.
By 1914, therefore, the political and moral restraints on war that had arisen after 1789–1815

were significantly weakened. The old conservative notion that established governments had a

heavy stake in peace lest revolution engulf them, and the old liberal notion that national unity,

democracy, and free trade would spread harmony, were all but dead. The historian cannot

judge how much social Darwinism influenced specific policy decisions, but a mood of fatalism

and bellicosity surely eroded the collective will to peace.

COMPLETING THE ALLIANCE SYSTEMS, 1890–1907

GERMANY’S NEW COURSE

In 1890 the young kaiser William II dismissed the aged Bismarck and proclaimed a new course

for Germany. An intelligent but unstable man who compensated for a withered arm with

military demeanour and intemperate remarks, William felt keenly his realm’s lack of prestige in

comparison with the British Empire. William rejected Bismarck’s emphasis on security in Europe

in favour of a flamboyant Weltpolitik (world policy) aimed at making Germany’s presence

abroad commensurate with her new industrial might. Where Bismarck considered colonies a

dangerous luxury given Germany’s geographic position, the kaiser thought them indispensable

for Germany’s future. Where Bismarck sought alliances to avoid the risk of war on two fronts,

the kaiser (and his chief foreign policy official, Baron von Holstein) believed Germany should

capitalize on the colonial quarrels among France, Britain, and Russia. Where Bismarck had

outlawed the socialists and feared for the old order in Germany, the kaiser permitted the
antisocialist laws to lapse and believed he could win over the working class through prosperity,

social policy, and national glory.

The consequences of the new course were immediate and damaging. In 1890 Holstein

gratuitously dropped Bismarck’s Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, prompting St. Petersburg to

overcome its antipathy to republican France and conclude a military alliance in 1894. The tie

was sealed with a golden braid: between 1894 and 1914 the Russians floated billions of francs

in loans on the Paris market to finance factory building, arms programs, and military railroads

to the German border. Russia hoped mainly for French support in its colonial disputes with the

British Empire and even went so far as to agree with Austria-Hungary in 1897 to hold the

question of the Balkans in abeyance for 10 years, thereby freeing resources for the construction

of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the penetration of northern China. The German foreign

office thus did not take alarm at the alliance Bismarck had struggled so long to prevent.

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 signaled the arrival of Japan on the world stage. Having

seen their nation forcibly opened to foreign influence by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in

1853, the Japanese determined not to suffer China’s fate as a hapless object of Western

incursion. Once the Meiji Restoration established strong central government beginning in 1868,

Japan became the first non-Western state to launch a crash program of industrialization. By the

1890s its modern army and navy permitted Japan to take its place beside the Europeans as an

imperial power. In the war with China, Japan won control of Korea, Taiwan, Port Arthur on the

Manchurian mainland, and other advantages. European intervention scaled back these gains,
but a scramble for concessions in China eventuated. Russia won concessions in Manchuria, the

French in South China, the Germans at Jiaozhou Bay on the Shandong Peninsula. In 1898 the

United States annexed the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War. The loser in the

scramble, besides China, was Britain, which had previously enjoyed a near monopoly in the

China trade.

THE THREATS TO BRITAIN’S EMPIRE

American naval scholar Alfred Thayer

Mahan, undated photo.U.S. Naval Academy MuseumBritish fortunes suffered elsewhere during

this high tide of imperialism from 1897 to 1907. The South African, or Boer, War (1899–1902)
against the independent Boer republics of the South African interior proved longer and costlier

than the British expected, and although they won the “dirty little war” the British saw their

world position erode. Germany partitioned Samoa with the United States, and the latter

annexed the Hawaiian Islands. Germany abandoned her long apathy toward the Middle East

and won a concession for Turkish railroads. The kaiser, influenced by his envy of Britain, his own

fondness for seafaring, and the worldwide impact of The Influence of Sea Power upon History by

the American naval scholar Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, determined that Weltpolitik was

impossible without a great High Seas Fleet. The prospect of a large German navy—next to the

growing fleets of France, Russia, Japan, and the United States—meant that Britain would no

longer rule the waves alone.

The dawn of the 20th century was thus a time of anxiety for the British Empire as well.

Challenged for the first time by the commercial, naval, and colonial might of many other

industrializing nations, the British reconsidered the wisdom of splendid isolation. To be sure, in

the Fashoda Incident of 1898 Britain succeeded in forcing France to retreat from the upper

reaches of the Nile. But how much longer could Britain defend her empire alone? Colonial

Secretary Joseph Chamberlain began at once to sound out Berlin on the prospect of global

collaboration. A British demarche was precisely what the Germans had been expecting, but

three attempts to reach an Anglo-German understanding, between 1898 and 1901, led to

naught. In retrospect, it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. The German foreign

minister and, from 1900, chancellor, Bernhard, Fürst (prince) von Bülow, shared the kaiser’s

and Holstein’s ambitions for world power. If, as Germany’s neo-Rankean historians proclaimed,

the old European balance of power was giving way to a new world balance, then the future
would surely belong to the Anglo-Saxons (British Empire and America) and Slavs (Russian

Empire) unless Germany were able to achieve its own place in the sun. Bülow agreed that “our

future lies on the water.” German and British interests were simply irreconcilable. What Britain

sought was German help in reducing Franco-Russian pressure on the British Empire and

defending the balance of power. What Germany sought was British neutrality or cooperation

while Germany expanded its own power in the world. Bülow still believed in Holstein’s “free

hand” policy of playing the other powers off against each other and accordingly placed a high

price on German support and invited Britain to join the Triple Alliance as a full military partner.

Understandably, the British declined to underwrite Germany’s continental security.

The failure of the Anglo-German talks condemned both powers to dangerous competition. The

German navy could never hope to equal the British and would only ensure British hostility. But

equality was not necessary, said Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. All Germany needed was a “risk

fleet” large enough to deter the British, who would not dare alienate Germany and thus lose

their only potential ally in the continuing rivalry with France and Russia. In this way Germany

could extract concessions from London without alliance or war. What the Germans failed to

consider was that Britain might someday come to terms with its other antagonists.

This was precisely what Britain did. The Edwardian era (1901–10) was one of intense concern

over the decline of Britain’s naval and commercial dominance. German firms shouldered aside

the British in numerous markets (even though they remained each other’s best trading

partners). The new German navy menaced Britain in her home waters. The French and Russian
fleets, not to mention the Japanese, outnumbered the Royal Navy’s Asian squadron. The

French, Italian, and potential Russian presence in the Mediterranean threatened the British

lifeline to India. Soon the Panama Canal would enable the United States to deploy a two-ocean

navy. Accordingly, the foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, set about reducing the number of

Britain’s potential opponents. First, he cemented friendly relations with the United States in

the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901). He then shocked the world by concluding a military alliance

with Japan, thereby securing British interests in East Asia and allowing the empire to

concentrate its regional forces on India. But when growing tension between Russia and Japan

over Manchuria appeared likely to erupt in war in 1904, France (Russia’s ally) and Britain (now

Japan’s ally) faced a quandary. To prevent being dragged into the conflict, the French and

British shucked off their ancient rivalry and concluded an Entente Cordiale whereby France

gave up opposition to British rule in Egypt, and Britain recognized French rights in Morocco.

Though strictly a colonial arrangement, it marked another step away from isolation for both

Britain and France and another step toward it for the restless and frustrated Germans.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was an ominous turning point. Contrary to all

expectations, Japan triumphed on land and sea, and Russia stumbled into the Revolution of

1905. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the war,

and the tsar quelled the revolutionary flames with promises of parliamentary government, but

the war resonated in world diplomacy. Japan established itself as the leading Asian power. The

example of an Oriental nation rising up to defeat a European great power emboldened Chinese,

Indians, and Arabs to look forward to a day when they might expel the imperialists from their
midst. And tsarist Russia, its Asian adventure a shambles, looked once again to the Balkans as a

field for expansion, setting the stage for World War I.

THE TRIPLE ENTENTE

In 1905 the Germans seized on Russia’s temporary troubles to pressure France in Morocco.

Bülow believed he had much to gain—at best he might force a breakup of the Anglo-French

entente, at worst he might provoke a French retreat and secure German rights in Morocco. But

at the Algeciras Conference in 1906, called to settle the Morocco dispute, only Austria-Hungary

supported the German position. Far from breaking the Entente Cordiale, the affair prompted

the British to begin secret staff talks with the French military. The United States, Russia, and

even Italy, Germany’s erstwhile partner in the Triple Alliance, took France’s side. For some

years Italian ambitions in the Mediterranean had been thwarted, and the attempt to conquer

Abyssinia in 1896 had failed. The German alliance seemed to offer little, while Rome’s other

foreign objective, the Italian irredenta in the Tirol and Dalmatia, was aimed at Austria-Hungary.

So in 1900 Italy concluded a secret agreement pledging support for France in Morocco in return

for French support of Italy in Libya. The Russo-Japanese War also strengthened ties between

France and Russia as French loans again rebuilt Russia’s shattered armed forces. Finally, and

most critically, the defeated Russians and worried British were now willing to put to rest their

old rivalry in Central Asia. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 made a neutral buffer of

Tibet, recognized Britain’s interest in Afghanistan, and partitioned Persia into spheres of

influence. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey also hinted at the possibility of British support for

Russian policy in the Balkans, reversing a century-old tradition.

The heyday of European imperialism thus called into existence a second alliance system, the

Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia. It was not originally conceived as a balance to

German power, but that was its effect, especially in light of the escalating naval race. In 1906

the Royal Navy under the reformer Sir John Fisher launched HMS Dreadnought, a battleship

whose size, armour, speed, and gunnery rendered all existing warships obsolete. The German

government responded in kind, even enlarging the Kiel Canal at great expense to accommodate

the larger ships. What were the British, dependent on imports by sea for seven-eighths of their

raw materials and over half their foodstuffs, to make of German behaviour? In a famous

Foreign Office memo of January 1907, Senior Clerk Sir Eyre Crowe surmised

that Weltpolitik was either a conscious bid for hegemony or a “vague, confused, and unpractical

statesmanship not realizing its own drift.” As Ambassador Sir Francis Bertie put it, “The

Germans aim to push us into the water and steal our clothes.”

For France the Triple Entente was primarily a continental security apparatus. For Russia it was a

means of reducing points of conflict so that the antiquated tsarist system could buy time to

catch up technologically with the West. For Britain the ententes, the Japanese alliance, and the

“special relationship” with the United States were diplomatic props for an empire beyond

Britain’s capacity to defend alone. The three powers’ interests by no means coincided—

disputes over Persia alone might have smashed Anglo-Russian unity if the war had not

intervened. But to the Germans the Triple Entente looked suspiciously like encirclement

designed to frustrate their rightful claims to world power and prestige. German attempts to

break the encirclement, however, would only alarm the entente powers and cause them to
draw the loose strings into a knot. That in turn tempted German leaders, fearful that time was

against them, to cut the Gordian knot with the sword. For after 1907 the focus of diplomacy

shifted back to the Balkans, with European cabinets unaware, until it was too late, that alliances

made with the wide world in mind had dangerously limited their freedom of action in Europe.

MILITARISM AND PACIFISM BEFORE 1914

ANXIETY AND THE ARMS RACE

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Europe before 1914 succumbed to hubris. The

conventional images of “armed camps,” “a powder keg,” or “saber rattling” almost trivialize a

civilization that combined within itself immense pride in its newly expanding power and almost

apocalyptic insecurity about the future. Europe bestrode the world, and yet Lord Curzon could

remark, “We can hardly take up our morning newspaper without reading of the physical and

moral decline of the race,” and the German chief of staff, Helmuth von Moltke, could say that if

Germany backed down again on Morocco, “I shall despair of the future of the German Empire.”

France’s stagnant population and weak industry made her statesmen frantic for security,

Austrian leaders were filled with foreboding about their increasingly disaffected nationalities,

and the tsarist regime, with the most justification, sensed doom.

Whether from ambition or insecurity, the great powers armed as never before in peacetime,

with military expenditures reaching 5 to 6 percent of national income. Military conscription and

reserve systems made available a significant percentage of the adult male population, and the

impulse to create large standing armies was strengthened by the widespread belief that
firepower and financial limitations would make the next war short and violent. Simple reaction

also played a large role. Fear of the “Russian steamroller” was sufficient to expand Germany’s

service law; a larger German army provoked the outmanned French into an extension of

national service to three years. Only Britain did without a large conscripted army, but her naval

needs were proportionally more expensive.

In an age of heavy, rapid-fire artillery, infantry rifles, and railroads, but not yet including motor

transport, tanks, or airplanes, a premium was placed by military staffs on mass, supply, and

prior planning. European commanders assumed that in a continental war the opening frontier

battles would be decisive, hence the need to mobilize the maximum number of men and move

them at maximum speed to the border. The meticulous and rigid advance planning that this

strategy required placed inordinate pressure on the diplomats in a crisis. Politicians might hold

back their army in hopes of saving the peace only at the risk of losing the war should diplomacy

fail. What was more, all the continental powers embraced offensive strategies. The French

general staff’s “cult of attack” assumed that élan could carry the day against superior German

numbers. Its Plan XVII called for an immediate assault on Lorraine. The Germans’ Schlieffen Plan

addressed the problem of war on two fronts by throwing almost the entire German army into a

sweeping offensive through neutral Belgium to capture Paris and the French army in a gigantic

envelope. Troops could then be transported east to meet the slower-moving Russian army.

Worked out down to the last railroad switch and passenger car, the Schlieffen Plan was an

apotheosis of the industrial age: a mechanical, almost mathematical perfection that wholly

ignored political factors. None of the general staffs anticipated what the war would actually be
like. Had they glimpsed the horrific stalemate in the trenches, surely neither they nor the

politicians would have run the risks they did in 1914.

Above the mass infantry armies of the early 20th century stood the officer corps, the general

staffs, and at the pinnacle the supreme war lords: kaiser, emperor, tsar, and king, all of whom

adopted military uniforms as their standard dress in these years. The army was a natural refuge

for the central and eastern European aristocracies, the chivalric code of arms sustaining almost

the only public service to which they could still reasonably lay claim. Even in republican France

a nationalist revival after 1912 excited public morale, inspired the military buildup, and both

fueled and cloaked a revanche aimed at recovery of the provinces lost 40 years before. Popular

European literature poured forth best sellers depicting the next war, and mass-circulation

newspapers incited even the working classes with news of imperial adventures or the latest

slight by the adversary.

THE PEACE MOVEMENTS

Various peace movements sprang up to counter the spirit of militarism before 1914. Most

numerous and disturbing to those responsible for national defense were the socialists.

The Second International took the Marxist view of imperialism and militarism as creatures of

capitalist competition and loudly warned that if the bosses provoked a war, the working classes

would refuse to take part. Jean Jaurès defined the proletariat as “masses of men who

collectively love peace and hate war.” The 1912 Basel Conference declared the proletariat “the

herald of world peace” and proclaimed “war on war.” Sober observers like George Bernard
Shaw and Max Weber doubted that any putative sense of solidarity among workers would

outweigh their nationalism, but the French government kept a blacklist of agitators who might

try to subvert mobilization. Some of Germany’s leaders imagined that war might provide the

opportunity to crush socialism by appeals to patriotism or martial law.

A liberal peace movement with a middle-class constituency flourished around the turn of the

century. As many as 425 peace organizations are estimated to have existed in 1900, fully half of

them in Scandinavia and most others in Germany, Britain, and the United States. Their greatest

achievements were the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907, at which the powers agreed to

ban certain inhumane weapons but made no progress toward general disarmament. The liberal

peace movement also foundered on internal contradictions. To outlaw war was to endorse the

international status quo, yet liberals always stood ready to excuse wars that could claim

progressive ends. They had tolerated the wars of Italian and German unification, and they

would tolerate the Balkan Wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1912–13 and the great war in

1914. Another solution for many peace advocates was to transcend the nation-state. Norman

Angell’s The Great Illusion (1910) argued that it already had been transcended: that

interdependence among nations made war illogical and counterproductive. To Marxists this

image of capitalism was ludicrous; to Weber or Joseph Schumpeter it was correct but beside

the point. Blood was thicker than class, or money; politics dominated economics; and

irrationality, reason.
The one European statesman most sympathetic to the peace movements was, not surprisingly,

Britain’s Liberal foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. Citing the waste, social discord, and

international tension caused by the naval arms race he made several overtures to Germany in

hopes of ending it. When these failed, Britain had little choice but to race more quickly than the

Germans. Even radical Liberals like David Lloyd George had to admit that however much they

might deplore arms races in the abstract, all that was liberal and good in the world depended

on the security of Britain and its control of its seas.

THE BALKAN CRISES AND THE OUTBREAK OF WAR, 1907–14

GROWING TENSIONS AND GERMAN ISOLATION

In the end, war did not come over the naval race or commercial competition or imperialism.

Nor was it sparked by the institutional violence of the armed states, but by underground

terrorism in the name of an oppressed people. Nor did it come over the ambitions of great

powers to become greater, but over the fear of one great power that unless it took vigorous

action it might cease to exist altogether. It began in the Balkans.

In 1897 Austria-Hungary and Russia had agreed to put their dispute over the Balkans on ice.

When the agreement ran out in 1907, the Ottoman Empire still ruled Macedonia, ringed by

Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bulgaria. But everything else had changed. For now Austria-

Hungary’s only reliable ally was Germany, whose Weltpolitik had led it to join the competition

for influence at Constantinople. Russia was looking again at the Balkans for foreign policy

advantage and enjoying, for the first time, a measure of British tolerance. In Serbia, the state
most threatening to Vienna because of its ethnic tie to the Serbs and Croats inside the Dual

Monarchy, a fundamental political shift had occurred. In previous years Vienna had neutralized

Serbia by bribing the ruling Obrenovid dynasty, but in 1903 the rival Karageorgevid clan seized

control in Belgrade in a bloody coup d’état and shifted to a violently anti-Austrian policy.

Finally, in 1908, a cabal of officers known as the Young Turks staged the first modernizing

revolution in the Muslim world and tried to force the sultan to adopt liberal reforms. In

particular the Young Turks called for parliamentary elections, thereby placing in doubt the

status of Bosnia and Hercegovina, provinces still under Ottoman sovereignty but administered

by Austria-Hungary since 1878. The Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Aloys Aehrenthal,

proposed to settle the Bosnian issue and to crush Serbian ambitions once and for all by

annexing the provinces. To this purpose he teased the Russian foreign minister, Aleksandr

Petrovich Izvolsky, with talk of a quid pro quo: Russia’s acquiescence in annexation in return for

Austria-Hungary’s in the opening of the Dardanelles to Russian warships. When instead

Aehrenthal acted unilaterally, and Izvolsky’s straits proposal was rejected, the Russians felt

betrayed. Their response was to increase aid and comfort to their client Serbia and to

determine never again to back down in the Balkans.

German politics were also approaching a breaking point. Chancellor von Bülow had governed,

with the support of Tirpitz, the kaiser, and the moderate and conservative parties in the

Reichstag, on the basis of a grand compromise of which the navy was the linchpin. Agrarian

interests continued to demand protection against foreign foodstuffs, but the tariffs imposed to

that end harmed German industrial exports. A large armaments program, especially naval,
compensated heavy industry for lost foreign markets. The losers in the tariffs-plus-navy-

legislation arrangement were consumers, who were taxed for the defense program after they

had paid higher prices for bread. Popular resentment tended to increase the socialist vote, and

the other parties could command a majority only by banding together.

Soon, however, the expensive dreadnought race provoked a fiscal crisis that cracked the Bülow

bloc and, in 1909, elevated Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to the chancellorship. He faced

the choice of ending the naval race and moderating Germany’s Weltpolitik or making

democratic concessions to the left or somehow rebuilding the coalition of conservative

agrarians and industrialists in the teeth of socialist opposition. Bethmann showed signs of

preferring the first course but was undercut by the pressure of industry, Tirpitz’s naval

propaganda, and the kaiser’s bravado, symbolized by a damaging Daily Telegraph interview

(1908) in which he made inflammatory remarks about the British. When in 1912 Lord Haldane

was dispatched to Berlin to discuss a suspension of the naval arms race, the kaiser spoiled

chances for an accord by introducing a new naval bill two days before his arrival. The British

then accelerated their own dreadnought construction. By now the failure of German policy was

apparent. Clearly the British would not permit Germany to challenge their sea power, while the

German army agreed in 1912 to tolerate further naval expansion only if the army were granted

a sharp increase in funding as well. In the 1912 elections the Social Democrats won 110 seats

and became the largest party in the Reichstag.

Domestic and foreign stalemate obsessed Germany’s political and military leadership. Reform

at home meant an end to the privileged positions of the various elites; retreat abroad meant

the end of Germany’s dreams of world power. A bold stroke, even at the risk of war, seemed

the only way out of the double impasse. In 1911 Foreign Minister Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter

tried to force the issue in Morocco, where the French clearly aimed at a formal protectorate in

defiance of the Algeciras accords. Germany sent the gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port

of Agadir in defense of “German interests” there. Britain again stood with France, however, and

Kiderlen-Wächter acquiesced in a French Morocco in exchange for portions of French colonies

in Central Africa. In France this accommodation of Germany brought down the government of

Premier Joseph Caillaux, who was succeeded by Raymond Poincaré, a determined nationalist

and advocate of military preparedness who quickly secured passage of an expansion of the

standing army. In Britain, Winston Churchill, then first lord of the Admiralty, withdrew his fleet

from the Mediterranean to home waters, making mandatory even closer military coordination

with France.

This Second Moroccan Crisis confirmed Germany’s isolation, while the British, French, and

Russian military buildups meant that time was on the side of the entente. Moltke had already

raised the notion of preventive war, and in the kaiser’s war council of December 1912 he

blustered, “War, the sooner the better.” To be sure, jingoism of this sort could be found in

every great power on the eve of the war, but only the leaders in Berlin—and soon Vienna—

were seriously coming to view war not as simply a possibility but as a necessity.
The final prewar assault on the Ottoman empire also began in 1911. Italy cashed in her bargain

with France over Libya by declaring war on Turkey and sending a naval squadron as far as the

Dardanelles. Simultaneously, Russian ministers in the Balkans brought about an alliance

between the bitter rivals Serbia and Bulgaria in preparation for a final strike against Ottoman-

controlled Europe. The First Balkan War erupted in October 1912, when Montenegro declared

war on Turkey, followed quickly by Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The Young Turks ended the

conflict with Italy, ceding Libya, but failed to contain the Balkan armies. In May 1913 the great

powers imposed a settlement; Macedonia was partitioned among the Balkan states, Crete was

granted to Greece, and Albania was given its independence. Landlocked Serbia, however, bid

for additional territory in Macedonia, and Bulgaria replied with an attack on Serbia and Greece,

thus beginning the Second Balkan War in June 1913. In the peace that followed in August,

Bulgaria lost most of her stake in the former Turkish lands plus much of the southern Dobruja

region to Romania. Serbia, however, doubled its territory and, flushed with victory, turned its

sights on the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina.

THE FINAL CRISIS

How might the Habsburg empire survive the rise of particularist nationalism in eastern Europe?

Austrian statesmen had debated the question for 50 years, and the best answer seemed to be

some form of federalism permitting political autonomy to the nationalities. Reforms of this

nature had always been vetoed by the Hungarians, who stood to lose their own position vis-à-

vis the German-Austrians and the minorities in their half of the empire. Conrad Franz, Graf

(count) von Hötzendorf, chief of the general staff, favoured preventive war against Serbia to
stifle nationalist agitation for good and reinforce the old order. Archduke Franz Ferdinand

wrote, however, “I live and shall die for federalism; it is the sole salvation for the monarchy, if

anything can save it.” Out of favour with the court for his morganatic marriage and resented by

the Hungarians and by conservatives, the heir apparent was also feared by Slavic radicals as the

one man who might really pacify the nationalities and so frustrate their dreams of a Greater

Serbia. Hence, the archduke was a marked man among the secret societies that sprang up to

liberate Bosnia. Such is the logic of terrorism: its greatest enemies are the peacemakers.

The National Defense (Narodna Odbrana) was formed in Serbia in 1908 to carry on pro-Serbian

and anti-Austrian agitation across the border. Its nonviolent methods were deemed insufficient

by others, who in 1911 formed the secret society Union or Death (Ujedinjenje ili Smrt), also

known as the Black Hand, led by the head of Serbian military intelligence, Colonel Dragutin

Dimitrijevid. The latter had been involved in the 1903 assassinations of the Obrenovid family

and favoured terrorist action over intellectual propaganda. With his support, if not on his direct

orders, a band of youthful romantics conspired to assassinate Franz Ferdinand during his state

visit to Sarajevo. On June 28, 1914, which happened to be the Serbian national holiday, the

archduke and his wife rode in an open car through the streets of the Bosnian capital. A bomb

was thrown but missed. The archduke completed his official duties, whereupon the governor of

Bosnia suggested they deviate from the planned route on the return trip for safety’s sake. But

the lead driver in the procession took a wrong turn, the cars stopped momentarily, and at that

moment the 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip fired his revolver, killing both royal passengers.
Reaction in Vienna, and Europe generally, was surprisingly restrained. No one imagined that the

outrage had more than local importance, much less that Bismarck’s prophecy about “some

damned fool thing in the Balkans” starting the next war was about to be fulfilled. Conrad von

Hötzendorf saw the deed as pretext for his preventive war against Serbia, but the aged

emperor Franz Joseph preferred to await an inquiry to determine the extent of Serbian

complicity. Germany, on the other hand, pressed for a firm riposte and in the kaiser’s famous

“blank check” memo promised to support whatever action Austria might take against Serbia.

The Germans expected Russia to back down, since its military reforms would not be complete

for several years, but even if Russia came to Serbia’s aid, the German high command was

confident of victory. Bethmann was less so. A move against Serbia could lead to a world war, he

warned on July 7. Yet Bethmann went along in the vain hope of localizing the conflict.

Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold, Graf von Berchtold, now advocated a firm policy toward

Serbia lest Austria’s prestige deteriorate further and the Balkan states unite behind Russia. Gróf

(count) Tisza, the prime minister of Hungary, insisted, however, that diplomatic and legal

justifications precede such a clash of arms: Austria must first present a list of demands for

redress. Should Serbia accept, the empire would win a “brilliant diplomatic success”; should

Serbia refuse, war could be waged with Austria-Hungary posing as the aggrieved party. In no

case was Austria to annex any Serbian territory.

The Russian response to any Austrian initiative would be critical, and by chance the president

and prime minister of France, Poincaré and René Viviani, were paying a state visit to St.
Petersburg in July. Strangely, there is no record of the Franco-Russian conversations, but it is

known that Poincaré assured the Russians that France would stand by her alliance

commitments. On July 23, just after the French leaders left for home, Vienna presented its

ultimatum to Belgrade, demanding dissolution of the secret societies, cessation of anti-Austrian

propaganda, and Austrian participation in the investigation of the Sarajevo crime. Serbia was

given 48 hours to respond.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Dmitriyevich Sazonov, erupted at news of the ultimatum

and insisted on military measures. The French ambassador, Maurice-Georges Paléologue, with

or without instructions from his departed chiefs, encouraged Sazonov, for if Austria’s prestige—

and very future—were at stake in the Balkans, so too were tsarist Russia’s, for which the

Balkans was the only region left in which to demonstrate its vitality. But now Germany was

competing for influence over the Young Turks, courting Bulgaria, and plotting to smash Serbia.

The German slogan “From Berlin to Baghdad,” referring originally only to railroads, took on

ominous new political meaning. On July 25 the Russian Council of Ministers decided that if

Austrian forces entered Serbia, Russia would mobilize its army. This precipitous, indeed

anticipatory, decision reflected Russia’s size and the inadequacy of its rail network. Sazonov

seems to have considered mobilization a political threat, but given the mechanistic timetables

that were integral to the planning of all the European general staffs, it could only provoke

countermobilizations and an inexorable drift into war.

On July 25 Serbia accepted all the Austro-Hungarian conditions save those two that directly

compromised its sovereignty. Two days later Berchtold persuaded Franz Joseph to initiate war.

At the same moment the kaiser, returning from a yachting expedition, tried belatedly to

restrain Vienna. On July 28 Austria declared war and bombarded Belgrade, and on the same day

the tsar approved the mobilization of the Russian army against Austria, and alarms went off all

over Europe. Sir Edward Grey, Kaiser William, and the Italian government all proposed

negotiations, with the Austrians to occupy Belgrade as a pledge of Serbian compliance. The

German ambassador in St. Petersburg assured the Russians that Austria meant to annex no

Serbian territory. But it was too little and far too late. In St. Petersburg the generals protested

that partial mobilization would disrupt their contingency plans: How could Russia prepare to

fight Austria-Hungary while leaving naked her border with Austria’s ally Germany? The weak

and vacillating tsar Nicholas II was persuaded, and on the afternoon of July 30 he authorized

general mobilization of the Russian army.

The previous day Poincaré and Viviani had finally arrived back in Paris, where they were met

with patriotic crowds and generals anxious for military precautions. In Berlin, anti-Russian

demonstrations and equally anxious generals called for immediate action. On the 31st, when all

the other powers had begun preparations of some sort and even the British had put the fleet to

sea (thanks to Winston Churchill’s foresight), Germany delivered ultimatums to Russia,

demanding an end to mobilization, and to France, demanding neutrality in case of war in the

east. But Russia and France could scarcely accede without abandoning the Balkans, each other,

and their own security. When the ultimatums expired, the Schlieffen Plan was put into effect.
Germany declared war against Russia on August 1 and against France on August 3 and

demanded safe passage for its troops through Belgium. Refused again, Germany invaded

Belgium in force.

On August 3, Italy took refuge in the fact that this was not a defensive war on Austria-Hungary’s

part and declared its neutrality. That left only Britain, faced with the choice of joining its

entente partners in war or standing aloof and risking German domination of the Continent.

Britain had little interest in the Serbian affair, and the kingdom was torn by the Irish question.

The cabinet was in doubt as late as August 2. But the prospect of the German fleet in the

English Channel and German armies on the Belgian littoral settled the issue. On the 3rd Britain

demanded that Germany evacuate Belgium, and Grey won over Parliament with appeals to

British interests and international law. On August 4, Britain declared war on Germany.

THE WAR-GUILT QUESTION

THE SEARCH FOR CAUSES

Debate over the origins of World War I was from the start partisan and moral in tone. Each of

the belligerents published documentary collections selected to shift the blame and prove that it

was fighting in self-defense. Serbia was defending itself against Austrian aggression. Austria-

Hungary was defending its very existence against terror plotted on foreign soil. Russia was

defending Serbia and the Slavic cause against German imperialism. Germany was defending its

lone reliable ally from attack and itself from entente encirclement. France, with most
justification, was defending itself against unprovoked German attack. And Britain was fighting

in defense of Belgium, international law, and the balance of power.

In the Treaty of Versailles (1919) the victorious coalition justified its peace terms by forcing

Germany and its allies to acknowledge guilt for the war. This tactic was historically dubious and

politically disastrous, but it stemmed from the liberal conviction, as old as the Enlightenment,

that peace was normal and war an aberration or crime for which clear responsibility—guilt—

could be established. Almost at once, revisionist historians examined the thousands of

documents that governments made available after 1920 and challenged the Versailles verdict.

Yes, the German government had issued the risky “blank check” and urged Vienna on an

aggressive course. It had swept aside all proposals for mediation until events had gained

irreversible momentum. It had, finally, surrendered its authority to a military plan that ensured

the war could not be localized. Indeed, the whole course of German foreign policy since 1890

had been restless and counter-productive, calling into existence the very ring of enemies it then

took extreme risks to break. But on the other hand, Russia’s hasty mobilization expanded the

crisis beyond the Balkans, initiated a round of military moves, and contributed to German

panic. Given the military realities of the age, Sazonov’s notion of Russian mobilization as a mere

“application of pressure” was either disingenuous or foolish. France could be faulted for not

restraining Russia and for issuing its own “blank check.” Even the British might have done more

to preserve peace, either through more vigorous mediation or by making clear that they would

not remain neutral in a continental war, thus deterring the Germans. Finally, what of the states

at the heart of the crisis? Surely Belgrade’s use of political terrorism in the name of Greater
Serbia, and Austria-Hungary’s determination to crush its tormentors, provoked the crisis in the

first place. By the 1930s moderate historians had concluded, with Lloyd George, that no one

country was to blame for the war: “We all stumbled into it.”

The failure of documentary research to settle the war-guilt question led other historians to look

behind the July 1914 crisis for long-range causes of the war. Surely, they reasoned, such

profound events must have had profound origins. As early as 1928 the American Sidney B. Fay

concluded that none of the European leaders had wanted a great war and identified as its

deeper causes the alliance systems, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, and the newspaper

press. (Marxists, of course, from the publication of Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism in 1916, held finance capitalism to be accountable for the war.) In this view the

polarization of Europe into alliance systems had made “chain-reaction” escalation of a local

imbroglio almost predictable. Militarism and imperialism had fed tensions and appetites among

the great powers, while nationalism and sensationalist journalism had stoked popular

resentments. How else could one explain the universal enthusiasm with which soldiers and

civilians alike greeted the outbreak of war? Such evenhanded sentiments, along with the

abstraction of the terms of analysis that exculpated individuals while blaming the system, were

both appealing and prescriptive. In the 1930s British statesmen in particular would strive to

learn the lessons of 1914 and so prevent another war. As another generation’s hindsight would

reveal, the lessons did not apply to the new situation.

After World War II and the Cold War had left the issues of 1914 passé, a committee of French

and German historians agreed that World War I had been an unwilled disaster for which all

countries shared blame. Only a few years later, however, in 1961, that consensus shattered.

The German historian Fritz Fischer published a massive study of German war aims during 1914–

18 and held that Germany’s government, social elites, and even broad masses had consciously

pursued a breakthrough to world power in the years before World War I and that the German

government, fully aware of the risks of world war and of British belligerency, had deliberately

provoked the 1914 crisis. Fischer’s thesis sparked bitter debate and a rash of new

interpretations of World War I. Leftist historians made connections between Fischer’s evidence

and that cited 30 years before by Eckhart Kehr, who had traced the social origins of the naval

program to the cleavages in German society and the stalemate in the Reichstag. Other

historians saw links to the Bismarckian technique of using foreign policy excursions to stifle

domestic reform, a technique dubbed “social imperialism.” Germany’s rulers, it appeared, had

resolved before 1914 to overthrow the world order in hopes of preserving the domestic order.

Traditionalist critics of Fischer pointed to the universality of imperialistic, social Darwinist, and

militaristic behaviour on the eve of the war. The kaiser, in his most nationalistic moods, only

spoke and acted like many others in all the great powers. Did not Sazonov and the Russian

generals, in their unrecorded moments, yearn to erase the humiliation of 1905 and conquer the

Dardanelles, or Poincaré and General J.-J.-C. Joffre wonder excitedly if the recovery of Alsace-

Lorraine were finally at hand, or the Primrose and Navy leagues thrill to the prospect of a

Nelsonian clash of dreadnoughts? Germans were not the only people who grew weary of peace
or harboured grandiose visions of empire. To this universalist view, leftist historians like the

American A.J. Mayer then applied the “primacy of domestic policy” thesis and hypothesized

that all the European powers had courted war as a means of cowing or distracting their working

classes and national minorities.

Such “new left” interpretations triggered intense study of the connections between domestic

and foreign policy, leading to the conclusion that a postulation of internal origins of the war,

while obvious for Austria and plausible for Russia, failed in the cases of democratic Britain and

France. If anything, internal discord made for reticence rather than assertion on the part of

their foreign policy elites. The conservative historian Gerhard Ritter even challenged the Fischer

thesis in the German case. The real problem, he argued, was not fear of the Social Democrats

but the age-old tension between civilian and military influence in the Prussian-German

government. Politicians, exemplified by Bethmann, did not share the eagerness or imprudence

of the general staff but lost control of the ship of state in the atmosphere of deepening crisis

leading up to 1914. Finally, a moderate German historian, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, dispensed

with polemics altogether. Germany’s rapid industrialization and the tardiness of modernization

in Austria-Hungary and Russia, he concluded, created instabilities in central and eastern Europe

that found expression in desperate self-assertion. Echoing Joseph Schumpeter, Mommsen

blamed the war on the survival of precapitalist regimes that simply proved “no longer adequate

in the face of rapid social change and the steady advance of mass politics.” This interpretation,

however, amounted to an updated and elaborated version of the unsophisticated consensus

that “we all stumbled into it.” Were the World Wars, then, beyond human control?
Thus, the search for long-range causes, while turning up a wealth of new information and

insight, ran ultimately aground. After all, if “imperialism” or “capitalism” had caused the war,

they had just as assuredly caused the unprecedented era of peace and growth that preceded it.

Imperialist crises, though tense at times, had always been resolved, and even Germany’s

ambitions were on the verge of being served through a 1914 agreement with Britain on a

planned partition of the Portuguese empire. Imperial politics were simply not a casus belli for

anyone except Britain. Military preparedness was at a peak, but armaments are responses to

tensions, not the cause of them, and they had, perhaps, served to deter war in the numerous

crises preceding 1914. Capitalist activity tied the nations of Europe together as never before,

and in 1914 most leading businessmen were advocates of peace. The alliance systems

themselves were defensive and deterrent by design and had served as such for decades. Nor

were they inflexible. Italy opted out of her alliance, the tsar was not bound to risk his dynasty

on behalf of Serbia, or the kaiser his on behalf of Austria-Hungary, while the French and British

cabinets might never have persuaded their parliaments to take up arms had the Schlieffen Plan

not forced the issue. Perhaps the 1914 crisis was, after all, a series of blunders, in which

statesmen failed to perceive the effects their actions would have on the others.

THE CENTRALITY OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

Perhaps a long-range view that is still serviceable is precisely the one derived from old-

fashioned analysis of the balance-of-power system, forgotten amid the debates over national or

class responsibility. This view, suggested by Paul Schroeder in 1972, asks not why war broke out

in 1914 but why not before? What snapped in 1914? The answer, he argued, is that the
keystone of European balance, the element of stability that allowed the other powers to chase

imperial moonbeams at will, was Austria-Hungary itself. The heedless policies of the other

powers, however, gradually undermined the Habsburg monarchy until it was faced with a

mortal choice. At that point, the most stable member of the system became the most

disruptive, the girders of security—the alliances—generated destructive pressures of their own,

and the European system collapsed. To be sure, Austria-Hungary was threatened with her own

nationality problem, aggravated by Serbia. It could better have met that threat, however, if the

great powers had worked to ameliorate pressures on it, just as they had carried the declining

Ottoman Empire for a full century. Instead, the ambitions of Russia, France, and Britain, and the

stifling friendship of Germany, only served to push Austria-Hungary to the brink. This was not

their intention, but it was the effect.

The central fact of global politics from 1890 to 1914 was Britain’s relative decline. This occurred

naturally, as industrial power diffused, but was aggravated by the particular challenge of

Germany. Overextended, the British sought partners to share the burdens of a world empire

and were obliged in return to look kindly on those partners’ ambitions. But the resulting Triple

Entente was not the cause of Germany’s frustrations in the conduct of Weltpolitik. Rather it was

the inability of Germany to pursue an imperial policy à outrance. Situated in the middle of

Europe, with hostile armies on two sides, and committed to the defense of Austria-Hungary,

Germany was unable to make headway in the overseas world despite her strength. By contrast,

relatively weak France or hopelessly ramshackle Russia could engage in adventures at will,

suffer setbacks, and return to the fray in a few years. Schroeder concluded: “The contradiction
between what Germany wanted to do and what she dared to do and was obliged to do

accounts in turn for the erratic, uncoordinated character of German world policy, its inability to

settle on clear goals and carry them through, the constant initiatives leading nowhere, the

frequent changes in mid-course.” All Germany could do was bluff and hope to be paid for doing

nothing: for remaining neutral in the Russo-Japanese War, for not building more dreadnoughts,

for letting the French into Morocco, for not penetrating Persia. Of course, Germany could have

launched an imperialist war in 1905 or 1911 under more favourable circumstances. It chose not

to do so, and German might was such that prior to 1914 the other powers never considered a

passage of arms with Germany.

Instead, Triple Entente diplomacy served to undermine Austria-Hungary. Everyone recognized

that it was the “sick man of Europe” and that its demise would be inconvenient at very best and

would almost certainly expose the ethnic mare’s nest of southeastern Europe to civil war or

Russian or German domination. Yet no one did anything about it. France could scarcely afford

to—its security was too tightly bound to Russia’s—but France’s policy of wooing Italy out of the

Triple Alliance was a grave setback, not for Germany but for Austria-Hungary. Russia brazenly

pushed the Slavic nationalities forward, thinking to make gains but never realizing that tsarism

was as dependent on Habsburg survival as Austria-Hungary had been on Ottoman survival. Only

Britain had the capacity to maneuver, to restrain the likes of Serbia and Russia and take some of

the Austro-Hungarian burden off Germany’s shoulders. And indeed it had done so before—in

1815–22, 1878, and 1888. But now the British chose vaguely to encourage Russia in the

Balkans, letting Austria-Hungary, as it were, pay the price for distracting Russia from the
frontiers of India. So by 1914 Austria was encircled and Germany was left with the choice of

watching her only ally collapse or risking a war against all Europe. Having chosen the risk, and

lost, it is no surprise that the Germans (as well as the other powers) gave vent to all their

prewar bitterness and pursued a thorough revision of world politics in their own favour.

WORLD WAR I, 1914–18

World War I has aptly been called a war of illusions that exposed in sharp relief all the follies of

the prewar generation. The war plans of the generals had misfired at once, and expectations

that the intensity of modern firepower would serve the offense, or that the war must be brief,

proved horribly false. Germany expected to achieve hegemony in Europe as a step toward

world power, and instead world powers were called into play to prevent hegemony in Europe.

Socialists thought war would bring general strikes and revolution, and instead the war inspired

patriotic national unity. Monarchists hoped war would bolster the old regimes, and instead it

cast down the remaining dynasties of eastern Europe. Liberals hoped that war would promote

the spread of freedom, and instead it forced even democratic governments to impose

censorship, martial law, and command economies subordinated to the dictates of centralized

bureaucracy. Each nation in its own way sacrificed one by one those values it claimed to be

fighting for in the belief that final victory would make good all the terrible cost. And with

terrible irony World War I also ended in various plans for peace as illusory as the plans for war

had been. As the historian William McNeill wrote, “the irrationality of rational, professionalized

planning could not have been made more patently manifest.”

World War I can be divided, without undue violence to reality, into three periods: the initial

battles, struggles for new allies, and mobilization on the home fronts, occupying the period

from 1914 to 1916; the onset of ideologized warfare in the Russian revolutions and American

entry in 1917; and the final four-way struggle of 1918 among German imperialism, Allied war-

aims diplomacy, Wilsonian liberal internationalism, and Leninist bolshevism.

MILITARY STALEMATE AND NEW BELLIGERENTS

FROM GRAND PLANS TO THE TRENCHES

The first months of war resounded with the collision of the war plans pored over for decades by

the general staffs of Europe. The original German plan for a two-front war, drafted by Helmuth

von Moltke the elder, had called for taking the offensive against Russia and standing on the

defensive in the rugged Rhineland. The plan showed military prudence and complemented the

stabilizing diplomacy of Bismarck. But Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, presided over the German

military in the era of Kaiser William’s Weltpolitik and adopted a more ambitious and risky

course. His plan, conceived in 1891 and completed by 1905, envisioned a massive offensive in

the west to knock out the compact French forces in six weeks, whereupon the army could shift

eastward to confront the plodding Russians. But a quick decision could be achieved in France

only by a vast enveloping action. The powerful right wing of the German army must descend

from the north and pass through the neutral Low Countries. This would virtually ensure British

intervention. But Schlieffen expected British aid to be too little and too late. In sum, the

Schlieffen Plan represented a pristine militarism: the belief that all factors could be accounted
for in advance, that execution could be flawless, that pure force could resolve all political

problems including those thrown up by the plan itself. In the event, the Germans realized all of

the political costs of the Schlieffen Plan and few of the military benefits.

Like the Germans, the French had discarded a more sensible plan in favour of the one

implemented. French intelligence had learned of the grand lines of the Schlieffen Plan and its

inclusion of reserve troops in the initial assault. General Victor Michel therefore called in 1911

for a blocking action in Belgium in addition to an offensive into Alsace-Lorraine. But this

required twice the active troops currently available. France would either have to give up the

Belgian screen or the offensive. The new chief of staff, J.-J.-C. Joffre, refused to believe that

Germany would deploy reserve corps in immediate combat and gave up the screen.

The traditional British way of war had been maritime: destroy the enemy’s fleet, impose a

blockade, and use land forces only to secure key points or aid continental allies at decisive

moments. In Sir John Fisher’s phrase, the army “should be regarded as a projectile fired by the

navy.” The prewar conversations with France, however, led the War Office to consider how

Britain’s army might help in case of war with Germany. General Henry Wilson insisted that even

Britain’s six divisions of professionals could tilt the balance between France and Germany and

won his case for a British Expeditionary Force. Privately, he conceded that six divisions were

“fifty too few” and hoped for a mass conscript army on continental lines.

By October 1914 all the plans had unraveled. After the German defeat in the Battle of the

Marne, the Western Front stabilized into an uninterrupted line for 466 miles from Nieuwpoort
on the Belgian coast south to Bapaume, then southeast past Soissons, Verdun, Nancy, and so to

the Swiss frontier. Both sides dug in, elaborated their trench systems over time, and

condemned themselves to four years of hellish stalemate on the Western Front.

The situation was little better on the other front. A necessary assumption of the Schlieffen Plan

was the inadequacy of the Russian rail network to support a rapid offensive. By 1914, however,

railroads through Poland were much improved, and the Russian general staff agreed to take the

offensive in case of war to relieve the pressure on France. Similarly, the Germans had asked the

Austrian commander, Conrad von Hötzendorf, to attack Russia and ease the threat to Germany.

Austria also had a two-front war, however, and an army too small to fight it. Owing to penury

and its nationality problems, the monarchy fielded fewer battalions in 1914 than it had in the

war of 1866. As the saying went, Austria was always “en retard d’une armée, d’une année et

d’une idée” (“one army, one year, and one idea behind”). Austria’s solution was to send one

army south against Serbia and one to Galicia against the Russians and to deploy a third as need

required. The reserves, a third of Austria’s already outnumbered forces, spent the opening

battles shuttling back and forth on the rails. Austria failed to penetrate Serbian defenses, while

the Germans smashed the Russian attack into East Prussia. In the east, too, stalemate set in.

By mid-1915 the Germans had overcome supply problems and were better prepared for trench

warfare than the Allies. They also pioneered the concept of “defense in depth,” making a

second trench line the main barrier to assault. Allied generals responded with longer and

denser artillery bombardments but thereby relinquished the element of surprise. Such tactics
turned western battlefields into seas of wreckage, with a “storm of steel” raging above, and

condemned hundreds of thousands of men for the sake of a few thousand yards of no-man’s-

land. Allied attacks in 1915 cost the British more than 300,000 casualties and the French

1,500,000. The only German initiative, the Second Battle of Ypres, introduced poison gas to the

Western Front. But no commander could see a means of breaking the deadlock, and all

confessed their strategy to be one of attrition.

THE WAR AT SEA AND ABROAD

The stalemate on land was matched by stalemate at sea when the British decided to impose a

distant rather than close blockade of the German coast. This reduced the danger to the Grand

Fleet and, it was hoped, might entice the German navy to venture out for a decisive battle.

Admiral von Tirpitz was prepared to run such a risk, believing that the technical superiority of

his High Seas Fleet would balance out Britain’s numerical edge. Only by risking all on a major

fleet action might Germany break the blockade, but the Kaiser and civilian leadership wished to

preserve their fleet as a bargaining chip in eventual peace talks, while the British dared not

provoke an engagement, since a major defeat would be disastrous. Admiral John Jellicoe, it was

said, was “the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon.”

In the wide world, the Allies cleared the seas of German commerce raiders and seized the

German colonial empire. In the Pacific, New Zealanders took German Samoa and Australians

German New Guinea. On August 23, 1914, the Japanese empire honoured its alliance with

Britain by declaring war on Germany. Tokyo had no intention of aiding its ally’s cause in Europe
but was pleased to occupy the Marshall and Caroline archipelagos and lay siege to Germany’s

Chinese port of Qingdao, which surrendered in November. Germany’s African colonies were, on

the outbreak of war, immediately cut off from communications and supply from home, but

military operations were needed to eliminate the German presence. By early 1916, Togoland

(Togo) and Kamerun (Cameroon) had fallen to Anglo-French colonial forces and German South

West Africa (Namibia) to the South Africans. Only in German East Africa was a native force

under Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, numbering initially just 12,000 men, able to

survive for the entire war, tying down 10 times that number of Allied troops.

EFFORTS TO BREAK THE STALEMATE

Thus, all the armies and navies of Europe faced each other across fortified front lines. The

prewar plans had succumbed to the technological surprise of 1914–15: that the withering

firepower of machine guns, cartridge rifles, and rapid-fire artillery favoured the defense.

Infantry in deep trenches, fronted with mines and barbed wire and backed by artillery, could

not be dislodged by frontal attack. Accordingly, military and political leaders spent the war

groping for means of breaking the stalemate in the trenches. First, neutrals might be enticed to

enter the war, perhaps throwing enough weight into the balance to provide victory. Second,

new weapons, tactics, and theatres might break the deadlock or achieve strategic goals

elsewhere. Third, more and more men and matériel might be squeezed out of the home

economy to tip the balance of forces or wear down the enemy by economic attrition. The first

of these means determined much of the diplomatic history of the war. The second stimulated

technological developments such as poison gas, tanks, and submarines, as well as the
peripheral campaigns of southern Europe and the Middle East. The third determined the

evolution of war economies and the character of what came to be called total war.

The first of the European neutrals to join the fray was the Ottoman Empire. Having lost the

Balkans before 1914 and fearing partition of their Arab possessions by the Triple Entente, the

Young Turks under Enver Paşa looked to Germany, whose military efficiency they admired.

Enver led in negotiating a secret German-Ottoman treaty, signed August 2, 1914. But the grand

vizier and others in the sultan’s court held back, even after extracting a German loan—

tantamount to a bribe—of £5,000,000. The war party then resorted to more extreme measures.

The Ottoman fleet, reinforced by two German cruisers, entered the Black Sea in October,

bombarded Odessa and the Crimean ports, and sank two Russian ships. The commander then

falsified his account to make it appear that the enemy had provoked the action. The outraged

Russians declared war on November 1. The Ottoman Empire’s alliance with the Central Powers

was a serious blow to the Entente, for it effectively isolated Russia from its Western allies and

weakened their hand in the Balkan capitals. The Turks concluded, however, that a Triple

Entente victory in the war would lead to the partition of their empire even if they remained

neutral (Allied negotiations had already begun to this effect), whereas joining forces with

Germany gave them at least a fighting chance to survive and perhaps even win some spoils

from Russia. Enver also declared a jihad, or holy war, inciting Muslims to rise up against British

and Russian rule in India, Persia, and Central Asia.

Turkish forces deployed along the coasts of the Dardanelles and on the Caucasus frontier with

Russia, where severe fighting began in the rugged mountains. Enver, with German

encouragement, took the strategic offensive when he ordered 10,000 troops from Syria to

attack the Suez Canal in late January 1915. After crossing the Sinai Peninsula the tired soldiers

found Indian and Australasian divisions in training, as well as gunboats and other equipment

they could not match. The Turks fell back to Palestine and never menaced the canal again.

The vulnerability and value of the Dardanelles in turn attracted the British. When Russia

requested a Western assault on Turkey to relieve the pressure in the Caucasus, War Secretary

Lord Kitchener and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill promoted an attack on

the Dardanelles. By capturing Constantinople, the British could link up with the Russians, knock

Turkey out of the war, and perhaps entice the Balkan states to rally to the Allied cause. The

British War Council created an amphibious force of British, Australians, and New Zealanders to

capture the heights of the Gallipoli Peninsula. On April 25 the ANZAC (Australian and New

Zealand Army Corps) forces went ashore, but their assaults on the heights of Sari Bair were

turned back through the charismatic leadership of the young Turkish officer Mustafa Kemal. A

sweltering, bloody deadlock dragged on into the summer. Five more divisions and another

amphibious landing, at Suvla Bay in August, failed to take the rugged heights in the face of

human wave counterattacks by the Turks. Cabinet opinion gradually turned against the

campaign, and the Allied force of 83,000 was evacuated—a dangerous operation conducted

with great skill—in January 1916. The Turks had lost some 300,000 men, the Allies about

250,000 to battle and disease. Gallipoli was, in Clement Attlee’s words, “the one strategic idea
of the war.” Its failure, through bad leadership, planning, and luck, condemned the Allies to

seek a decision in bloody battles of attrition on the Western Front.

The other peripheral front that enticed Allied strategists was Austria’s border with Italy. Though

a member of the Triple Alliance, the Rome government maintained on August 3, 1914, that it

was not bound to fight since Austria had not been attacked nor had it consulted with Italy as

the treaty required. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, a nationalist dedicated to the

Irredentists’ goal of recovery of Trentino and Trieste from Austria, announced that Italy would

be informed by sacro egoismo. This, he explained, was a mystical rather than cynical concept,

but it set off seven months of haggling over what the Allies would offer Italy to enter the war,

and what the Central Powers would offer for neutrality. Some considerations were objective:

Italy’s 4,160 miles of coastline made defense against the Anglo-French fleet virtually impossible;

any gains extorted from the Central Powers for neutrality would hardly be secure should those

powers win the war; and neutrality was incompatible with Italy’s tenuous claim to be a great

power. What was more, all the Central Powers could offer was Trentino, and even that promise

had to be forced from Vienna by German pressure.

After a clumsy intervention by the Russian foreign minister, Sazonov, in which he tried to

secure Italy’s help and still protect Serbian interests on the Dalmatian coast, negotiations

moved to London. Berlin dispatched ex-chancellor Bülow and Roman Catholic statesman

Matthias Erzberger to Rome to plead for the Central Powers. On April 26, the day after the first

Gallipoli landing, the Treaty of London committed Italy to enter the war against Austria-
Hungary within a month. In return the Allies promised Italy Trentino, part of South Tirol,

Trieste, a third of Dalmatia (at the expense of Serbian ambitions), a mandate over Albania, a

portion of German East Africa, all of Libya, a part of Asia Minor, and a 1,250,000,000-lira war

chest from Britain. Still, a month of crisis followed in Rome as journalists like Gabriele

D’Annunzio and Benito Mussolini stoked war fever and parliamentary power-broker Giovanni

Giolitti (backed by Bülow) maneuvered for peace and parecchio—the “much” that might be

obtained from Austria without lifting a rifle. After a cabinet crisis Salandra returned to power to

declare war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915 (though Italy did not declare war on Germany

until August 1916).

General Luigi Cadorna’s war plan called for a strategic defense in the mountainous Trentino

while half the Italian army concentrated for attack along the Isonzo River to the south. In June

1915 he launched the first of 11 battles of the Isonzo, wasting some 250,000 men against the

rocky parapets and spirited Austrian defenders. The southern front became another deadlock,

while Italy’s weak finances and industry would only make her a continuing drain on Anglo-

French resources.

After Turkey and Italy, attention turned to the neutral Balkan states. The entry of the Balkan

states on the side of the Central Powers would doom Serbia and open direct communications

between Germany and Turkey. Balkan participation on the Allied side would isolate Turkey and

complete the encirclement of Austria-Hungary. The Central Powers had the upper hand

in Bulgaria, still smarting from its defeat in the Second Balkan War and allied with Turkey as of
August 2, 1914. The Allies had little to offer Bulgaria except bribes, especially after their failure

at Gallipoli. German offers proved irresistible: Macedonia (from Serbia) and parts of the

Dobruja and Thrace should Romania and Greece intervene. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers

on September 6, 1915. In Romania the Allies had the upper hand despite a treaty, renewed in

1913, binding Bucharest and its Hohenzollern dynasty to the Triple Alliance. Romania’s main

ambition was to annex Transylvania, a Habsburg province populated largely by Romanians, but

Prime Minister Ionel Brătianu determined to stay neutral and observe the fortunes of war.

In 1915 those fortunes appeared to favour the Central Powers on the Turkish, Italian, Serbian,

and Russian fronts. The Russian front collapsed in the face of a German offensive in May,

allowing the Central Powers to reoccupy Galicia, Lithuania, and Courland in the north. In July

the Germans resumed the drive and threatened to pincer the entire Russian army in Poland.

Warsaw fell on August 5 and Brest-Litovsk on the 26th, whereupon the German armies outran

their supplies and halted the drive on a line stretching from Riga on the Baltic to Czernowitz on

the Romanian border. Russian losses were apocalyptic: more than a million men captured and

at least as many killed and wounded in 1915. Technical inferiority, shortage of munitions, and

poor tactics led to terrible wastage of men in the attack and lack of mobility on the defense.

The inadequacy of the Russian state and economy in modern war now stood revealed.

Desertions increased and morale plummeted. On September 5, Tsar Nicholas himself took over

supreme command, a chivalrous move but one that would identify the crown with future

disasters.
In 1916 German strategists again turned west with the expressed intention of bleeding France

white and breaking her army’s spirit. The object of attack was to be the fortress of Verdun, and

the plan called for the substitution of ordnance for manpower as much as possible, thereby

using Germany’s industrial might to kill Frenchmen in the most efficient way. The assault began

on February 21, following an avalanche of shells and poison gas, and continued without

interruption for five months. France’s civilian and military leadership turned Verdun into a

national symbol of resistance, symbolized by General Philippe Pétain’s famous order of the day:

“Ils ne passeront pas!” Verdun was the most intensive battle in history and cost France and

Germany more than 300,000 men each.

In December 1915 an Allied conference at Chantilly had decided to coordinate simultaneous

attacks on all fronts. Given Verdun, responsibility for the Western assault fell to the British.

After elaborate preparation and a week of bombardment the cream of “Kitchener’s New Army”

went over the top on July 1, 1916, and strode in formation toward the German lines. By mid-

November the Somme offensive had gained about six and a half miles across a 30-mile front at

the cost of 420,000 Britons, 194,000 Frenchmen, and 440,000 Germans.

On the Eastern Front in 1916 the Russian command dutifully took up the offensive to relieve

the pressure on Verdun and in coordination with the push on the Somme. But failures in

leadership and supply, poor intelligence and tactics again thwarted the courage of Russia’s

peasant-soldiers, 100,000 of whom were lost in a March attack that achieved nothing. The last

gasp of the tsarist army followed in June. Russian attacks at Lutsk, Buchach, and Czernowitz
beginning June 4 achieved total surprise, captured 200,000 men, and overran Bukovina by the

end of the month. This apparent revival of Russia’s fortunes prompted the Romanians, finally,

to declare war on Austria-Hungary on August 27, 1916. Half the Romanian army—12 divisions—

joined the offensive and advanced into Transylvania, expecting to deal the final blow to

staggering Austria-Hungary. Instead, Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria promptly declared war on

Romania. The Romanians held out for a month against a German-Austrian-Bulgarian attack at

the Vulcan and Szurduk (Surduc) passes, but the Central Powers broke through and captured

Bucharest on December 6. The Romanian gambit ended in disaster as the Germans acquired

their oil and wheat and the Russians inherited an additional 300 miles of frontline. Meanwhile,

the Russian offensive degenerated into frontal assaults and closed in August. Russia had lost

500,000 men—the last trained reserves of the tsarist army.

By the end of 1916 what may be called the traditional phase of the war had run its course.

Despite ever greater expenditures of men and matériel and the accession of neutral powers to

one side or the other, victory remained elusive. Henceforth the coalitions would rely all the

more on breaking the internal cohesion of the enemy or on calling forth global forces to tip the

balance. The resort to revolution, especially in Russia, and extra-European powers, especially

the United States, would have profound consequences for Europe’s future in the 20th century,

while internal mobilization for total war had already gone far to reshape European societies.

WAR MOBILIZATION AT HOME AND ABROAD

THE INVENTION OF TOTAL WAR

When the first campaigns failed and the belligerents steeled themselves to fight a long war of

attrition, World War I became total—that is, a war fought without limitations, between entire

societies and not just between armies, with total victory the only acceptable outcome. It

became such a war because, for the first time, the industrial and bureaucratic resources existed

to mobilize an entire nation’s strength, because the stalemate required total mobilization, and

because the tremendous cost and suffering of such a war seemed to preclude settling for a

negotiated truce. Only victory might redeem the terrible sacrifices already made by both sides;

and if final victory were the only acceptable end, then any means could be justified in pursuit of

it.

The first violent battles of 1914 nearly expended prewar munitions reserves. By mid-war the

artillerymen of the Western Front might fire more shells in a single day than were expended in

the entire Franco-German War. Clearly the home front—the war economy—would be the most

decisive of all. And yet the governments, expecting a short war, were unprepared for economic

mobilization and had to adjust to emergencies and shortages as they arose. In Germany the

process began in the first days of war when private manufacturers, especially Walther

Rathenau, suggested a state bureau to distribute raw materials to industry. Over the years it

became a model for new agencies, boards, and commissions controlling production, labour,

rationing, travel, wages and prices. By late 1917, Germany came to dominate the economies of

Austria-Hungary and the occupied regions by the same means. In all the belligerent nations, to

a greater or lesser degree, civil and economic liberties, the free market, even national

sovereignty, gave way to a kind of military socialism in the crucible of war. All the belligerents
met their labour needs through employment of old men, children, and women (a fact that

ensured the success of the suffragist movement in Europe after the war). The Allies also

engaged in economic war through agreements with neutral countries on the Continent not to

re-export goods to Germany and through preemptive purchase of everything from Chilean

nitrates to Romanian wheat.

An economic problem that could be postponed was the financial one. The belligerents

immediately ended controvertibility of their currencies according to the gold standard and

liquidated their holdings overseas. By late 1915 the British and French also began to float

sizable loans on the American market, even as they themselves underwrote the war efforts of

weaker economies like the Italian and Russian. British, Germans, and Americans covered a

fraction of the war’s expense through income and other taxes, but World War I was financed

primarily through war bonds and secondarily through loans from abroad. This pattern would

exacerbate the diplomatic and domestic political climates after the war, when the bills for the

four years’ wastage came due.

THE WEAPON OF MORALE

The mass conscripted army and labour force, the employment of women and children, and the

mobilization of science, industry, and agriculture meant that virtually every citizen contributed

to the war effort. Hence all governments tried to stoke morale on the home front, subvert that

of the enemy, and sway the opinions of neutrals. A variety of techniques for manipulating

information were used, including particularly censorship and vilification of the enemy.
German propaganda depicted Russians as semi-Asiatic barbarians and the French as mere

cannon fodder for the bloated, envious British Empire lusting to destroy Germany’s power,

prosperity, and Kultur. The French Maison de la Presse and British Ministry of Information took

German war guilt for granted and made great play of the atrocities committed by the “Hun” in

Belgium and on the high seas, where defenseless passenger ships were treacherously

torpedoed. War hatred whipped up by such propaganda made it all the more difficult to justify

negotiating a truce.

The Allies proved more adept than the Germans at psychological warfare. Propaganda was

distributed across German lines by shells, planes, rockets, balloons, and radio. Such activities

were given into the hands of an Inter-Allied Propaganda Commission in 1918. The Allies also,

especially after 1917, identified themselves with such universal principles as democracy and

national self-determination, while the German war effort had only a narrow national appeal.

The most important target of propaganda was the United States. In the first weeks of war the

British cut the German transatlantic cables and subsequently controlled the flow of news to

America. German attempts to influence U.S. opinion were invariably clumsy, while the British,

aided by the common language, reminded Americans of their common values for which

German militarism had no respect. In political warfare, German attempts to arouse the Muslim

world and incite India to rebellion were stillborn, while their exploitation of the situation in

Ireland, culminating in the Easter Rising of 1916, backfired. The aristocratic and continental

German officials seemed out of their element when either trying to appeal to the masses or
looking beyond Europe. But their one success was nothing less than the Russian Revolution of

1917 (see below The Russian Revolution).

WAR AIMS AND PEACE FEELERS

WAR AIMS OF THE BELLIGERENTS

For what were the nations of Europe making such total and mortal commitments? In public

each government insisted it was fighting first in self-defense, then for victory and some

hallowed national goal like naval security for Britain, Alsace-Lorraine for France, or

Constantinople for Russia. But in private, now that peacetime constraints were torn off, each

indulged greater ambitions. German war aims took shape at once in the September Program

of Bethmann. While debate exists over how much this document reflected Bethmann’s real

views, it did come to represent the prevailing view of the military, which in turn came to speak

increasingly for Germany as a whole. The dream of world power seemed within reach through

the acquisition of Belgian and French colonies that, when joined to Germany’s and perhaps

Portugal’s, would constitute a Mittelafrika of immense proportions. In Europe the Germans

determined to assure that France and Russia would pose no threat in the future and to create

an economic base suitable for a world power. This notion of a single economic bloc from Berlin

to Baghdad, including Belgium, the Longwy-Briey mines of France, Poland, Courland, the

Ukraine, and the Balkans, was popularized as Mitteleuropa in a 1915 best-seller by Friedrich

Naumann. How committed Germany’s civilian leadership was to this hegemonic plan is

disputed: Bethmann favoured abandoning much of it in hopes of a negotiated peace. But a war-
aims majority held the balance in the Reichstag until 1917 and in the military until the bitter

end.

On September 5, 1914, the entente powers solemnly and severally renounced any separate

peace, but throughout the war they felt constrained to bolster each other’s will to fight with

promises of spoils. Hence the purchase of Italy’s belligerency and the shocking willingness of

Britain and France to consign Constantinople to Russia in March 1915. In general, Allied

ambitions added up to the partition of the German and Ottoman empires and security against

Germany in Europe and on the seas. Partition of Austria-Hungary was not an initial Allied aim.

In the spring of 1915 France and Russia exchanged letters promising that both could do as they

wished on their borders with Germany, implying a free hand for Russia in Galicia and East

Prussia and the same for France on the Rhine. French industry contemplated an advance into

the Saar and Rhine regions to end France’s inferiority in coal production (which would only be

exacerbated by the return of Alsace-Lorraine with its rich iron deposits). For the French army

and foreign ministry, however, the main motive for separating the Rhineland from Germany

was security: what Poincaré called “breaking Prussian militarism” and Aristide Briand

“guarantees of lasting peace.” In 1917 Paris and St. Petersburg were close to a formal treaty on

the German boundaries when the Russian Revolution intervened.

The Allies specified their colonial claims in an agreement of April 1916: Britain won influence in

Mesopotamia and part of Syria; France in the rest of Syria, Lebanon, Cilicia, and southern

Kurdistan; and Russia in Armenia and northern Kurdistan; Palestine was placed under joint
Anglo-French administration. The Sykes–Picot Agreement in May also divided much of the

Ottoman Empire into British and French spheres. The Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne of

April 1917 promised Italy concessions on the Anatolian coast; one Allied motive in this was to

persuade Rome to scale down its claims on Austria-Hungary in hopes of a separate peace with

Vienna (see below War-weariness and diplomacy). Finally, the French began in 1916 to

formulate a second set of war aims directed, not at Germany, but at their own allies. British

currency supports, loans, coal shipments at fixed prices, and other benefits helped sustain the

French war effort, and the minister of commerce, Étienne Clémentel, lobbied for an extension

of these supports beyond an armistice lest France win the military struggle only to lose the

postwar economic struggle. The British agreed at the Allied Economic Conference of 1916, and

the following year the French placed even greater hopes of economic solidarity in the newly

associated power, the United States.

ATTITUDE OF THE UNITED STATES

Since 1783 the United States had acquired a number of foreign policy traditions. George

Washington, in his Farewell Address, admonished his young and vulnerable country to avoid

alliances that would drag it into disputes in which it had no interest. Thus was born a powerful

isolationist and exclusivist tradition. The Monroe Doctrine declared the Western Hemisphere

off-limits to European adventurism, giving birth to a regionalist and paternalist tradition vis-à-

vis Latin America. After the Civil War, belief in America’s Manifest Destiny directed national

attention to the West Coast and beyond. Then the war against Spain in 1898 yielded colonial

possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific and inspired the building of a two-ocean navy and of a
Panama Canal to serve it. By 1914, when the canal opened, the United States was already the

greatest industrial power in the world, yet its tradition of exclusivity and its tiny standing army

gave the Europeans excuse to ignore America’s potential might.

In August 1914 President Woodrow Wilson implored the American people to be “neutral in

thought as well as deed” with respect to the European war. In so doing he was not only

honouring tradition but also applying his own religious principles to foreign policy. His agenda

upon entering the White House in 1913 had been domestic reform, and he had written that it

would be an irony of fate should foreign policy come to dominate in his administration. Yet

when fate so decreed, Wilson preferred to trust his own motives and methods rather than the

advice of his secretaries of state or his other advisers. Wilson deplored the war and earnestly

wished to bring about a just and lasting peace through U.S. mediation, for what greater mission

could Providence assign to that “city on a hill,” the United States of America?

American power began to figure in the balance of war almost from the start. Trading was

suspended on the New York Stock Exchange when war broke out, but when it resumed in

November 1914, Europeans sold most of the $4,000,000,000 worth of securities they held

before the war. U.S. loans to belligerents were at first declared “inconsistent with the true spirit

of neutrality,” but the large Anglo-French orders for U.S. munitions, raw materials, and food

created an economic boom, and by 1915 the Allies needed credit to continue their purchases.

An initial £200,000,000 loan in September 1915 led eventually to billions being floated on the

U.S. market and a complete reversal of the financial relationship between the Old World and
the New. By 1917 the United States was no longer a debtor nation but the world’s greatest

creditor. U.S. firms also inherited many overseas markets, especially in Latin America, which the

British and Germans could no longer serve.

To Americans neutrality seemed both moral and lucrative—the United States, said Wilson, was

“too proud to fight.” But the failure of his peace initiatives, the German assaults on neutrals’

rights at sea, and the cumulative effect of Allied propaganda and German provocations

conjoined to end U.S. neutrality by 1917. On February 4, 1915, Germany declared the waters

around the British Isles a war zone in which Allied ships would be sunk, without warning if

necessary. While this procedure dispensed with traditional civilities like boarding, search and

seizure, and care of civilians, effective submarine warfare required it. Underwater craft relied

on stealth and surprise and exposed themselves to easy destruction once they made their

presence known. Thus, even though the British blockade interfered with neutral shipping more

than the German blockade, the latter appeared far more beastly. The sinking of the Cunard

liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, which killed over a thousand passengers, including 128 U.S.

citizens, outraged U.S. public opinion despite the rightful German claim that she was carrying

munitions (173 tons worth). Two more passenger ships, the Arabic and Hesperia, went down in

August and September, respectively, whereupon American diplomatic protests caused civil

officials in Berlin to overrule the military command and call off unrestricted submarine warfare,

although the issue did not remain settled.

Wilson’s own peace initiatives, including an offer of mediation by Secretary of State William

Jennings Bryan in 1914 and a trip to Europe by Wilson’s personal aide and adviser, Colonel

Edward M. House, in 1915, were unsuccessful. Early in 1916 House returned to Europe and on

February 22 in London agreed to a formula whereby the United States would summon a peace

conference and—if Germany refused to attend or proved unreasonable—“would leave the

conference as a belligerent on the side of the Allies.” Wilson later drew back from the

guarantee and added the word “probably” after “would.” But the British themselves shied from

promoting such a conference, while the other belligerents also ducked the suggestion lest they

compromise the determination of their people or incur the distrust of allies.

By the end of 1916 Germany had 102 U-boats ready for service, many of the latest type, and

the chief of the naval staff assured the kaiser that unrestricted submarine warfare would sink

600,000 tons of Allied shipping per month and force Britain to make peace within five

months. Bethmann fought to delay escalation of the submarine war in hopes of another

Wilsonian peace move. But the president held off new initiatives during his reelection

campaign. When he had still not acted by December 1916, Bethmann was forced to make a

deal with his own military, which consented to tolerate a German peace offer in return for

Bethmann’s endorsement of unrestricted submarine warfare if the offer failed. But the army

helped ensure that the German note (released December 12) would fail by insisting on implicit

retention by Germany of Belgium and other battlefield conquests. Wilson followed on the 18th

with an invitation to the two camps to define their war aims as a prelude to negotiation. The

Allies demanded evacuation of occupied lands and guarantees against Germany in the future.
The Germans stuck to their December note, and the military command decided to resume

unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1.

The United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3 and commenced the

arming of merchant ships on March 9. Meanwhile, German Foreign Secretary Arthur

Zimmermann, anticipating war with the United States over the U-boat issue, cabled an offer of

alliance to Mexico on January 16, promising Mexico its own “lost provinces” of Texas, Arizona,

and New Mexico in case of war with the United States. British intelligence intercepted the

Zimmermann telegram and leaked it to Washington, further inflaming American opinion. When

U-boats proceeded in mid-March to sink the Algonquin, City of Memphis,

Vigilancia, and Illinois (the latter two without warning), Wilson went before Congress and in a

lofty and moving address reviewed the reasons why America was forced to take up the sword—

why, “God helping her, she can do no other.” On April 6, 1917, Congress declared war on

Germany, and the United States became an associated (not an Allied) power. Henceforth World

War I hinged on whether the U-boats could force Britain to her knees and the German armies

overwhelm the sagging Western Front before the men and matériel of the aroused Yankees

could arrive in France.

THE CRISES OF 1917

WAR-WEARINESS AND DIPLOMACY

For every belligerent, 1917 was a year of crisis at home and at the front, a year of wild swings

and near disasters, and by the time it was over the very nature of the war had changed
dramatically. A French offensive in the spring soon ground to a standstill, sparking a wave of

mutinies and indiscipline in the trenches that left the French army virtually useless as an

offensive force. The British offensive of July–November, called variously Passchendaele or the

Third Battle of Ypres, was a tactical disaster that ended in a viscous porridge of mud. That

offensive action could be ordered under such conditions is a measure of how far Western Front

generals had been seduced into a gothic unreality. Allied and German casualties “in Flanders

Fields, where poppies grow” numbered between 500,000 and 800,000. The British Army, too,

neared the end of its offensive capacities.

For two years the Italian front had been left unchanged by the first nine battles of the Isonzo,

but the underfinanced and underindustrialized Italian war effort gradually eroded. The Tenth

Battle of the Isonzo (May–June 1917) cost Italy dearly, while the Eleventh (August–September)

registered a “success” amounting to some five miles of advance at a cost of over 300,000

casualties, pushing the total for the war to more than 1,000,000. With peace propaganda,

strikes, and communist agitation spreading throughout Italy, and the Austrians in need of

stiffening, the German high command reinforced the Austrians at Caporetto. Within days the

Italian commander had to order a general retreat. The Germans broke the line of the

Tagliamento as well, and not until the Italians regrouped at the Piave on November 7 did the

front stabilize. Caporetto cost Italy 340,000 dead and wounded, 300,000 prisoners, and another

350,000 deserters: an incredible 1,000,000 in all, suggesting that the Italian army, like the

French, was on strike against its own leadership.

Among the Central Powers also, 1917 intensified the yearning for peace. Polish, Czech, and

Yugoslav leaders had formed committees in exile to agitate for the autonomy or independence

of their peoples, while war-weariness among those at home grew with food shortages, bad

news from the front, and desertions among the troops. When Emperor Franz Joseph died in

November 1916 after 68 years on the throne, there was a sense that the empire must die with

him. Austro-Hungarian officials already had begun to look for a way out of the war—which

meant a way out of the German alliance. The new Habsburg foreign minister, Ottokar, Graf

Czernin, raised the issue of war aims and peace at his first ministerial meeting with the new

emperor, Charles. A negotiated peace could only be one without victors or vanquished,

conquests or indemnities—so said Czernin 10 days before Wilson’s own “Peace Without

Victory” speech. The only means of achieving such a peace, however, was for Austria-Hungary’s

ally Germany to restore Belgium and, perhaps, Alsace-Lorraine.

The first Austrian demarches, made through Scandinavia, came to nothing, and so Charles,

Czernin, and the Empress Zita tried again in late January 1917 through the intermediary of her

brother, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, on leave from service in the Belgian army. In March,

Charles drafted a letter in which he asked Sixtus to convey to the president of France his “lively

sympathies” and support for the evacuation of Belgium and the lost provinces. The cautious

French premier, Alexandre Ribot, shared the news in April with Lloyd George, who said simply,

“That means peace.” But Baron Sonnino, at the Conference of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne,

refused to consider peace with Austria-Hungary (the only enemy Italy was interested in

fighting) and warned Lloyd George against attempts to split their alliance. Charles’s second
letter, in May, which inexplicably told the French and British of an “Italian peace offer” that was

never made, only put the Allies on their guard.

Simultaneously the parliamentary forces of Germany rose in protest against the war, the

erosion of civilian authority, and the war-aims stubbornness of the military command. A

moderate annexationist deputy, Matthias Erzberger, met with Czernin and Emperor Charles in

April 1917 and learned that Austria-Hungary’s military strength was near its end. In May a

Reichstag committee demanded that the army be placed under civilian control. The kaiser and

the military high command replied with scorn. In July, Bethmann was forced to resign and the

army assumed de facto control of Germany. When the kaiser appointed a nonentity, Georg

Michaelis, as chancellor, the Reichstag passed a peace resolution on July 19 by a vote of 212–

126. But the resolution could have no bearing on the ruling circles, to whom compromise with

the foreign enemy meant surrender to the domestic forces of reform.

In mid-August, Pope Benedict XV tried to preserve momentum toward a truce by calling on all

parties to evacuate occupied regions, but the German government again refused to surrender

Belgium, while the American reply to the Vatican seemed to insist on the democratization of

Germany. Emperor Charles and Czernin were likewise unable to make headway, for the Allies

were not at this point seeking a general peace but only a separate peace with Austria-Hungary

that would leave Germany stranded. This Vienna could not in honour do, nor Berlin permit. The

United States declared war on Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917, and, when the French

government leaked news the following spring of the Austrian peace correspondence, Charles
and Czernin were forced to humble themselves before the kaiser and German high command at

Spa. Austria-Hungary had become a virtual satellite of the German military empire.

The Ottoman Empire in 1917 began to give way before the relatively mild but incessant

pressure on fronts the other powers considered sideshows. Baghdad fell to British forces in

March. Sir Edmund Allenby, having promised Lloyd George that he would deliver Jerusalem to

the British people “as a Christmas present,” made good his promise on December 9. The

political future of Palestine, however, was a source of confusion. In the war-aims treaties, the

British had divided the Middle East into colonial spheres of influence. In their dealings with the

Arabs the British spoke of independence for the region. Then, on November 2, 1917,

the Balfour Declaration promised “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the

Jewish people,” albeit without prejudice to “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish

communities.” Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour was persuaded that this action was in British

interest by the energetic appeals of Chaim Weizmann, but in the long run it would cause no end

of difficulty for British diplomacy.

The one flank on which Turkey had not been besieged was the Balkan, where an Allied force

remained in place at Salonika pending resolution of the Greek political struggle. The Allies

continued to back Prime Minister Eleuthérios Venizélos, who, because King Constantine still

favoured the Central Powers, had fled Athens in September 1916 and set up a provisional

government under Allied protection at Salonika. Finally, the Anglo-French forces deposed

Constantine in June 1917 and installed Venizélos in Athens, whereupon Greece declared war on
the Central Powers. By the end of 1917, therefore, Turkey, like Austria, was exhausted,

beleaguered on four fronts, and wholly dependent on German support.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

While Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey all survived their crises of

1917 and found the will and stamina for one last year of war, Russia succumbed. In three years

of war Russia had mobilized roughly 10 percent of its entire population and lost over half of

that number in battle. The home economy was stretched to the limit, and even the arms and

food it could produce were subject to vagaries of transport and corruption in the supply

services. Inflation and food shortages panicked the towns, and shortages of fuel isolated the

countryside. Suddenly, on March 12, 1917, the parliament and Petrograd soviet (workers’ and

soldiers’ council) joined forces to form a Provisional Government. Three days later the Tsar

abdicated.

Two leading ministers in the new regime, Aleksandr Kerensky and Pavel Milyukov, hoped to

streamline the state and invigorate the war effort. Political liberals, they valued Russia’s ties to

Britain and France and even looked forward to capturing Constantinople as a means of

legitimating the new regime. Kerensky assured the Allies on March 17 that Russia would fight

“unswervingly and indefatigably” until victory. The local soviets and leftist parties, however,

forced a declaration in April by which “free Russia” renounced domination over other nations

and their territories. When Prince Gyorgy Lvov, the prime minister, promised to accept the

revolutionary formula of “no annexations, no indemnities” on May 15, Milyukov stepped down
as foreign minister. President Wilson was especially moved by the spectacle of Russia

embracing democracy, and all the Allies could now truly depict their cause as moral and

ideological: “to make the world safe for democracy,” as Wilson said, in opposition to militarism

and imperialism. Russia’s ability to fight steadily and rapidly deteriorated, however. The

Petrograd soviet called for abolition of the officer corps, and the Provisional Government

abolished courts-martial and issued a Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights.

The Provisional Government’s decision to continue the war was a grave disappointment to the

Germans. Since 1914 they had dabbled in revolutionary intrigues in hopes of shattering Russia

from within. The campaign took two forms: collaboration with nationalist agitators among the

Finns, Baltic peoples, Poles, Ukrainians, and Georgians; and support for Russian social

revolutionaries. Lenin, leader of the most virulent wing of Russian Marxists, the Bolsheviks, was

living in Kraków when the war broke out and was promptly arrested. An Austrian Social

Democrat, Victor Adler, persuaded the Austrian minister of the interior that Lenin was an ally in

the fight against Russia, whereupon he was released into Switzerland. Another Russian émigré

and socialist, Alexander Helphand, impressed the German ambassador in Constantinople with

his revolutionary connections and was soon briefing the German foreign ministry in Berlin. In

March 1915 the Germans set aside the first 2,000,000 of what would eventually total

41,000,000 marks spent on secret subversion in Russia.

After the first Eastern Front victories in 1915, Berlin had hoped to entice Russia into a separate

peace, and efforts to that end continued up to March 1917. Behind the scenes, however,
Helphand’s organization, supported by the German foreign office, worked to spread

revolutionary and pacifist ideas inside Russia. After Kerensky’s declaration that Russia would

stay in the war, the German command determined to facilitate Lenin’s return to Russia. On

April 9, 1917, he and his comrades were placed aboard a special security train in Zürich for the

trip across Germany, continued by boat to Sweden and thence by rail to Petrograd.

Bolshevik propaganda penetrated the army, which even the Russian high command confessed

was “a huge, weary, shabby, and ill-fed mob of angry men.” In an attempt to restore it to

fighting trim, General Lavr Kornilov urged on Kerensky a number of reforms (August 16), but

behind Kornilov were conspirators hoping for military dictatorship. Kerensky grasped the

danger to himself, forbade troop movements to the capital lest they support a coup, and then

had Kornilov arrested. The division between the centre and right gravely weakened the

Provisional Government and strengthened the Bolsheviks, who took the lead in denouncing this

“counterrevolutionary plot.” The Provisional Government, bereft of authority and will, hoped to

hold on until elections for a Constituent Assembly in December. Lenin, knowing that he stood

to lose by the fact and the result of free elections, struck in November, and the Provisional

Government collapsed in the face of the Bolshevik coup d’état.

One of Lenin’s first acts as revolutionary dictator of Russia was to attempt to transform the

European war of nations into a war of classes. His ringing speech of November 8 appealed to

workers and soldiers everywhere to force an immediate armistice, end secret diplomacy, and

negotiate a peace of “no annexations, no indemnities.” Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Radek
promptly organized to spread revolution abroad. The expected uprisings occurred nowhere, but

peace was mandatory for Russia if the Bolshevik regime were to survive. On December 15,

therefore, Lenin’s regime signed an armistice with the Central Powers.

LAST BATTLES AND ARMISTICE

RUSSIA’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE WAR

The events of 1917 meant that World War I was no longer a two-sided contest. Rather, four

visions of the future competed for the allegiance of governments and peoples. Germany fought

on in hope of victory and domination of the Continent. The Allies fought on to frustrate

Germany and realize their own ambitious war aims. Wilson’s America fought as an “associated

power” for a liberal internationalist agenda opposed to German and Allied imperialism alike.

Finally, Lenin’s Russia raised a second challenge to the old diplomacy in the name of socialist

internationalism. German, Allied, Wilsonian, and Bolshevik images of the peace differed so

radically that the war was now as much ideological as it was military.

Lloyd George and Wilson replied to Lenin’s peace initiatives with speeches of their own to

reassure their peoples, contrast their liberal goals with those of the Germans, and perhaps

persuade Russia to remain in the field. Lloyd George insisted before the Trades Union Congress

(January 5, 1918) that “we are not fighting a war of aggression against the German people,” and

he stressed autonomous development for all peoples, including those of Austria-Hungary.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech (January 8, 1918) called for (1) open covenants, openly arrived

at; (2) freedom of the seas; (3) lowering of economic barriers; (4) reduction of armaments; (5)
colonial arrangements respecting the will of the peoples involved; (6) national self-

determination for the peoples of Russia; (7) restoration of Belgium; (8) return of all invaded

territory plus Alsace-Lorraine to France; (9) Italian recovery of her irredente; (10) autonomy for

the nationalities of Austria-Hungary; (11) restoration of the Balkan states and access to the sea

for Serbia; (12) autonomy for the peoples of the Ottoman Empire and free navigation through

the Dardanelles; (13) an independent Poland with access to the sea; and (14) a “general

association of nations” offering “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial

integrity.” In his Four Principles (February 11) and Five Particulars (September 27) speeches

Wilson elaborated his views on national self-determination, a truly revolutionary idea with

global, but unpredictable, implications.

Allied assurances failed to dissuade the Bolsheviks from exiting the alliance. Lenin took power

on the slogan “Peace, Bread, and Land,” and he needed to be free of the war in order to

consolidate Bolshevik power. A peace conference convened at Brest-Litovsk on December 22,

1917, but it proceeded slowly while the two sides—one imperialist, the other incipiently

totalitarian—bickered about the definition of “national self-determination.” On January 7,

1918, Trotsky asked for adjournment, still hoping for revolutionary outbreaks abroad. In fact, a

mutiny in the Austrian fleet and a general strike movement in Berlin did occur but were easily

suppressed. The Bolshevik leadership now faced three bad choices: to defy the Germans and

risk conquest and overthrow; to relent and sign over half of European Russia to German

control; or to pursue what Trotsky called “neither war nor peace” while awaiting the revolution

in Germany. He also wished to avoid any sign of collusion with the German military, lest the
Bolsheviks appear to be collaborationists. In the meantime the Germans and Austrians

concluded the Brotfrieden (“bread peace”) with representatives of wheat-rich Ukraine. When,

however, Bolshevik forces began to penetrate Ukraine—and the German high command tired

of Trotsky’s rhetoric—the Germans broke off talks and ordered the army to resume its advance.

The French ambassador immediately offered the Bolsheviks all aid if they would fight the

Germans, but Lenin ordered an immediate capitulation. Germany now presented even harsher

peace terms, and on March 3 the Bolsheviks signed. The Romanians then made peace on the

5th, and newly independent Finland signed a treaty with Germany on the 7th.

In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik regime turned over to Germany 34 percent of

Russia’s population, 32 percent of Russia’s farmland, 54 percent of Russia’s industrial plant, 89

percent of Russia’s coal mines, and virtually all of its cotton and oil. These economic gains in the

east, plus the release of troops who could now be shifted to the Western Front, revived

German hopes that victory was achievable before the Americans arrived in force.

Negative views of the Bolshevik Revolution predominated from the start in Western capitals,

although some people on the left in London, Paris, and Washington sympathized with it or

thought it would bring much needed “efficiency” to Russia. The French and British had talked of

supporting this or that Russian faction with arms or cash and had agreed on a tentative division

of southern Russia into areas of responsibility. The German advance of February then caused

the Allied missions to flee Petrograd and reassemble in remote Vologda, where they waited to

see what direction the Bolsheviks would take. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk answered the
question. It was an unparalleled disaster for the beleaguered Allies, who now had to consider

intervention in Russia. First, if they could link up with nationalist Russians and reopen the

Eastern Front, they might save their exhausted armies in France from facing the full might of

the Central Powers. Second, it would be most helpful if they could save Allied war matériel that

had stacked up in Russian ports (some 162,495 tons of supplies in Arkhangelsk alone) from

seizure by the Germans or Bolsheviks and distribute it to Russians still willing to fight Germans.

When the German onslaught on the Western Front opened in March, the French and British

became desperate for a diversion in the East. In March 1918 an Anglo-French expedition

docked at Murmansk, followed in June by an American cruiser and 150 marines. An Anglo-

French force occupied Arkhangelsk in August, and 4,500 U.S. soldiers under British command

joined them in September. These tiny contingents, totaling about 28,000 men, were never

meant to overthrow the Bolshevik regime, although the British hoped they might serve as

magnets for White Russian forces opposing the Bolsheviks.

The Japanese, seeking an imperial foothold on the Asian mainland, used Brest-Litovsk as pretext

to occupy Vladivostok in April. Wilson then committed U.S. troops to Siberia in order to keep an

eye on the Japanese and to make contact with 30,000 Czechoslovak legionnaires, mostly former

prisoners of war from the Habsburg armies seeking to escape Russia to fight for an

independent Czech state. The Czechoslovak Legion, released and armed by the Kerensky

government, at first declared neutrality toward Russian politics, but when the Bolsheviks tried

to disarm them, skirmishes ensued, and the legion became strung out along the 6,000-mile-
long Trans-Siberian Railway. The Allied interventions also became entangled in the erupting

Russian Civil War. Bolsheviks controlled Petrograd, Moscow, and the core regions of Russia,

while White governments were established by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Omsk and General

Anton Denikin in Odessa.

THE EASTERN MINORITIES

The saga of the Czechoslovak Legion was symbolic of the growing vigour of the national

movements inside the Habsburg Empire. Early in the war the subject peoples had remained

loyal to beloved old Franz Joseph. But martial law, which fell especially hard on minorities, war

weariness, hunger, and the example of the Russian Revolution converted moderates among the

Czechs, Galician Poles, and South Slavs to the cause of independence. The Czechs and Slovaks

were brilliantly served by Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, who lobbied for Allied recognition

of a Czech national council. The Polish movement, led by Józef Piłsudski, sought to establish

similar national institutions and cooperated with the Central Powers after their Two Emperors’

Manifesto (November 5, 1916) promised autonomy to the Poles. The Polish National

Committee in France, and famed pianist Ignacy Paderewski in the United States, also pleaded

the Polish cause. Yugoslav (or South Slav) agitation was complicated by rivalries between the

Serbs (Orthodox, Cyrillic alphabet, and politically stronger) and the Croats and Slovenes (Roman

Catholic, Latin alphabet, politically disinherited), as well as Serbia’s and Italy’s conflicting claims

to the Dalmatian coast. In July 1917 the factions united in the Corfu Declaration that envisioned

a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. All the committees then gathered in Rome for a

Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in April 1918.

The Allies stood aloof from the nationalities while hope persisted of detaching Austria-Hungary

from Germany. But in 1918 the Allies took up the revolutionary weapon. In April 1918 Masaryk

sailed to the United States, won personal recognition from Wilson and Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, and concluded the Pittsburgh Convention by which Slovak-Americans, on behalf

of their countrymen, agreed to join the Czechs in a united state. The Czechoslovak National

Council won official recognition as a co-belligerent and de facto government-in-exile from

France in June, Britain in August, and the United States in September. Only their quarrel with

Italy kept the Yugoslavs from achieving the same. Thus, de facto governments were prepared to

assume control of successor states as soon as Habsburg authority should collapse, internally or

on the military fronts.

GERMANY’S FINAL BATTLES

Ironically, the Germans did not take maximum advantage of Brest-Litovsk after all, leaving

about a million men—60 divisions—in the East in order to coerce the Ukrainians into

relinquishing foodstuffs, to pursue political goals in the Baltic, and to ensure Bolshevik

compliance. Facing virtual starvation as economic exhaustion deepened and the Allied blockade

grew more effective, the German high command decided on a series of all-out attacks on the

Western Front, beginning in March 1918. But tactical errors, together with the Allies’ creation

at last of a unified command and the arrival in strength of eager U.S. divisions, blunted and

then turned back the offensives. By late July it was clear that Germany had lost the war. The

1918 offensives cost 1,100,000 men and drained the Reich of reserves. Morale plummeted on

the Western Front and at home. Then on August 8, 1918, British, Australian, and Canadian
divisions struck on the Somme and overwhelmed German forces not adequately dug in. The

20,000 casualties, and an equal number of prisoners taken in one day, testified to the broken

spirit of the German troops. Further Allied successes followed, and on September 29, 1918,

General Erich Ludendorff, the chief of staff, informed the kaiser that the army was finished. The

next day the new chancellor, the moderate Maximilian, prince of Baden, was authorized to seek

an armistice. On the night of October 3–4 he requested an armistice from President Wilson on

the basis of the Fourteen Points.

While negotiations began for an armistice in the West, Germany’s allies elsewhere collapsed.

The collapse of the Bulgarian front before the Franco-Serbian offensive ended with the French

cavalry capture of Skopje on September 29, whereupon the Allies accepted Bulgaria’s petition

for peace in the Armistice of Salonika. This opened Constantinople to attack and prompted the

Turks as well to sue for peace. It also left Austria-Hungary, stymied on the Italian front, with

little recourse. On October 4 Vienna appealed to President Wilson for an armistice on the basis

of the Fourteen Points. But the U.S. note of the 18th indicated that autonomy for the

nationalities no longer sufficed and thus amounted to the writ of execution for the Habsburg

Empire. On October 28, in Prague and Kraków, Czech and Polish committees declared

independence from Vienna. The Croats in Zagreb did the same on the 29th pending their union

with the Serbs, and Germans in the Reichsrat proclaimed rump Austria an independent state on

the 30th. The Armistice of Villa Giusti (November 4) required Austria-Hungary to evacuate all

occupied territory, the South Tirol, Tarvisio, Gorizia, Trieste, Istria, western Carniola, and
Dalmatia, and to surrender its navy. Emperor Charles, his empire gone, pledged to withdraw

from Austria’s politics on November 11 and from Hungary’s on the 13th.

The first U.S. note responding to the German request for an armistice was sent on October 8

and called for evacuation by Germany of all occupied territory. The German reply sought to

ensure that all the Allies would respect the Fourteen Points. The second U.S. note reflected high

dudgeon about Germany’s seeking assurances, given her own war policies. In any case, the

British, French, and Italians (fearing Wilsonian leniency and angry about not being consulted

after the first note) insisted that their military commands be consulted on the armistice terms.

This in turn gave the Allies a chance to ensure that Germany be rendered unable to take up

resistance again in the future, whatever the eventual peace terms, and that their own war aims

might be advanced through the armistice terms—e.g., surrender of the German navy for the

British, occupation of Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland for the French. Wilson’s second note,

therefore, shattered German illusions about using the armistice as a way of sowing discord

among the Allies or winning a breathing space for themselves. The third German note (October

20) agreed to the Allies setting the terms and indicated, by way of appeasing Wilson, that

Maximilian’s civilian cabinet had replaced any “arbitrary power” (Wilson’s phrase) in Berlin. The

third U.S. note (October 23) specified that the armistice would render Germany incapable of

resuming hostilities. Ludendorff wanted further resistance, but the kaiser instead asked for his

resignation on the 26th. The next day Germany acknowledged Wilson’s note.
Some Allied leaders, most notably Poincaré and General John Pershing, bitterly disputed the

wisdom of offering Germany an armistice when her armies were still on foreign soil. Marshall

Ferdinand Foch drafted military terms harsh enough for the skeptics, however, and Georges

Clemenceau could not in good conscience permit the killing to go on if Germany were rendered

defenseless. Meanwhile, House, sent by Wilson to Paris to consult with the Allies, threatened a

separate U.S.-German peace to win Allied approval of the Fourteen Points on November 4

(excepting a British reservation about “freedom of the seas,” a French one about “removal of

economic barriers and equality of trade conditions,” and a clause enjoining Germany to repair

war damage). House and Wilson jubilantly concluded that the foundations of a liberal peace

were in place: substitution of the Fourteen Points for the Allies’ “imperialist” war aims and the

transition of Germany to democracy. The fourth U.S. note (November 5) informed the Germans

of Allied agreement and the procedures for dealing with Foch.

Germany, however, seemed to be moving less toward democracy than toward anarchy. On

October 29 the naval command ordered the High Seas Fleet to leave port for a last-ditch battle,

prompting a mutiny, then full insurrection on November 3. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils

formed in ports and industrial cities, and a socialist Republic of Bavaria was declared on the 8th.

Two days later Maximilian announced the abdication of Kaiser William II and his own

resignation, and the Social Democratic leader Friedrich Ebert formed a provisional government.

On the 10th the kaiser went into Dutch exile. The armistice delegation led by Erzberger,

meanwhile, met with Foch in a railway carriage at Rethondes on the 8th. Erzberger, begging for

amelioration of the Allies’ terms and especially for the lifting of the blockade so that Germany
might be fed, raised the spectre of bolshevism. Receiving only minor concessions, the Germans

relented and signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918. It called on Germany to evacuate and

turn over to Allied armies all occupied regions, Alsace-Lorraine, the left (west) bank of the

Rhine, and the bridgeheads of Mainz and Koblenz. A neutral zone of 10 kilometres on the right

bank of the Rhine was also to be evacuated, the entire German navy surrendered, and the

treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest renounced. Germany was also to turn over a large

number of locomotives, munitions, trucks, and other matériel—and to promise reparation for

damage done.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE OLD ORDER

The four years’ carnage of World War I was the most intense physical, economic, and

psychological assault on European society in its history. The war took directly some 8,500,000

lives and wounded another 21,000,000. The demographic damage done by the shortage of

young virile men over the next 20 years is incalculable. The cost of the war has been estimated

at more than 200,000,000,000 1914 dollars, with some $36,800,000,000 more in damage.

Much of northern France, Belgium, and Poland lay in ruin, while millions of tons of Allied

shipping rested at the bottom of the sea. The foundation stone of prewar financial life, the gold

standard, was shattered, and prewar trade patterns were hopelessly disrupted.

Economic recovery, vital to social stability and the containment of revolution, depended on

political stability. But how could political stability be restored when four great empires—the

Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman—had fallen, the boundaries of old and new
states alike were yet to be fixed, vengeful passions ran high, and conflicting national aims and

ideologies competed for the allegiance of the victors? In World War I, Europe lost its unity as a

culture and polity, its sense of common destiny and inexorable progress. It lost much of its

automatic reverence for the old values of country, church, family, duty, honour, discipline,

glory, and tradition. The old was bankrupt. It remained only to decide which newness would

take its place.

The damage wrought by war would live on through the erosion of faith in 19th-century

liberalism, international law, and Judeo-Christian values. Whatever the isolated acts of charity

and chivalry by soldiers struggling in the trenches to remain human, governments and armies

had thrown away, one by one, the standards of decency and fair play that had governed

European warfare, more or less, in past centuries. Total war meant the starving of civilians

through naval blockade, torpedoing of civilian craft, bombing of open cities, use of poison gas in

the trenches, and reliance on tactics of assault that took from the private soldier any dignity,

control over his fate, or hope of survival. World War I subordinated the civilian to the military

and the human to the machine. It remained only for such imperious cynicism to impose itself in

peacetime as well, in totalitarian states modeled on war government, until the very distinction

between war and peace broke down in the 1930s.

PEACEMAKING, 1919–22

The bells, flags, crowds, and tears of Armistice Day 1918 testified to the relief of exhausted

Europeans that the killing had stopped and underscored their hopes that a just and lasting
peace might repair the damage, right the wrongs, and revive prosperity in a broken

world. Woodrow Wilson’s call for a new and democratic diplomacy, backed by the suddenly

commanding prestige and power of the United States, suggested that the dream of a New

Jerusalem in world politics was not merely Armistice euphoria. A century before, Europe’s

aristocratic rulers had convened in the capital of dynasties, Vienna, to fashion a peace

repudiating the nationalist and democratic principles of the French Revolution. Now,

democratic statesmen would convene in the capital of liberty, Paris, to remake a Europe that

had overthrown monarchical imperialism once and for all in this “war to end war.”

In fact, the immense destruction done to the political and economic landmarks of the prewar

world would have made the task of peacemaking daunting even if the victors had shared a

united vision, which they did not. Central and eastern Europe were in a turmoil in the wake of

the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman collapses. Revolution sputtered in Berlin and

elsewhere, and civil war in Russia. Trench warfare had left large swaths of northern France,

Belgium, and Poland in ruin. The war had cost millions of dead and wounded and more than

$236,000,000,000 in direct costs and property losses. Ethnic hatreds and rivalries could not be

expunged at a stroke, and their persistence hindered the effort to draw or redraw dozens of

boundaries, including those of the successor states emerging from the Habsburg empire. In the

colonial world the war among the imperial powers gave a strong impetus to nationalist

movements. India alone provided 943,000 soldiers and workers to the British war effort, and

the French empire provided the home country with 928,000. These men brought home a

familiarity with European life and the new anti-imperialist ideas of Wilson or Lenin. The war
also weakened the European powers vis-à-vis the United States and Japan, destroyed the

prewar monetary stability, and disrupted trade and manufactures. In sum, a return to 1914

“normalcy” was impossible. But what could, or should, replace it? As the French foreign

minister Stéphen Pichon observed, the war’s end meant only that “the era of difficulties

begins.”

The Paris Peace Conference ultimately produced five treaties, each named after the suburban

locale in which it was signed: the Treaty of Versailles with Germany (June 28, 1919); the Treaty

of Saint-Germain with Austria (Sept. 10, 1919); the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria (Nov. 27,

1919); the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary (June 4, 1920); and the Treaty of Sèvres with

Ottoman Turkey (Aug. 10, 1920). In addition, the Washington Conference treaties on naval

armaments, China, and the Pacific (1921–22) established a postwar regime in those areas.

COMPETING VISIONS OF STABILITY

THE IDEALIST VISION

According to the armistice agreement the peace was to be based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points.

But the French and British had already expressed reservations about them, and, in many cases,

the vague Wilsonian principles lent themselves to varying interpretations when applied to

complex realities. Nevertheless, Wilson anticipated the peace conference with high hopes that

his principles would prevail, either because of their popularity with common people

everywhere, or because U.S. financial leverage would oblige European statesmen to follow his

lead. “Tell me what is right,” he instructed his delegation on the George Washington en route
to Paris, “and I will fight for it.” Unique among the victor powers, the United States would not

ask any territorial gains or reparations and would thereby be free to stand proudly as the

conference’s conscience and honest broker.

Wilsonianism, as it came to be called, derived from the liberal internationalism that had

captured large segments of the Anglo-American intellectual elite before and during the war. It

interpreted war as essentially an atavism associated with authoritarian monarchy, aristocracy,

imperialism, and economic nationalism. Such governments still practiced an old diplomacy of

secret alliances, militarism, and balance of power politics that bred distrust, suspicion, and

conflict. The antidotes were democratic control of diplomacy, self-determination for all nations,

open negotiations, disarmament, free trade, and especially a system of international law and

collective security to replace raw power as the arbiter of disputes among states. This last idea,

developed by the American League to Enforce Peace (founded in 1915), found expression in the

Fourteen Points as “a general association of nations” and was to be the cornerstone of Wilson’s

edifice. He expected a functioning League of Nations to correct whatever errors and injustices

might creep in to the treaties themselves.

Liberal internationalism set the tone for the Paris Peace Conference. European statesmen

learned quickly to couch their own demands in Wilsonian rhetoric and to argue their cases on

grounds of “justice” rather than power politics. Yet Wilson’s principles proved, one by one, to

be inapplicable, irrelevant, or insufficient in the eyes of European governments, while the

idealistic gloss they placed on the treaties undermined their legitimacy for anyone claiming that
“justice” had not been served. Wilson’s personality must bear some of the blame for this

disillusionment. He was a proud man, confident of his objectivity and prestige, and he insisted

on being the first U.S. president to sail to Europe and to conduct negotiations himself. He had

visited Europe only twice before, as a tourist, and now delayed the peace conference in order

to make a triumphant tour of European capitals. Moreover, the Democrats lost their Senate

majority in the elections of November 1918, yet Wilson refused to include prominent

Republicans in his delegation. This allowed Theodore Roosevelt to declare that Wilson had

“absolutely no authority to speak for the American people.” Wilson’s flaws exacerbated the

difficulty of promoting his ideals in Paris and at home. Still, he was a prophet in world politics,

both as lawgiver and as seer. Only a peace between equals, he said, can last.

THE REALIST VISION

Georges Clemenceau also approached peacemaking as a personal quest, stacking the French

delegation with loyal supporters and minimizing the influence of the foreign ministry, the army,

and parliament. Even political enemies hailed Clemenceau (known as “the tiger”) as “père la

victoire,” and he determined not to betray the soldiers’ victory in the peace negotiations to

come. But the French vision of a just peace contrasted sharply with Wilson’s. France alone in

1914 had not chosen war, but had been summarily attacked. France had provided the major

battleground, suffered the most physical damage, and sacrificed a generation of manhood.

France faced the most massive task of reconstruction, the most direct threat of German

revenge, and the most immediate responsibility for executing the armistice and peace treaties

by dint of its contiguity with Germany. Clemenceau, therefore, sought material advantage from
the peace according to a traditional balance-of-power viewpoint and did so with almost

universal support in the government. The 77-year-old Clemenceau, who had begun his political

career during the German siege of Paris in 1870–71, placed little faith in Germany’s sudden

conversion to democracy, nor in Wilson’s lofty idealism, which he characterized with irony as

“noble candour.” The French government judged early on that Wilson’s dream of a prosperous

German republic taking its place in the council of nations was the primary obstacle to a peace

serving France’s real needs. Indeed, his decision to accept the armistice may have been

influenced by the fact that a more thorough victory over Germany would also have meant

another million American soldiers at the front and proportionally greater U.S. influence over

the peace.

Postwar France faced a severe triple crisis. The first involved future security against German

attack: Germany remained far more populous and industrial than France, and now France’s

erstwhile eastern ally, Russia, was hors de combat. The French would try to revive an anti-

German alliance system with the new states in eastern Europe, but the only sure way to restore

a balance of power in Europe was to weaken Germany permanently. The second crisis was

financial. France had paid for the war largely by domestic and foreign borrowing and inflation.

To ask the nation to sacrifice further to cover these costs was politically impossible. Indeed, any

new taxes would spark bitter social conflict over which groups would bear the heaviest

burdens. Yet France also faced the cost of rebuilding the devastated regions and supporting an

army capable of forcing German respect for the eventual treaty. The French, therefore, hoped

for inflows of capital from abroad to restore their national solvency. Third, France faced a crisis
in her heavy industry. The “storm of steel” on the Western Front made obvious the strategic

importance of metallurgy in modern war. Recovery of Alsace-Lorraine lessened France’s

inferiority to Germany in iron but by the same token worsened her shortage of coal, especially

metallurgical coke. European coal production was down 30 percent from prewar figures by

1919, creating acute shortages everywhere. But France’s position was especially desperate

after the flooding of French mines by retreating German soldiers. To realize the industrial

expansion made possible by the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, France needed access to German

coal and markets and preferably a cartel arrangement allowing French industry to survive

German competition in the peacetime to come.

Wilson’s program was not without promise for France if collective security and Allied solidarity

meant permanent British and American help to deter future German attacks and restore the

French economy. In particular, the French hoped that the wealthy United States would forgive

the French war debts. On the other hand, if Britain and the United States pursued their own

interests without regard to French needs, then France would be forced to find solutions to its

triple crisis through harsher treatment of Germany.

In some respects, Britain stood between France and the United States. It would be more

accurate, however, to view Britain as the third point of a triangle, attached to the interests of

France in some cases, to the principles of the United States in others. Hence, Prime

Minister David Lloyd George, second only to Wilson in liberal rhetoric, was accused by

Americans of conspiring with Clemenceau to promote old-fashioned imperialism, and, second

only to the French in pursuing balance of power, was accused by Clemenceau of favouring the

Germans. But that was Britain’s traditional policy: to prop up the defeated power in a European

war and constrain the ambitions of the victor. To be sure, in the election campaign held after

the Armistice, Lloyd George’s supporters brandished slogans like “Hang the Kaiser” and

“Squeeze the German lemon til the pips squeak,” but at the peace conference to come, Lloyd

George equivocated. Britain would take the toughest stand of all on German reparations in

hopes of ameliorating its own financial situation vis-à-vis the United States, but otherwise

promoted a united, healthy Germany that would contribute to European recovery and balance

the now ascendant power of France. Of course, Lloyd George also demanded a ban on German

naval armaments and partition of Germany’s colonies.

Exhausted Italy was even less able than France to absorb the costs of war. Labour unrest

compounded the usual ministerial instability and enhanced the public appeal of anti-

Communist nationalists like Benito Mussolini. But the hope that the war would prove somehow

worthwhile put peace aims at the centre of Italian politics. In April 1918 the terms of the Treaty

of London were proclaimed on the floor of Parliament, sparking months of debate between

nationalists and Wilsonians over their propriety. By January 1919, however, Prime Minister

Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino had won a mandate for a firm

position at the peace conference in favour of all Italy’s claims with the exception of that to the

entire Dalmatian coast.

The other victorious Great Power, Japan, suffered the least human and material loss in the war

and registered astounding growth. Between 1913 and 1918 Japanese production exploded,

foreign trade rose from $315,000,000 to $831,000,000, and population grew 30 percent until

65,000,000 people were crowded into a mountainous archipelago smaller than California.

Clearly Japan had the potential and the opportunity for rapid expansion in the Pacific and East

Asia.

Finally, the defeated Germans also looked with hopes to the peace conference. Throughout the

first half of 1919 the new Weimar Republic (so called after the site of its constitutional

convention) was in gestation, and the Germans hoped that their embrace of democracy might

win them a mild peace. At the very least they hoped to exploit differences among the victors to

regain diplomatic equality, as Talleyrand had done for France at the Congress of Vienna.

Instead, the Allies found compromise among themselves so arduous that they could brook no

further negotiation with Germany. German delegates were not invited to Paris until May, and

the “preliminaries of peace” became, with few exceptions, the final treaty. To Germans,

Wilson’s promise of “open covenants, openly arrived at” proved a sham, and the final treaty

a Diktat.

THE VERSAILLES DIKTAT

HAMMERING OUT THE TREATY

The Paris Peace Conference opened on Jan. 18, 1919, in a politically charged atmosphere. The

delegations of 27 nations harassed the Great Powers with their various and conflicting
complaints and demands. The Great Powers, in turn, sent five delegates each, supported by

sprawling staffs of geographers, historians, and economists. Clearly, peace could not be made

in such a global assembly; hence the five leading victors created a Council of Ten—the heads of

government and their foreign ministers. But even this proved unwieldy, and since Italy and

Japan tended to focus on questions of local interest, major decisions were hammered out in

private by an informally constituted Big Three: Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. The

French had tried to impose a schedule of priorities for the conference, but Wilson insisted on

tackling the League of Nations first in order to prevent the others from rejecting the League or

using it as a bargaining chip in later disputes. The French were skeptical of the idealistic basis of

the League but hoped that it might be turned into an instrument of security committing the

British and Americans to the defense of the new European order. In this they were

disillusioned, for the British viewed the League less as a means for mobilizing force against an

aggressor than as a means of preventing future conflicts in the first place. The Covenant of the

proposed League provided for a plenary assembly of all members and a council of the Great

Powers and outlined a system of sanctions against aggressor states. But the British chose to

focus on moral sanctions (not unlike Wilson’s belief in the “court of world opinion”), or at most

economic sanctions, and participation in military sanctions was made voluntary. The Covenant

also contained machinery for declaring boundary changes, implying that the League’s primary

function was to secure peace, not to secure the status quo. Upon final rejection in April of a

Franco-Italian plan for tougher collective security and an international force adequate to

enforce peace, French newspapers scorned the League as a toothless debating society. And
since Clemenceau had succeeded in having Germany barred from the League pending good

behaviour, the German press denounced it as a “League of Victors.”

In mid-February Wilson returned to the United States to attend to presidential duties, and in his

absence committees went to work on the details of the German treaty. Foremost in the minds

of the French was security against future German attack. As early as November 1918 Marshal

Ferdinand Foch drafted a memo identifying the Rhine as “the frontier of democracy” and

arguing for the separation of the Rhineland from Germany and its occupation in perpetuity by

Allied troops. This plan echoed earlier French war aims: The victory of 1871 had created a

unified Germany; the defeat of 1918 should undo it. Foch’s occupation forces tried also to

locate and encourage the Rhenish autonomist tendencies that grew up for a brief time in 1919

out of the desire to escape the burden of defeat and fear of the Communist agitation in Berlin.

But the primary French argument was strategic: Four times in a century German armies had

invaded France from the Rhineland (1814, 1815, 1870, 1914), and a united Germany would

remain potentially overwhelming. As General Fayolle put it, “One speaks of the League, but

what can this hypothetical society do without a means of action? One promises alliances, but

alliances are fragile, like all human things. There will always come a time when Germany will

have a free hand. Take all the alliances you want, but the greatest need for France and Belgium

is a material barrier.”

André Tardieu, Clemenceau’s chief aide, sought to give the Rhineland scheme a Wilsonian gloss

in a lengthy memo distributed on February 25. The Rhenish people, he claimed, were largely
Celtic, Catholic, and liberal and resented the rule of Germanic, Protestant, and authoritarian

Prussia. They had been loyal citizens of the French Republic and Empire from 1792 to 1815.

Thus an autonomous Rhineland would serve both self-determination and the defense of

democracy. The British and Americans rejected Tardieu’s brief in the strongest terms and

warned that dismemberment of Germany would only create “a new Alsace-Lorraine” and the

seeds of a new war. In April, after Wilson returned to Paris, he and Lloyd George countered

with an unprecedented offer: an Anglo-American guarantee to fight on the side of France in

case of future German aggression. The French were again skeptical. In a future war the United

States and Britain would need months or years to raise and transport armies, by which time

France might be lost. On the other hand, how could Clemenceau refuse an unlimited extension

of the wartime coalition? On March 17 he proposed a mixed solution—the guarantee treaties,

plus material safeguards including German disarmament, demilitarization, and Allied

occupation of the Rhine.

This acrimonious debate over security overlapped with the negotiations over reparations. The

latter was perhaps an even more emotional issue, since the financial settlement would affect

every taxpayer in every country. The moral issues also seemed clearer: Surely Germany, and

not her victims, should pay for reconstruction; surely the wealthy British and Americans should

forgive France’s war debt, a small sacrifice beside those made by France in the joint effort. The

French government had borrowed 26,000,000,000 francs from its own people during the war

and owed another $3,600,000,000 to Britain and the United States. The franc had lost 70

percent of its value. Yet French hopes for Allied economic unity were dashed when the U.S.
Treasury refused to discuss abrogation of war debts, rejected French and Italian proposals for a

“financial League of Nations,” and opposed economic favouritism of all kinds in accord with the

Fourteen Points. The British, in turn, repudiated the resolutions of the 1916 Allied Economic

Conference and refused to forgive France her debt so long as the United States insisted on

repayment from London.

“If it is France or Germany that must be ruined,” wrote a conservative French journal about

the reparations debate, “let us be sure that it is Germany!” The French chamber refused to vote

a tax on capital and relied on German payments to cover the cost of repairing the devastated

regions. Wilson accepted German responsibility for war damage, but the British vastly inflated

reparations by insisting on repayment for “invisible damage” like sunken ships and cargo, lost

markets and production, and veterans’ pensions. On the other hand, the British favoured

setting a fixed indemnity in the treaty, while the French claimed that Germany should agree to

pay whatever reparation ended up costing. When negotiations failed to fix either a total sum or

the percentage shares to flow to France, Britain, Belgium, and the others, the U.S. delegation

recommended on March 24 that the whole problem be postponed. On April 5 it was agreed

that a Reparations Commission would determine, by May 1, 1921, the amount and timing of

German payments and be empowered to declare defaults and sanctions in case of

noncompliance. But in the meantime Germany would make immediate transfers totaling

20,000,000,000 gold marks. Thus the peace conference obliged the Germans to sign an open

account and adjourned without plans to stabilize currencies or settle war debts.
In economic matters the French delegation laboured to improve the imbalance in heavy

industry between Germany and France. At first Clemenceau fought hard for annexation of the

Saar—the French “frontier of 1814”—and then settled for French control of the Saar coal mines

and a League of Nations administration for 15 years, at which time the Saarlanders would hold

a plebiscite to decide their permanent status. Germany was also obliged to deliver 20,000,000

tons of coal per year to France and Belgium and to allow the products of Alsace-Lorraine into

Germany duty-free for five years.

Such punitive clauses ensured German feebleness for some time to come. France, on the other

hand, now possessed both the largest army in Europe and a set of natural allies among the new

states in eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, many British observers came to consider France the

primary threat to dominate the Continent. In late March Lloyd George’s

eloquent Fontainebleau Memorandum warned that vindictiveness in the hour of victory would

serve not justice and reconciliation but German revanchism and Bolshevik propaganda.

Nevertheless Clemenceau, under attack from President Poincaré, Marshal Foch, and the

parliament for “giving up the Rhine,” dared not compromise further. On April 22, Wilson and

Lloyd George accepted his material guarantees of security in addition to the Anglo-American

pacts. These included the limitation of the German army to 100,000 men with no offensive

weapons; demilitarization of a zone extending 50 kilometers east of the Rhine; and an Allied

occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, with bridgeheads at Cologne, Koblenz, Mainz, and

Kehl. The occupation would be divided into three zones, to be evacuated serially at five-year

intervals.
REACTION TO THE TREATY

On May 7 the German delegation was finally summoned to receive the draft treaty. Additional

important clauses called for the abolition of the German high seas fleet, the general staff, and

conscription; partition of Germany’s African colonies; cession of the Eupen-et-Malmédy district

to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine to France, most of Upper Silesia and West Prussia to Poland,

including a corridor to the Baltic that cut Germany in two; plebiscites to determine whether

Allenstein and Marienwerder should go to Poland and Schleswig to Denmark; a League of

Nations administration for the free city of Danzig (to provide Poland a coastal port); prohibition

of Anschluss (union) between Germany and Austria; and abrogation of the Treaty of Brest-

Litovsk. Finally, Article 231 enjoined Germany to accept full responsibility for the war caused

“by the aggression of Germany and her allies.”

The draft treaty caused acute consternation in Germany (though it left Germany intact and was

mild compared to Germany’s terms to Russia at Brest-Litovsk), and the German delegation

argued without success for substantial revisions. The Germans could not reject the treaty,

however, without inviting a continuation of the Allied blockade, revolutionary outbreaks, an

Allied military advance, or French intrigues against German unity. (On June 1, Foch’s generals in

the occupation implicated themselves in an abortive separatist putsch aimed at creating a

“Rhineland Republic” and thereby magnified German—and British—suspicions.) Hence, the

German delegation—frock-coated professionals bearing little resemblance to the spike-

helmeted militarists the Allies meant to punish—affixed their signatures to the treaty in the Hall

of Mirrors at Versailles on the fifth anniversary of the Sarajevo assassination (June 28, 1919).
The Weimar coalition of Democrats, Social Democrats, and the Catholic Centre party ratified

the treaty on July 9. German nationalists, however, denounced acceptance of the treaty as

treason and immediately began propounding the myth that the German army had been

“stabbed in the back” by Socialists and defeatists, the “November criminals” who signed the

Armistice, and the liberal parties who signed the Versailles Diktat. The war-guilt clause was

particularly damaging, since any historical evidence suggesting that Germany did not bear sole

guilt for the war would tend to undermine the treaty’s legitimacy.

Allied delegates and populations were scarcely happier with the treaty than the Germans.

British diplomat Harold Nicolson echoed the views of disillusioned Wilsonians when he left the

signing ceremony in disgust, “and thence to bed, sick of life.” Economist John Maynard Keynes

quit the peace conference in protest and returned to Britain to write a scathing critique of

Wilson and the treaty, whose economic clauses, he said, stymied European recovery. Nor were

the French satisfied. Marshal Foch despaired of containing the power of a united Germany and

prophesied: “This is not peace, but a truce for 20 years.” Poincaré predicted willful German

default and Allied disputes over execution. Clemenceau had to exploit all his prestige to win

parliamentary ratification, and still he lost the presidential election that followed.

As for Wilson, the treaty he had personally helped to fashion, and the global obligations it

imposed on the United States, proved unpopular with various factions in American politics,

including nationalists, isolationists, “Monroe Doctrine” regionalists, xenophobes, and tariff

protectionists. The immediate postwar years also gave rise to the “red scare,” the first
legislation limiting immigration to the United States on an ethnic basis, and the belief that

Wilson had been duped by the clever Europeans so that the war redounded only to the benefit

of Anglo-French imperialism. But it is not true that the United States retreated at once into

isolationism. The debate over Versailles was essentially a debate over the terms on which the

United States would continue to play a role in world affairs. Most important was fear that

Article 10 of the League Covenant might embroil the United States in foreign quarrels and even

violate the Constitution. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, led by Henry Cabot

Lodge, eventually proposed ratification of the Treaty of Versailles subject to 14 reservations,

but Wilson insisted on an all-or-nothing strategy and embarked on a hectic national tour to

mobilize public support. In October 1919 he suffered a debilitating stroke, and on November 19

the Senate voted down the treaty. Further compromise led to a final vote on March 19, 1920,

but Wilson instructed his own loyalists to reject any reservations. The 49–35 vote fell short of

the necessary two-thirds majority. By failing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the United States

also rejected the League of Nations (which its own president had forced on the Europeans), the

security guarantee by which Clemenceau had been persuaded to give up the Rhineland, and

U.S. commitment to the economic and political reconstruction of Europe. All this gave those

who clung to the belief that the French cause had been betrayed the opportunity to deal even

more harshly with Germany.

THE WEST AND THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR

BOLSHEVIK DIPLOMACY
France’s deep fears about a future German threat sprang in large part from the elimination of

Russia as a factor in the European balance. Indeed, the Russian question was at least as

important as the German one and absorbed as much time and worry at the peace conference.

After Brest-Litovsk, Anglo-French policy turned sharply anti-Bolshevik, and Clemenceau and

Foch worked to build a cordon sanitaire in eastern Europe against German and Bolshevik

expansion alike. The Lenin regime also repudiated the tsarist debts to Britain and France (the

latter being more delicate since most of it dated from before the war and was owed to private

bondholders). But Wilson still believed in the innate desire of the Russian people for democracy

and searched desperately for ways to end the civil war and liberalize the Reds, the Whites, or

both. As early as July 1918 he wrote Colonel Edward House: “I have been sweating blood over

what is right and feasible to do in Russia. It goes to pieces like quicksilver under my touch.”

After Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks came quickly to a two-track policy toward the West. Their

rhetoric still condemned Allied and German imperialists in vitriolic terms, but their deeds aimed

at securing their own survival at all costs. These included attempts to open negotiations with

Allied governments, to exploit differences among them, to persuade them to withdraw support

for the Whites, and to encourage the opposition to intervention in Russia that already existed

among French and British workers and soldiers. On the other hand, the Red Terror launched by

the Bolsheviks in 1918, including the murder of the royal family, convinced many in the West

that this new breed was beyond the pale. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing called

Bolshevism “the most hideous and monstrous thing that the human mind has ever conceived.”

When, in August 1918, the Cheka (secret police) arrested 200 British and French residents of
Moscow, invaded their consulates, and murdered the British naval attaché, opinion spread in

Paris and London that the Bolsheviks were thugs and bandits, if not German agents. In the

autumn the Allies imposed a blockade on the Moscow regime and broke the last contacts

(diplomatic missions and the Red Cross) that still existed.

The Bolsheviks’ paramount need was a breathing spell in which to consolidate their power,

mobilize the economy in the lands under their control, and subdue the White armies. By the

end of 1918 these forces included the Cossacks of General Anton Denikin in the south,

supported by the French from Odessa; the Ukrainian separatists; General Nikolay Yudenich’s

army of the Baltic; a puppet government in the north supported by the Anglo-French from

Arkhangelsk; and the government of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak at Omsk in Siberia. American

and Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok on the Pacific. The Bolsheviks had also

invaded Estonia only to be met by local troops, a British naval squadron, Yudenich’s Russian

nationalists, and even General Rüdiger von der Goltz’s German veterans seeking to maintain

German authority on the Baltic. Against these disparate and uncoordinated forces the

Bolsheviks deployed the Red Army under the command of Leon Trotsky. In the opening stages

of the Revolution they experimented with a “people’s army” in which ranks were abolished and

officers were elected by the troops. This quickly gave way to traditional military practice and

even recruitment of ex-tsarist officers and technicians. By the turn of 1919 the Red Army

numbered in the millions.

Lenin instructed the new commissar for foreign affairs, Georgy Chicherin, to try to separate the

United States from the Allies. In October and November 1918 he addressed long notes to

Wilson protesting Allied intervention and proposing a cease-fire in return for Allied evacuation.

Then in December, Maksim Litvinov appealed to Wilson in terms drawn from the Fourteen

Points, ending with the plea auditur et altera pars (“let the other side be heard”). Some

historians have judged these demarches as a genuine opportunity for early reconciliation

between the Bolsheviks and the West. Others consider them the equivalent of the Brest-Litovsk

negotiations with the Germans, a “peace offensive” designed to serve the internal security of

the regime. The Western powers, however, were confused about how to influence events in

Russia. In January 1919, Lloyd George showed Wilson an intelligence report indicating that the

Allied interventions, if not increased massively, would only strengthen the appeal of the

Bolsheviks. He favoured negotiation; Clemenceau favoured a stronger intervention.

Given the Bolsheviks’ single-minded dedication to power and ideology (which was, after all,

their sole source of legitimacy), it is difficult to imagine how Allied–Soviet friendship, or a

compromise settlement among the Russian factions, could have emerged. Nevertheless, the

snarled diplomacy of the two sides during the peace conference widened the gap between

them. Lenin had postponed his summons to European Socialists to form the Third (or

Communist) International (Comintern) until January lest it spoil his efforts to open negotiations

with the West. He finally issued the call on Jan. 25, 1919, just as the Paris Peace Conference

finally decided to make an initiative. It appeared, therefore, as if Lenin was intent on remaining

an international outlaw seeking to destroy the very governments with which he claimed to
want normal relations. The Comintern was founded on March 2, and at its second congress

(July 1920) Lenin insisted that member parties accede to 21 conditions imposing rigorous

Communist discipline and subordinating local parties to the will of Moscow. It divided European

Socialists, most of whom rejected the Communists’ violent tactics, Lenin’s dictatorship, or both.

From its inception, therefore, the Comintern was an arm of Soviet foreign policy more than a

vehicle of Socialist internationalism.

ALLIED APPROACHES TO THE BOLSHEVIKS

Meanwhile, Wilson and Lloyd George agreed on an appeal directed to the White forces (and

radioed to the Bolsheviks) to declare a cease-fire and send representatives to the island of

Prinkipo (Büyükada), in the Sea of Marmara. This was a fruitless gesture, since neither the Red

nor the White regime could survive except by the other’s total destruction. The Bolsheviks

ignored the call for a truce but accepted the invitation; the Whites, with French

encouragement, candidly declined both. The Big Three were informed of the failure on

February 12, two days before Wilson’s return to the United States. Winston Churchill then

hurried to Paris to urge on Wilson a vigorous Allied military campaign on behalf of the Whites.

But even if the Big Three had agreed to launch an anti-Bolshevik crusade, their war-weary

populations, depleted treasuries, and aroused labour unions would not have permitted it.

Five days later Colonel House, who was given charge of Russian matters by Wilson, asked a

young American liberal, William Bullitt, to journey to Russia for direct talks with Lenin. Bullitt

reached Petrograd on March 8, spoke with Chicherin and Litvinov, then went on to Moscow.
Lenin offered an immediate cease-fire and negotiations in return for the cessation of Allied

occupation, aid to the Whites, and the blockade. The Bolsheviks, in turn, promised amnesty to

all Russians who had collaborated with the Allies. Bullitt returned to Paris in great excitement at

the end of March, only to be denied an audience with Wilson and to find the conference near

collapse over the Rhineland question. Lloyd George was under pressure from parliamentary

Tories to avoid conciliating Lenin, while the general level of Allied anxiety had been raised by

declaration of a Soviet republic in Bavaria and Béla Kun’s Communist coup d’état in Hungary on

March 21. Kun immediately invaded Czechoslovakia and appealed to Lenin for help (which the

Bolsheviks were in no condition to provide). On April 10 a Romanian army attacked Hungary,

and successive Red and White terrors ensued. The episodes ended on May 1, when German

federal troops deposed the Bavarian Communists, and August 1, when Kun fled the

approaching Romanian army.

Historians debate whether the Bullitt mission was a missed opportunity. Considering the

Bolsheviks’ final victory, the Allies would have done well to extricate themselves on Lenin’s

March 1919 terms. On the other hand, the document held out little hope for a Russia in line

with Western principles or interests. Allied acceptance would have obliged them to pull out

their own forces, cut off aid to the Whites, and resume trade with the Bolsheviks. If hostilities

had then resumed—on any pretext—the Reds would have been able to crush the divided

Whites and solidify their control. On the other hand, Lenin was hard pressed in the spring of

1919—Kolchak was launching a major offensive—and was probably sincere in seeking relief.

Bullitt himself was consumed with bitterness over his reception in Paris and rebuked Wilson for
having “so little faith in the millions of men, like myself, in every nation who had faith in you.”

(Bullitt testified before the Senate against the Versailles treaty and retired to France until, in

1933, he was appointed the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. Disillusioned with Stalin,

he soon resigned.)

The fourth approach by the peace conference to Russia grew out of letters from the director of

European food relief, Herbert Hoover (March 28), and the Norwegian explorer and

philanthropist Fridtjof Nansen (April 3) urging massive deliveries of food to Russia. The way to

fight Communism, they argued, was with bread, not guns. Colonel House procured Allied

consent to offer relief to Russia, but only if Russian transportation facilities were placed at the

disposal of an Allied commission. The Bolsheviks replied in derisory terms on May 13, since the

conditions would have meant de facto Allied control of Russia. (In 1921 the American relief

commission nonetheless began distribution of food that saved countless Russians from

starvation.)

CONSOLIDATION OF THE REVOLUTION

The peace conference’s inability to frame a common policy toward the Lenin regime meant that

Russia’s future was now solely a military matter. By May, Kolchak’s offensive reached its

greatest extent, approaching Moscow from the east, and the French and British resolved to

recognize the Whites. Wilson also gave up on the Reds and began cajoling White leaders to

pledge democratization of Russia in the event of their victory. But the Red Army turned back
Kolchak in the summer, and the Allies gave up in the north, evacuating Arkhangelsk, after a

number of clashes with Red forces, on Sept. 30, 1919, and Murmansk on October 12.

The Russian Civil War was a vast, protean struggle fought out in five major theatres with rapid

thrusts over hundreds of miles made possible by railroads and cavalry. The Reds took good

advantage of their interior lines, while their control of Russia’s industrial heartland and trunk

rail lines and their ruthless requisitioning (known as “War Communism”) procured enough food

and supplies for them to outlast their enemies. The outcome was not inevitable, but the

inability of the far-flung White forces to coordinate their actions exposed them to defeat in

detail. Denikin took Kiev in September 1919, but a Soviet counteroffensive forced him steadily

back until his last base fell in March 1920. Command in the south fell to General Pyotr Wrangel.

Meanwhile, the Red Army drove out Kolchak and recaptured Omsk in November 1919. On April

25, 1920, war broke out between the Soviets and Poland as the Polish leader, Marshal Józef

Piłsudski, pursued his ambition of a grand Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian empire. On May 7 the

Poles captured Kiev, but a Soviet counterstroke drove them out (June 11), captured Vilnius (July

15), and soon threatened Warsaw itself. Alarms arose in western Europe over the possible

sovietization of Poland and even a German-Bolshevik alliance to overthrow the Treaty of

Versailles. But Piłsudski, with advice from French attaché General Maxime Weygand, hurled

back the overextended Reds, took 66,000 prisoners, and recaptured extensive Belorussian

territories. Distressed by the resistance of the Poles to the Revolution, Lenin counseled peace,

as at Brest-Litovsk, even on humiliating terms. A preliminary treaty (October 12) and

final Treaty of Riga (March 18, 1921) fixed the Soviet-Polish border just to the west of Minsk

and far to the east of the Curzon Line proposed at Paris.

Peace with Poland freed the Red Army to turn south and eliminate the last resistance from

Wrangel, who evacuated Crimea on Nov. 14, 1921. Soviet forces invested the Caucasus as well,

setting up an “autonomous” federation of Communist regimes in Georgia, Armenia, and

Azerbaijan. The original anti-imperialism of the Bolsheviks thus gave way to a policy of

domination of all the subject nationalities of the Russian Empire that the Bolsheviks could

subdue. On Oct. 25, 1922, the Japanese withdrew from Vladivostok under U.S. pressure,

bringing all foreign interventions in Russia to a close.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came into existence on Dec. 30, 1922. In the World War

and Civil War, Russia had lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia. The Communist

government had survived, but the Revolution had failed to spread. Hence, the Bolshevik leaders

were left to construct a permanent relationship to an outer world which they defined as

implacably hostile. The Western powers, in turn, faced the challenge of living with a Great

Power that repudiated, at least publicly, all norms of international behaviour.

CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST

THE REORGANIZATION OF CENTRAL EUROPE

Although the Habsburg Empire had ceased to exist, the peace conference dealt with the new

republics of Austria and Hungary as defeated powers and systematically favoured the interests
of the successor states that had arisen from the ruins of the empire in the last weeks of the

war. It was Wilson’s hope that peace and self-rule might finally bless the troubled regions

between Germany and Russia through strict application of the principle of nationality. But east-

central Europe comprised a jumble of peoples with conflicting claims based on language,

ethnicity, economics, geography, military considerations, and historic ties. What was more, the

new states themselves were in no case homogeneous. The name Yugoslavia could not hide the

rivalries within that kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Czechoslovakia was born of an

alliance of convenience among Czechs, Slovaks, and Ruthenes. Historic Poland embraced

Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians, and Yiddish-speaking Jews. Romania, enlarged by the

accession of Transylvania and Bessarabia, now numbered millions of Ukrainians, Hungarians,

Jews, and other minorities. In short, the Balkanization of central Europe raised as many political

disputes as it solved and created many little multinational states in place of a few empires.

Poland was a favourite of the Americans and the French by dint of historic sympathies, the

votes of Polish-Americans, and Clemenceau’s hope for a strong Polish ally in Germany’s rear.

The Fourteen Points promised Poland an outlet to the sea, but the resulting Polish Corridor and

free city of Danzig contained 1,500,000 Kashubians and Germans. In the north, the Baltic states

of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia won their independence from Moscow and were sheltered by

the British fleet. But an example of the difficulties in applying national self-determination was

the Polish-Lithuanian quarrel over the disposition of Vilnius. That town (according to 1897

Russian statistics) was 40 percent Jewish, 31 percent Polish, 24 percent Russian, and 2 percent

Lithuanian. Vilnius Province, however, was 61 percent Russian, 17 percent Lithuanian, 12

percent Jewish, and 8 percent Polish. In December 1919 the Supreme Allied Council

provisionally awarded Vilnius to Lithuania. Poland and Czechoslovakia similarly quarreled over

the coal-rich Teschen district. Poles predominated in the district, but historic claims lay with

Bohemia. In the end the Great Powers merely ratified the de facto partition effected by

occupying Polish and Czech troops—a solution that favoured Czechoslovakia and left a

bitterness the two states could ill afford and never overcame. Finally, the Polish-German

conflict over Upper Silesia, another coal-rich region of mixed nationality, proved that even the

League of Nations could not make an objective judgment. The March 1921 plebiscite called for

in the Treaty of Versailles (one of the few concessions awarded the German delegation) showed

German preponderance in the region as a whole but Polish majorities in the vital mining

districts. The British delegation in the League argued that Germany could hardly be expected to

pay reparations if it lost yet another rich source of coal, while the French sought to weaken

Germany further and bolster the Polish economy. Finally, in October 1922, Poland was granted

the greater portion of the mines.

The Treaty of Saint-Germain disposed of the Austrian half of the former Habsburg

monarchy. Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, sincere Wilsonians, exploited their personal

goodwill to win two major concessions that otherwise violated the principle of national self-

determination. First, they retained for Czechoslovakia the entire historic province of Bohemia.

This afforded the vulnerable new state the military protection from Germany of the Sudeten

mountains, but it also brought 3,500,000 Sudeten Germans under the rule of Prague. Second,

Czechoslovakia received territory stretching south to Bratislava on the Danube, providing it with
a riverine outlet but creating a minority of a million Magyars. The Austrian boundary with

Yugoslavia at Klagenfurt was fixed by plebiscite in Austria’s favour in October 1920, as was the

division of the Burgenland district between Austria and Hungary in December 1921.

Italy’s boundaries with Austria and Yugoslavia became one of the most volatile issues of the

peace conference owing to Italian truculence and Wilsonian sanctimoniousness. Orlando clung

to the Allied promises that had enticed Italy into the war in the first place. But Wilson, offended

by the secret war-aims treaties, vented his frustration on Italy. He went so far as to plead his

case publicly in the French press on April 24, 1919, a violation of diplomatic etiquette that

provoked the Italians to bolt the conference. Upon their return, a compromise of sorts was

achieved: Italy received Trieste, parts of Istria and Dalmatia, and the Upper Adige as far as the

Brenner Pass with its 200,000 German-speaking Austrians. But Wilson refused to budge

on Fiume, a province whose hinterland was Yugoslav but whose port city was Italian. On June

19 Orlando’s government fell over the issue. In August Fiume was declared a free city, and in

September a band of Italian freebooters led by the nationalist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio

declared Fiume a free state. Such passions among Italians over their “mutilated victory” helped

prepare the way for the triumph in 1922 of Mussolini’s Fascists.

The Treaty of Trianon, delayed until 1920 by the Communist coup in Hungary, partitioned that

ancient kingdom among its neighbours. Transylvania, including its minority of 1,300,000

Magyars, passed to Romania. The Banat of Temesvár (Timişoara) was divided between Romania

and Yugoslavia, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia passed to Czechoslovakia, and Croatia to Yugoslavia.

All told, Hungary’s territory shrank from 109,000 to 36,000 square miles. The armies of rump

Austria and Hungary were limited to 35,000 men.

The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria marked yet another stage in the old struggles over

Macedonia dating back to the Balkan wars and beyond. Bulgaria lost its western territories back

to the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and nearly all of Western Thrace to Greece,

cutting the Bulgarians off from the Aegean. Their armed forces were likewise limited to 20,000

men. Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria also accepted war guilt and reparations obligations, but

these were later remitted in light of their economic weakness.

The settlement in east-central Europe was a generally well-meaning attempt to apply the

principle of nationality under the worst imaginable circumstances. The new governments all

faced aggrieved minorities, not to mention the onerous tasks of state-building—drafting

constitutions, supporting currencies, raising armies and police—with no democratic tradition or

financial resources beyond what they could borrow from the already strapped British and

French. Austria in particular was a head without a body—over a quarter of its population lived

in Vienna—yet was forbidden union with Germany. Hungary suffered violations of self-

determination to an even greater degree and was bound to become a centre of aggressive

revanche. Disputed borders, ethnic tensions, and local ambitions hampered economic and

diplomatic cooperation among the successor states and would make them easy prey to a

resurgent Germany, or Russia, or both.

THE REORGANIZATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST

The Treaty of Sèvres likewise dismembered the Ottoman Empire. Here again secret war-aims

treaties reflected Allied ambitions in the Middle East, but Wilson was less willing to challenge

them given his belief that the Arab peoples were not ready for self-rule. To avoid the tinge of

imperialism, the victors took control of the former Ottoman (and German) territories under

“mandates” from the League: Class A mandates for those lands to be prepared for

independence (Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine entrusted to Britain; Syria and Lebanon to

France); Class B mandates for those judged not ready for self-rule in the foreseeable future

(Tanganyika to Britain, Cameroons and Togoland divided between Britain and France, and

Rwanda-Urundi to Belgium); and Class C mandates (German South West Africa to South Africa,

Kaiser Wilhelms Land [New Guinea] to Australia, German Samoa to New Zealand, and the

Mariana, Marshall, and Caroline islands to Japan).

The victors also agreed, informally, that southeastern Anatolia would be a French sphere of

influence, while Italy received the Dodecanese Islands and a sphere in western and southern

Anatolia. The Greek government of Venizélos, still a British client, occupied Smyrna (İzmir) and

its hinterland, to the consternation of the Italians, who considered this poaching on their zone.

Armenia was a special consideration because of its Christian population and the wartime deaths

of hundreds of thousands (some claimed millions) of Armenians—through battle, mass murder,

or forced deportation—at the hands of the Young Turks, who considered them a seditious

element. Talk of an American mandate for Armenia gave way to independence. The collapse of

the tsarist regime spared the Allies from having to award Constantinople and the Straits to

Russia. The British proposed a League of Nations regime under U.S. administration for these
areas, but Wilson refused this responsibility, while Indian Muslims protested any weakening of

the Islāmic caliphate. So the status of Constantinople remained in abeyance, although the

Straits were demilitarized and an Anglo-French-Italian commission regulated free passage. In

August 1920 the helpless sultan’s delegation signed the Treaty of Sèvres.

It was a dead letter. Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish war hero, rallied his army in the interior and

rebelled against the foreign influence in Anatolia and Constantinople. Unwilling to dispatch

British armies, Lloyd George encouraged the Greeks to enforce the treaty instead. Indeed,

Venizélos harboured a dream, the megali idea, of conquering the entire Turkish littoral and

making the Aegean Sea a “Greek lake” as in ancient times. The Treaty of Sèvres, therefore, was

the signal for the start of a Greco-Turkish War. By the end of 1920 the Greeks had fanned out

from İzmir, occupied the western third of Anatolia, and were threatening the Turkish

Nationalists’ capital of Ankara. In March 1921 the British and French proposed a compromise

that was rejected by the Turks, who nonetheless kept open diplomatic links in an effort to split

the Allies. But as Kemal, later called Atatürk, put it: “We could not flatter ourselves that there

was any hope of diplomatic success until we had driven the enemy out of our territory by force

of arms.” The tide of battle turned in August 1921, and the Greeks were forced to retreat

precipitously through a hostile countryside. The French then made a separate peace with

Ankara, settled their Syrian boundary, and withdrew support for the Anglo-Greek adventure. In

March 1921 Turkey also signed a treaty of friendship with the new U.S.S.R. regulating the

border between them and dooming the briefly independent Armenian and Trans-caucasian

republics.
Another Allied offer (March 1922) could not tempt Kemal, who now had the upper hand. His

summer attack routed the Greeks, who engaged in a panicky naval evacuation from İzmir which

the Turks reentered on September 9. Kemal then turned north toward the Allied zone of

occupation at Çanak (now Çanakkale) on the Dardanelles Strait. The French and Italians pulled

out, and the British commissioner was authorized to open hostilities. At the last moment the

Turks relented, and the Armistice of Mudanya (October 11) ended the fighting. Eight days later

Lloyd George’s Cabinet was forced to resign. A new peace conference produced the Treaty of

Lausanne (July 24, 1923), which returned eastern Thrace to Turkey and recognized the

Nationalist government in return for demilitarization of the Straits. The Treaty of Lausanne was

to prove a durable solution to the old “Eastern question.”

The Young Turk and Kemalist rebellions were models for other Islāmic revolts against Western

imperialism. Persian nationalists had challenged the shah and Anglo-Russian influence before

1914 and flirted with the Young Turks (hence with Germany) during the war. By August 1919,

however, British forces had contained both domestic protest and an ephemeral Bolshevik

incursion and won a treaty from Tehrān providing for British administration of the Persian

army, treasury, and railroads in return for evacuation of British troops. The Anglo-Persian Oil

Company already controlled the oil-rich Persian Gulf. In June 1920, however, nationalist

agitation resumed, forcing the shah to suspend the treaty. In Egypt, under British occupation

since 1882 and a protectorate since 1914, the nationalist Wafd Party under Saʿd Zaghlūl Pasha,

agitated for full independence on Wilsonian principles. Their three weeks’ revolt of March

1919, suppressed by Anglo-Indian troops, gave way to passive resistance and bitter
negotiations between Zaghlūl and the British high commissioner, Edmund Allenby. On Feb. 28,

1922, the British ended the protectorate and granted legislative power to an Egyptian

assembly, though they retained military control of the Suez Canal.

In India, where Britain controlled the fate of some 320,000,000 people with a mere 60,000

soldiers, 25,000 civil servants, and 50,000 residents, the war also sparked the first mass

movement for independence. Out of hostility to Britain’s Turkish policies, Islāmic leaders joined

forces with Hindus in protest against the British raj. Edwin Montagu promised constitutional

reform in July 1918, but the Indian National Congress deemed it insufficient. In 1919 famine,

the return of Indian war veterans, and the inspiration of Mohandas Gandhi provoked a series of

ever larger demonstrations until, on April 13, a nervous British general at Amritsar ordered his

troops to open fire, and 379 Indians were killed. The amīr of Afghanistan, Amānollāh Khān, then

sought to exploit the unrest in India to throw off the informal protectorate Britain enjoyed over

his country. Parliament hastily approved the Montagu reforms, vetoed a campaign through the

Khyber Pass, and so staved off a general uprising. But the Indian independence movement

became a British preoccupation.

Other challenges to the empire arose from white minorities. After the Armistice, Lloyd George

finally bowed to Irish demands for independence. After much negotiation and a threatened

revolt in the northern counties, the compromise of December 1921 established the Irish Free

State as a British dominion in the south while predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland

remained in the United Kingdom. (The Sinn Féin nationalists continued to protest the treaty
until, in 1937, Éire achieved complete independence, Ulster remaining British.) In South Africa

the war propelled General Jan Smuts to international prominence and an influential role at the

peace conference. South African expansionists clung to their own version of manifest destiny

and dreamed of absorbing German South West Africa, Bechuanaland, and Rhodesia to forge a

vast empire on the southern third of the continent. The British Colonial Office sternly resisted

such ambitions. Yet the white minority of 1,500,000, dwarfed by a population of 5,000,000

blacks, 200,000 Indians, and 600,000 Chinese labourers, was itself split among Boer

nationalists, “reconciled Boers,” and British. The nationalists cited Wilsonian principles in a

symbolic claim to restore the independent Transvaal and Orange republics in 1919 and

remained a disaffected nationality within the Union of South Africa.

The non-European revolts, however—in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, and China—were the first

expressions of what would become a major theme of the 20th century. Native elites, often

educated in Europe and citing the anti-imperialist ideas of Wilson or Lenin, formed the first

cadre of mass movements for decolonization. Often alienated from Europeans by their colour

and customs, but no longer able to fit comfortably into their pre-modern societies, they

became deracinated agitators for independence and modernization. Their growing numbers

demonstrated that European imperialism, even as it reached its greatest extent through the

1919 treaties, must inevitably be a passing phenomenon.

THE NEW BALANCE IN EAST ASIA

THE THREE PACIFIC POWERS

World War I also overthrew the power structure in East Asia and the Pacific. Before 1914 six

imperial rivals had struggled for concessions on the East Asian coast. But the war eliminated

Germany and Russia from colonial competition and weakened Britain and France, leaving the

United States, Japan, and China in an uncomfortable triangular relationship that would persist

until 1941.

Americans, largely ignorant of Asian realities, harboured a mix of attitudes before 1914.

Contemptuous of what seemed to some of them, at least, as a barbaric and frozen Chinese

culture, they nevertheless saw China as an unequalled opportunity for both Christian

proselytizing and commercial exploitation. American investment in China in 1914 was only a

quarter that of Japan and a 10th that of Britain, but moralism and manifest destiny both

seemed to endow the United States with a special mission in China. On the other hand,

Americans admired Japan for its mastery of modern technology but by the same token feared it

as the primary obstacle to U.S. hopes for China. In 1899, a year after American acquisition of

the Philippines and a year before the Boxer Rebellion, Secretary of State John Hay circulated his

two “Open Door” notes imploring the Great Powers to eschew the dismemberment of China

and to preserve free commercial access for all. The growing Japanese fleet worried American

naval planners, who drafted at the time of the Russo-Japanese War the “Plan Orange”

contingency for war with Japan. (They also conceded the impossibility of defending the

Philippines against Japanese attack.)

The Chinese Revolution of 1911–12, inspired by the democratic principles of Sun Yat-sen

(educated in Hawaii and British Hong Kong), expelled the Manchu dynasty and elevated

the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), to power. But Sun quickly gave way in 1913 to

General Yüan Shih-kʾai, whose failure to unify the giant land of 400,000,000 condemned China

to a struggle among rival warlords that kept it in turmoil until at least 1928. Even as the Chinese

revolted against foreign influence and exploitation, they remained nonetheless vulnerable to

imperial predations or, conversely, dependent on foreign protection. In 1913 the Wilson

administration entered office with a decidedly pro-Chinese leaning, and at the same time many

Americans on the West Coast had become alarmed about the growing presence and success of

enterprising Japanese immigrants and had begun to seek, in Washington and California, to

legalize various forms of discrimination against them.

Japanese expansion during World War I only magnified American concern. After seizing

Germany’s Pacific islands and Chiao-chou Bay on the strategic Shantung Peninsula, Japan

imposed on China the “Twenty-one Demands” (January 1915), claiming greatly expanded

economic privileges and rights in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia (Sept. 3, 1916). After U.S.

entry into the war, the Peking regime (but not the Nationalists in Canton) declared war on the

Central Powers (Aug. 14, 1917) in hopes of defending its interests at the peace conference. The

United States moved to end the embarrassment stemming from its co-belligerency with both

China and Japan through the Lansing–Ishii Agreement of Nov. 2, 1917, in which Japan paid lip

service to the Open Door while the United States recognized Japan’s “special interests” in

China. Wilson also sent troops to Vladivostok to monitor the Japanese intervention in Siberia.
The Paris Peace Conference exposed the two branches of Japanese expansionism, rooted in a

bursting population and a booming industry in need of raw materials and markets. Delegate

Saionji Kimmochi demanded the inclusion of a clause in the League of Nations Covenant

proscribing racial discrimination, a principle that would have obliged the United States, Canada,

and Australia to admit immigrants from Japan on equal terms with those of other nations. This

was politically impossible for Wilson and Lloyd George to accept. The Japanese also demanded

the rights formerly held by Germany at Chiao-chou, which Peking resisted vehemently. Finally

Saionji agreed to drop the racial-equality plank in return for the granting of Japan’s Chinese

demands and threatened to reject the League of Nations if they were denied. Against Lansing’s

advice, Wilson acquiesced. Announcement of the terms provoked the anti-Western May Fourth

Movement in China and caused it to be the only state that refused even to sign the Treaty of

Versailles. Japan’s triumph was an inauspicious precedent for diplomatic extortion by

imperialist states from liberal states at the expense of helpless third parties.

THE ORGANIZATION OF POWER IN THE PACIFIC

In the United States, liberal internationalists, balance-of-power realists, Protestant churches

with Chinese missions, and xenophobes all decried the cynical expansionism of Japan and what

they took to be Wilson’s capitulation. The Republican administration of Warren G. Harding in

1921 therefore determined to continue an ambitious naval construction plan dating from

before the war and to pressure London to terminate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance dating from

1902. War debts gave the United States financial leverage over the British, as did American

influence (based in a large Irish-American segment of the electorate) in the Irish question then
reaching its climax. In June 1921 the British Commonwealth Conference bowed to this pressure

and decided not to renew the alliance. This in turn confronted the Japanese with the prospect

of a Britain aligned with Washington, not Tokyo, as well as a costly arms race against the

world’s two leading naval powers. A postwar business slump and worker unrest also suggested

to Tokyo the wisdom of a tactical retreat.

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited the Great Powers to Washington, D.C., to forge

a new order for East Asia and the Pacific. A Four-Power Pact negotiated at the conference

(November 1921–February 1922) enjoined the United States, Japan, Britain, and France to

respect each other’s Pacific island dependencies for 10 years. A Nine-Power Pact obliged all

parties to respect “the sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial and administrative

integrity of the state of China” and the commercial Open Door. A separate Sino-Japanese

agreement provided for Japanese evacuation of Shantung. In a Five-Power Treaty on naval

armaments, Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy agreed severally to maintain the

naval balance of capital ships in the ratios 5:5:3:1.67:1.67 and agreed not to fortify their Pacific

possessions. The latter three powers protested, but the United States frankly threatened to use

its superior resources to dwarf the Japanese fleet, while France and Italy could not afford to

compete with the British. France was also hoping for British support at this time in the struggle

over German reparations (see below The postwar guilt question). Still, domestic displeasure

with the treaties forced both the French and Japanese cabinets to resign.
Hughes’s balance-of-power diplomacy for the Pacific seemed to reflect a realist turn in

American statecraft in reaction to Wilson’s idealism insofar as the United States flexed its

muscle to compel the British and Japanese to keep hands off China and limit armaments. But in

so doing the United States assumed responsibility as the balancer and container of Japanese

power, for the naval agreement still left the Japanese fleet dominant in Asian waters.

Moreover, the Japanese had clearly bowed to force majeure and, while resigned for the time

being, would shrug off these constraints as soon as the Great Depression began to sap

American resolve. In the long run, East Asian stability could come only through a strong and

united China, for a weak and divided China represented constant temptation to a Japan

bursting with strength, anxious for outlets, and resentful of Anglo-American containment.

THE POSTWAR GUILT QUESTION

Looking back on 1919–21 from the perspective of World War II, historians easily concluded that

the Paris peacemakers had failed. In fact, debate over a “postwar guilt question” began even

before the Big Three had completed their work. Anglo-American liberals felt betrayed by

Wilson’s failure to fashion a new diplomacy, while exponents of traditional diplomacy ridiculed

Wilson’s self-righteous intrusions. As Harold Nicolson put it: “We had hoped to call a new world

into existence; we ended only by fouling the old.” In other words, the peace amounted to a

self-defeating mixture of contradictory ends or of tough ends and gentle means. Many Britons

said the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh, would destroy Germany’s economy and fragile new

democracy, and would drive the bitter Germans to embrace militaristic revanche or Bolshevism.

Many Frenchmen replied that the treaty was too mild, that a united Germany would resume its
drive for hegemony, and that German democracy was sheeps’ clothing put on for Wilson’s

benefit. Historians persuaded by the former argument often cast the peace conference as a

morality play, with the messianic Wilson frustrated in his lofty mission by the atavistic

Clemenceau. Those persuaded by the second argument speculate that the French plan for a

permanent weakening of Germany might have made for a stabler Europe but for Wilson’s and

Lloyd George’s moralizing, which, incidentally, served American and British interests at every

turn. Clemenceau said: “Wilson speaks like Jesus Christ, but he operates like Lloyd George.” And

Lloyd George, when asked how he had done at Paris, said, “Not badly, considering I was seated

between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.”

Such caricatures skirt the facts that the war was won by the greatest coalition in history, that

the peace could only take the form of a grand compromise, and that ideas are weapons. Once

taking them up to great effect in the war on Germany, the Big Three could not cynically shrug

them off any more than they could their constituents’ interests, hopes, and fears. A purely

Wilsonian peace, therefore, was never a possibility, nor was a purely power-political one on the

order of the Congress of Vienna. Perhaps the new diplomacy was revealed as a sham or a

disaster, as many professional diplomats claimed. Perhaps Wilson’s moral insinuations only

gave all parties grounds to depict the peace as illegitimate, one man’s justice being always

another’s abomination. But it was still the old diplomacy that had spawned the hideous war in

the first place. The pursuit of power without regard to justice, and the pursuit of justice without

regard to power, were both doomed and dangerous occupations—such seemed to be the
lesson of Versailles. The democratic states would spend the next 20 years searching in vain for a

synthesis.

In the 1960s this portrait of the peace conference as a Manichaean duel gave way to new

interpretations. New left historians depicted peacemaking after World War I as a conflict

between social classes and ideologies, hence as the first episode in the Cold War. Arno J. Mayer

wrote of 1919 as an “international civil war” between the “forces of movement” (Bolsheviks,

Socialists, labour, and left-Wilsonians) and the “forces of order” (the Russian Whites, Allied

governments, capitalists, and conservative power-politicians). While this thesis attracted

overdue attention to the domestic political concerns of the Big Three, it imposed an equally

dualistic set of categories, derived from the “primacy of domestic policy” paradigm, on the

convoluted events of 1919. Perhaps it is most accurate to describe the Paris Peace Conference

as the birthplace of all the major tactics, confrontational and conciliatory, for dealing with the

Bolshevik phenomenon that have reappeared time and again to the present day. Prinkipo was

the first attempt to get Communists and their opponents to substitute negotiations for force.

Bullitt made the first stab at détente: direct negotiation of a modus vivendi. Churchill was the

first “hawk,” declaring that the only thing Communists understand is force. And Hoover and

Nansen first acted on the theory that Communism is a social disease for which aid, trade, and

higher standards of living were the cure.

Thus, to say that the democratic, free-market statesmen at Paris were anti-Bolshevik is to state

the obvious; to make this the wheel around which all else turned is to ignore the subtle. As
Marshal Foch observed in counseling against exaggeration of the Bolshevik threat: “Revolution

never crossed the frontiers of victory.” That is, Communism was a product not just of privation,

but of defeat, as in Russia, Germany, and Hungary. Perhaps, as Churchill thought, the Western

democracies were not obsessed enough with the Bolshevik threat. They also understood it

poorly, differed as to tactics, and were continually absorbed in other issues. Yet the failure to

reintegrate Russia into the European order was as poisonous to future stability as the German

peace.

Whatever one’s interpretation and assessment of the personalities and policies that collided at

Paris, the overall settlement was surely doomed, not only because it sowed seeds of discord in

almost every clause, but because all the Great Powers scurried from it at once. Germans

denounced Versailles as a hypocritical Diktat and determined to resist it as much they were

able. Italians fulminated against the “mutilated victory” given them by Wilson and then

succumbed to Fascism in 1922. The Russian Communists, not privy to the settlements,

denounced them as the workings of rapacious rival imperialisms. From the start, the Japanese

ignored the League in favour of their imperial designs, and they soon held the Washington

treaties to be unfair, confining, and dangerous to their economic health. The United States, of

course, rejected Versailles and the League. Only Britain and France remained to make a success

of Versailles, the League, and the chronically unstable successor states. But by 1920 British

opinion was already turning against the treaty, and even the French, bitter over their “betrayal”

at the hands of the United States and Britain, began to lose faith in the 1919 system. It was a

new order that many yearned to overthrow and few were willing to defend.
A FRAGILE STABILITY, 1922–29

The 1920s are usually depicted as a bridge between the turmoil of the war and the turmoil of

the 1930s, a brief truce in the “Thirty Years’ War” of the 20th century. The disputes over

execution of the Treaty of Versailles suggest a continuation of the Great War by other means,

while the economic and security arrangements of mid-decade, and the era of good feeling they

engendered, were flawed from their inception and collapsed with the onset of the Great

Depression. Still, the postwar decade was Shakespeare’s “time for frighted peace to pant.” The

conflicts of the early 1920s notwithstanding, weary populations had no stomach for war and

demanded, in President Harding’s words, a “return to normalcy,” however fragile it might

prove.

A BROKEN WORLD

THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRATIC CONSENSUS

But what was normal in a world broken by total war? The pillars of the antebellum system—the

balance of power, the non-interventionist state, the gold standard, and the free-market

economy—lay in ruins and in any case reflected a faith in the natural play of political and

economic forces that many Europeans had ceased to share. Wilsonians and Leninists blamed

balance-of-power diplomacy for the war and fled from such normalcy. Technocrats, impressed

by the productivity of regulated war economies, hoped to extend them into peacetime to

promote recovery and dampen competition. Some economists and politicians even applauded

the demise of the gold standard (“a barbarous relic,” said Keynes) since inflation seemed the
only means of financing jobs and veterans’ pensions, thus stabilizing domestic societies. Finally,

the free-market economy that had made high growth rates and technological dynamism seem

normal from 1896 to 1914 was itself challenged by Socialists on the left and corporate interest

groups on the right. In every case governments found it easier to try to shift the burden of

reconstruction on to foreign powers, through reparations, loans, or inflation, than to impose

taxes and austerity on quarreling social groups at home. It soon became clear that the effects of

the war would continue to politicize economic relations within and between countries; that the

needs of internal stability conflicted with the needs of international stability; that old dreams

clashed with new realities, and new dreams with old realities.

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW STABILITY

The lack of consensus on democracy itself also hampered the quest for a new stability. Wilson

expected victory to mean a heyday of democracy in which the will of the people would oblige

states to value peace and compromise. Instead, Communists and Fascists alike challenged

democratic assumptions and elevated social class, race, and the state to the role Wilson

reserved for the individual. In terms of the distribution of world power, the 1920s gave rise to a

false normalcy, an Indian summer of European Great Power politics thanks to the peripheral

roles played by the United States and the Soviet Union. In diplomacy, affairs of state came to be

conducted increasingly by politicians meeting in grand conferences or at the League of Nations

rather than by experts communicating with precision through written notes. Inevitably, style

replaced substance at such meetings as prime ministers worried as much about their political

image at home as about the actual issues at hand. The prime ministers of France and Britain
held no less than 23 meetings from 1919 to 1923. As French Ambassador Camille Barrère

complained, “Politicians have replaced diplomats at these conferences and seem to believe that

nations conduct business like deputies in the Palais-Bourbon.” But the trend was irreversible,

for the crises of war and peace impressed on voters how much foreign policy affected their

pocketbooks and daily lives, and they were sure to hold their elected officials responsible.

Technological developments—the telephone, the wireless, and soon the airplane—also tended

to reduce the role of professional ambassadors to that of messengers.

Behind the contradictory mixture of old and new in politics lay a profound cultural confusion.

For the cultural shock of the Great War had turned modernist iconoclasm from the conceit of

bohemian cliques into a new conventional wisdom. Respect for elders, for established

authority, for “bourgeois” decency and restraint, died in the trenches. Faith in God and faith in

reason, the two abiding fonts of Western culture, withered under the war’s barbarizing

bombardment, as did the belief in human progress born of the Enlightenment and the

Industrial Revolution. Science and technology, those engines of progress, had only perfected an

economy of death, and turned soldiers and civilians into mere cogs in the war machine. In the

1920s Einsteinian relativity, or a debased and popularized notion of it, replaced the comfortable

order of the Newtonian universe, offering skeptics a pseudoscientific justification for their

rejection of absolute moral values. Popular Freudianism, depicting man as the victim of

irrational, subconscious drives, seemed to describe the behaviour of 1914–18 better than the

old Aristotelian psychology of man as a rational, moral creature. Nietzsche’s transvaluation of

values, implying that in a social Darwinist world compassion and charity were suicidal and force
and mastery progressive, became a fad. To vulgar minds on the right and the left, Nietzsche’s

critique of modern mass civilization was an anthem for a politics of the violent deed. And while

some artists despaired of man’s fate in the crucible of the machine age, there were others, like

the German Bauhaus school, who extolled steely power or, like the Italian Futurists, even

modern war.

Oswald Spengler’s 1918–22 best-seller The Decline of the West mourned the engulfing

of Kultur by the cosmopolitan anthill of Zivilisation and argued that only a dictatorship could

arrest the decline. Sociologist Max Weber hoped for charismatic leadership to overcome

bureaucracy. Much painting, music, and film of the 1920s illustrated the theme of decline: Paul

Klee’s Cubist depiction of literally broken people and societies; George Grosz’s looks beneath

the veneer of respectable society to the rot underneath; the broken musical scales of Arnold

Schoenberg; and the political drama of Bertolt Brecht. The intelligentsia of the 1920s leveled a

comprehensive assault on bourgeois values, forms, and traditions. Tradition won scarcely more

respect in the salons of Paris and London. The decade that was to have spawned a democratic

diplomacy prepared the way instead for the totalitarian diplomacy of the 1930s.

To be sure, these were the years when European statesmen, in historian Charles Maier’s words,

set themselves the task of “recasting bourgeois Europe” and pioneered corporatist compromise

among organized interest groups and bureaucracies when the increasingly polarized

parliaments were unable to distribute the costs and benefits of reconstruction. By 1925 they

had made a good show of it, as currencies and world trade stabilized and food, coal, and
industrial production again reached 1913 levels. But the American economy alone boomed

following the postwar slump of 1920–21. Between 1922 and 1929, U.S. steel production

climbed 70 percent, oil 156 percent, and automobiles 255 percent. Overall, national income

soared 54 percent in those years; by 1929 the U.S. economy accounted for 44.8 percent of

global industrial output, compared to 11.6 percent for Germany, 9.3 for Britain, 7.0 for France,

and 4.6 for the Soviet Union. Yet the demobilization of American armed forces and United

States refusal to make political-military engagements abroad meant that this mighty power

existed in semi-isolation from the rest of the world. France and Britain, though engaged, lacked

the resources and the will to run the risks inherent in trying to reintegrate Germany and Russia

into the European order. A world with such disparities in the distribution of power and

responsibility could not be returned to normal. It could only be given the appearance of

normalcy by pasting paper constitutions, paper money, and paper treaties over the absence of

common values, common interests, or a true balance of power.

REPARATIONS, SECURITY, AND THE GERMAN QUESTION

THE CONTINUING PROBLEM OF GERMANY

The Great War failed to solve the German question. To be sure, Germany was exhausted and in

the shackles of Versailles, but its strategic position actually improved in the war. Britain and

France were at least as exhausted, Russia was in chaos and her boundary driven far to the east,

and Italy was disaffected from her former allies, so that Germany’s eastern and southern
approaches now consisted of a broad ring of weak states. If and when Germany escaped

Versailles, therefore, it might pose a greater threat to Europe than in 1914.

This danger obsessed postwar French leaders, but they quarreled among themselves over the

proper response: strict execution of the Versailles treaty and perhaps even the breaking of

German unity, or a Wilsonian policy of “moral disarmament” and reconciliation? In late 1919

the French electorate returned a staunchly conservative decision. The peace conference had

not solved France’s triple crisis of security, finance, and industrial reconstruction. Postwar

French governments undertook to replace the abortive Anglo-American guarantee with an

alliance system of Germany’s neighbours. Belgium shrugged off neutrality, which had failed

spectacularly to shelter it in 1914, and concluded a military alliance with France in September

1920. The Franco-Polish alliance (February 1921) and a Franco-Czechoslovak entente (January

1924) created an eastern counterweight to Germany. But these states, while wedded to the

Versailles system, needed more protection than they offered. France could come to their aid

only by a vigorous offensive against Germany from the west, which in turn required access to

the bridgeheads over the Rhine. Thus, not only French security but that of east-central Europe

as well depended on German disarmament and Allied occupation of the Rhineland.

French finances were strained by the costs of rebuilding the devastated regions, the army,

imperial obligations, and the refusal of the French chamber to accept sizable new taxes until

Germany had paid reparations or France’s war debts were annulled. To the extent that

Germany reneged, France would face deficits imperiling its currency. As to industrial
reconstruction, France depended on Germany for the coal needed to revive iron and steel

production and at the same time was forced to countenance a cartel arrangement to escape

Germany’s economic competition.

Far from sympathizing with France’s plight, the United States and Britain quickly withdrew from

the Versailles treaty. Britain found itself in the midst of a postwar economic slump magnified by

its wartime losses in ships and markets. Lloyd George had promised the veterans a land “fit for

heroes,” yet unemployment reached 17 percent in 1921. The war had accelerated the decline

of the aging British industrial plant and the economy more generally. Unemployment never

dipped much below 10 percent during the decade before the onset of the Great Depression,

and in the early 1920s the pressure was on the British government to boost employment by

reviving trade. Keynes argued persuasively that while Europe could never recover until the

German economy took its natural place at the centre, virtually every clause of the treaty

seemed designed to prevent that particular return to normalcy. To be sure, the British needed

the reparations debt from Germany on the books to balance against their own war debts to the

United States. But soon after the war Lloyd George came to favour German recovery in the

interest of trade. The entente with France became strained as early as 1920 over the issues of

reparations, Turkey, and the coal shortage of that year, from which Britain garnered windfall

profits at the expense of the French.

GERMAN POLITICS AND REPARATIONS

Germany, meanwhile, weathered both the leftist agitation of 1919 and the right-wing Kapp

Putsch of March 1920. But elections showed a swing to the centre-right in German politics

away from the parties that had voted to ratify Versailles. The insecure coalition cabinets of the

early 1920s, therefore, found themselves with little room to maneuver on the foreign stage.

They dared not rebel openly against Versailles, but dared not endorse fulfillment too eagerly in

the face of domestic opinion. Nor could the weak Berlin government take forceful measures to

end inflation, impose taxes, or regulate big business. The industrial magnates of the Ruhr thus

acquired a virtual veto power over national policy by dint of their importance to the economy, a

fact the embittered French did not fail to notice. German leaders themselves differed over how

to win relief from the treaty. Army chief Hans von Seeckt and the eastern division of the foreign

office thought in Bismarckian terms and favoured close ties with Russia, despite its obnoxious

regime. But other economic and foreign policymakers preferred to rely on Britain and the

United States to restrain France and revise the treaty. German diplomats soon synthesized

these approaches, threatening closer ties with Moscow in order to win concessions from the

West.

The Reparations Commission bickered throughout 1920 over the total sum to be demanded of

Germany and its distribution among the Allies. At the Spa Conference (July 1920), France won

52 percent of German payments, Britain 22 percent, Italy 10, and Belgium 8. At the conferences

of Hythe, Boulogne, and Brussels, France presented a total bill of 230,000,000,000 gold marks,

although the British warned that this was far beyond Germany’s capacity to pay. But when

German foreign minister Walter Simons offered a mere 30,000,000,000 (Paris Conference,
February 1921), French Premier Aristide Briand and Lloyd George made a show of force, seizing

in March the Ruhr river ports of Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Ruhrort, taking over the Rhenish

customs offices, and declaring a 50 percent levy on German exports. Finally, on May 5, 1921,

the London conference presented Berlin with a bill for 132,000,000,000 gold marks, to be paid

in annuities of 2,000,000,000 plus 26 percent ad valorem of German exports. The Germans

protested adamantly that this was “an injustice without equal.” Historians have differed sharply

as to whether the obligations were within the capacity of the German economy. But the May

1921 schedule was less harsh than it seemed, for the bill was divided into three series—A bonds

totaling 12,000,000,000 marks, B bonds for 38,000,000,000, and the unlikely C bonds in the

amount of 82,000,000,000. The latter would not even be issued until the first two series were

paid and existed as much to balance against the Allies’ debts to the United States as actually to

be paid by Germany. Nevertheless, Chancellor Konstantin Fehrenbach resigned rather than

accept this new Diktat, and his successor, Joseph Wirth, acquiesced only under threat of

occupation of the Ruhr.

The “fulfillment” tactic adopted by Wirth and his foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, was to

make a show of good faith to demonstrate that the reparations bill was truly beyond Germany’s

capacity. They were aided in this by the continuing deterioration of the paper mark. The prewar

value of the mark was about 4.2 to the dollar. By the end of 1919 it reached 63, and after the

first payment of 1,000,000,000 marks under the London plan, the mark fell to 262 to the dollar.

The French argued that the inflation was purposeful, designed to feign bankruptcy while

allowing Berlin to liquidate its internal debt and German industrialists like Hugo Stinnes and
Fritz Thyssen to borrow, expand, and dump exports on the world market. Recent research

suggests, however, that the government did not fully understand the causes of the inflation

even though it recognized its social utility in stimulating employment and permitting social

expenditures. Of course, the reparations bill, while not the cause of inflation, was a strong

disincentive to stabilization for Berlin could hardly plead bankruptcy if it boasted a strong

currency, a balanced budget, and a healthy balance of payments. And insofar as the German

government was dependent on those who benefited most from inflation—the industrialists—it

was incapable of implementing austerity measures. This financial tangle might have been

avoided by a program of reparations-in-kind whereby German firms delivered raw and finished

goods directly to the Allies. The Seydoux Plan of 1920 and the Wiesbaden Accords of 1921

embraced such a mechanism, but the Ruhr magnates, delighted that the French might “choke

on their iron” in the absence of German coal, and the British, fearful of any continental cartel,

together torpedoed reparations-in-kind. By December 1921, Berlin was granted a moratorium.

ALLIED POLITICS AND REPARATIONS

At the Cannes Conference (January 1922) the Allies searched for common ground on

reparations, a security pact, and Lloyd George’s scheme for a grand economic conference

including Soviet Russia. But the French chamber rebelled, and Briand was replaced as prime

minister by the wartime president, Poincaré. A hard-headed lawyer from Lorraine, Poincaré

was determined to relieve France’s triple crisis without sacrificing its treaty rights. He

approached London for a security pact, only to learn that the British were not willing to

guarantee the Rhenish demilitarized zone and demanded French concessions on reparations in
return. In June a conference of international bankers in Paris recommended loans to stabilize

the German mark, but only if Germany were granted a long moratorium on reparations.

(Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress created the World War Foreign Debt Commission to pressure

the Allies to fund their war debts.) The grand economic conference promoted by Lloyd George

was held at Genoa in April and May 1922 and was the first to bring German and Russian

delegations together with the Allies on a status of equality. But the Soviets refused to recognize

the tsarist regime’s prewar debts and then shocked the Allies by signing the Treaty of Rapallo

(April 16) with Germany, an innocuous document (providing for annulment of past claims and

restoration of diplomatic relations) that nonetheless appeared to signal an unholy alliance

between the two European outcasts. (Innocuous or not, Rathenau was assassinated by German

rightists on June 24; Erzberger, signer of the Armistice, had also been murdered in 1921.)

French representatives also bargained directly with the Ruhr magnates late in 1922, hoping for

a coal-for-iron exchange and market-sharing, but the German price was evacuation of the

Rhineland and substantial revision of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, the German mark

tumbled to 7,500 to the dollar in December. Poincaré concluded that only force would break

the deadlock. As he told the Belgians in July, “I will propose a short moratorium subject to

guarantees. If England refuses I will act alone. The German industrialists conspire to destroy the

mark. They hope to ruin France.”

The new German Cabinet of Wilhelm Cuno made a desperate appeal to the United States.

Secretary of State Hughes responded on December 29 with an offer to convene a committee of

experts to study means of stabilizing the mark, but he held out no hope that the United States
might relent on war debts. When the Reparations Commission declared that Germany had

defaulted on its 1922 timber deliveries (Britain dissenting), Poincaré had his mandate to take

sanctions. On Jan. 11, 1923, French and Belgian troops began to occupy the Ruhr. If the

Germans submitted peacefully, the Ruhr would constitute a “productive guarantee,” generating

coal and receipts for France and giving her a valuable bargaining chip. If the Germans resisted,

the French might take whatever measures seemed fit, up to and including political change in

the Rhineland.

German workers protested the occupation of the Ruhr with an immense sitdown strike that

proprietors and the government quickly joined. Berlin supported this passive resistance with

unemployment relief that, in seeking to prove that the hated French could not “mine coal with

bayonets,” completed the destruction of the German currency. The railroads, mines, factories,

and public services in the Ruhr and Rhineland ground to a halt. Poincaré steeled his will and

dispatched French engineers and workers to revive the Rhine-Ruhr complex through the Inter-

Allied Control Commission for Factories and Mines (MICUM) and a Franco-Belgian directorate

for the railroads. The Allied Rhineland Commission (Britain dissenting) seized all executive,

legislative, and judicial power in the occupied territories, expelled 16,000 uncooperative

German officials (and more than 100,000 persons in all), and sequestered all German

government property, energy resources, and transportation. France began covertly subsidizing

separatist agitation. The Ruhr adventure thus became an economic war of attrition with stakes

potentially as high as in a shooting war. If France retreated, the Treaty of Versailles was as good

as dead; if Germany collapsed, the Rhineland might be lost.

The paper mark reached 4,000,000 to the dollar in August, and the Reich treasury was at the

end of its tether. Business in non-occupied Germany was choking, and social unrest was

spreading. Bavarian rightists called for war or separatism, while the Communist Party made

gains in the cities. Gustav Stresemann, the conservative, business-oriented politician who

replaced Cuno, finally ended passive resistance in September 1923 “to preserve the life of the

nation and the state.” But Poincaré, instead of naming his terms to Germany, apparently threw

away the victory and accepted, after nine months’ delay, Hughes’s invitation to form a

committee of experts. Poincaré’s inaction baffled contemporaries, but in fact he had little to

gain from dealing with Berlin. Only Britain and the United States could cancel France’s war

debts, stabilize the mark with loans to fund reparations, and offer security pacts or legitimize an

autonomous Rhenish state, while only the Ruhr magnates could satisfy French industrial needs.

So Poincaré ordered his Ruhr army commander to negotiate directly with Thyssen, Stinnes,

Krupp, and their colleagues for the MICUM Accords (November 23) under which German

industry went back to work, while he himself saw to the mandate of the international

committee of experts.

Poincaré’s plans misfired, however, for by the time the committee of experts began its

deliberations at the turn of 1924, France’s dearly purchased leverage had eroded and Germany

had begun to recover. Troops expelled Communists from the governments of Saxony and

Thuringia, a Communist putsch in Hamburg misfired, and Bavarian police quashed the Nazi

putsch led by Adolf Hitler and Ludendorff. Hjalmar Schacht, recently appointed president of the

Reichsbank, halted the inflation with a temporary currency called the Rentenmark, and on New
Year’s Day 1924 the president of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, extended a

500,000,000 gold mark credit to back a new German mark. In October 1923, meanwhile, rowdy

bands supported by the French occupation began to seize public buildings from Aachen to

Speyer and to proclaim a Rhineland Republic. These separatists had no support from the

population or from genuine Rhenish notables like the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, and

their actions only further discredited French policy in the eyes of Britain. By January the

separatists had been driven out or murdered by fellow Germans. Finally, the French franc also

succumbed to the pressure it had been under since the war. Poincaré tried austerity measures,

but a new collapse in March forced him to borrow $89,000,000 from J.P. Morgan, Jr., of New

York to stabilize the exchange rate. All these blows to France’s position told in the report of the

committee of experts under American Charles G. Dawes, released in April 1924. It called for a

grand loan to Germany and the resumption of reparations payments, but made the latter

contingent on French withdrawal from the Ruhr and restoration of German economic

unity. Jacques Seydoux, an economist in France’s foreign ministry, had predicted this outcome

as early as November 1923: “There is no use hiding the fact that we have entered on the path

of the ‘financial reconstruction of Europe.’ We will not deal with Germany as conqueror to

vanquished; rather the Germans and Frenchmen will sit on the same bench before the United

States and other lending countries.” On May 11, 1924, the French electorate defeated Poincaré

in favour of the Cartel des Gauches (a leftist coalition) under Édouard Herriot, who favoured a

policy of accommodation with Germany.

THE AGREEMENTS OF MID-DECADE

REPARATIONS AGREEMENTS

Out of the exhaustion of France and Germany after the Ruhr struggle and the desire of

American bankers and British diplomats to promote their reconciliation, the period 1924–26

finally produced agreements on reparations, security, and industrial cooperation. An interim

reparations plan, the Dawes Plan, emerged from the London conference of July–August 1924.

Expecting to join Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour prime minister, in Socialist

brotherhood, Herriot instead found himself a supplicant whose bargaining points were few and

feeble. France was obliged to evacuate the Ruhr (by August 1925), to end sanctions on the

Rhine, and to promise never again to impose sanctions on Germany without the unanimous

agreement of the Reparations Commission. The United States would lend $200,000,000 to

Germany to “prime the pump,” and Germany would pay from 1,000,000,000 to 2,500,000,000

marks in reparations for five years. The French government, by contrast, issued bonds worth

44,000,000,000 francs from 1919 to 1925 to finance reconstruction of its devastated regions. In

the end, Germany received more money in loans than it ever paid in reparations, so that the

cost of repairing war damage was borne ultimately by the taxpayers, investors, and consumers

of the Allied nations and the United States.

The influx of American capital through the Dawes Plan nevertheless broke the postwar spiral of

inflation, default, and hostility and made possible a return to the gold standard. Germany

stabilized its currency in 1924, Britain followed in 1925, and France did so in 1926 (officially in

1928). The smaller countries of Europe and Latin America, in turn, pegged their currencies

against either the dollar, the pound, or the franc. Finally, the French government agreed in
the Mellon–Berenger Accords (April 20, 1926) to fund its war debts at the favourable rates

offered by the United States. The new gold standard and the cycle of international transfers,

however, depended on a continuous flow of American capital. Should that flow ever cease, the

normalcy so painfully achieved would quickly be imperiled.

SECURITY AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

With respect to security, France had achieved nothing. Of course, the Versailles restrictions on

German armaments were still in force, as was France’s rear alliance system, but in striving for

collective security the French suffered a series of disappointments. The League of Nations

Assembly Resolution XIV of September 1922 endorsed the disarmament commission’s

recommendation for a treaty on collective security. The Czechoslovakian delegation, led

by Edvard Beneš, quickly rose to a position of leadership in security matters, with the support

of French and British proponents of the League such as Lord Robert Cecil, whose Draft Treaty of

Mutual Assistance came under discussion in 1923. Beneš rightly criticized the Draft Treaty for

requiring unanimity on the League Council to declare sanctions against an aggressor, for only in

rare cases was the accused party’s guilt obvious to all, as the 1914 case itself illustrated. Beneš

also wanted a mechanism for pacific settlement of disputes before resort to arms. More telling,

however, was opposition to the concept of collective security in British opinion. Canada,

Australia, and other dominions especially opposed an instrument that might involve them in

war over some obscure conflict in eastern Europe. In July 1924 London rejected the Draft

Treaty.
Beneš submitted an improved Geneva Protocol (or Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of

International Disputes) in October. Under the protocol, states would agree to submit all

disputes to the Permanent Court of International Justice, any state refusing arbitration was ipso

facto the aggressor, and the League Council could impose binding sanctions by a two-thirds

majority. France enthusiastically supported the Geneva Protocol, but British Foreign Secretary

Austen Chamberlain rejected it in March 1925.

Herriot had made it known that France would not proceed with the first partial evacuation of

the Rhineland, scheduled for January 1925, unless he could show the French people some

guarantee of security. Chamberlain suggested to Stresemann in February 1925 that the

Germans themselves reassure France through a regional security pact. Stresemann took up the

idea, seeing in it a way to head off a bilateral Anglo-French alliance. Herriot’s government fell in

April, but Aristide Briand stayed on as foreign minister to carry through negotiations.

Stresemann and Briand met and embraced at Locarno, swore to put the war behind them once

and for all, and signed five treaties (Oct. 16, 1925) designed to pacify postwar Europe. Locarno

seemed truly a second peace conference and was greeted with cheers and relief in world

capitals. The main treaty, the Rhineland Pact, enjoined France, Belgium, and Germany to

recognize the boundaries established by the Treaty of Versailles as inviolate and never again to

resort to force in an attempt to change them. Moreover, the pact was guaranteed by Britain

and Italy, who pledged to resist whatever country violated the demilitarized Rhineland.

Germany also signed arbitration agreements with France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia,

agreeing to submit future disputes to international authority.

Locarno seemed a giant step forward. Rather than a Diktat, it was a voluntary recognition by

Germany of the 1919 borders in the west. Britain had been brought in to guarantee not only

France but also demilitarization of the Rhineland. Italy’s adherence was a bonus. Germany had

negotiated as an equal and looked forward to further abridgement of the Versailles restrictions.

Above all, Briand hoped, Locarno was the start of the “moral disarmament” of Germany. But

some contemporaries, and many historians, criticized Locarno for being an incomplete system,

as dangerous as it was seductive. By way of granting German equality, Britain had guaranteed

Germany against French attack as much as France against Germany. “England,” said Poincaré,

“becomes the arbiter of Franco-German relations.” To be sure, France still promised to help

Poland and Czechoslovakia in case of German attack, but, after Locarno, Prague and Warsaw

discounted the French commitment. What was more, Locarno all but invited German

revisionism in the east by explicitly providing not for recognition but for arbitration on

Germany’s eastern borders. Changes in French military policy also boded ill for eastern Europe.

Since 1919, Foch and Pétain had quarreled over whether to adopt an offensive or defensive

contingency plan for the French army. In the wake of Locarno the Pétain faction won, and

France began to design an imposing system of concrete fortresses along the border with

Germany. This Maginot Line (after Minister of War André Maginot) was not meant to preclude

offensive action by the French army but was in effect (in Foch’s words) a “Great Wall of China”

that would breed a false sense of security and weaken France’s will to take the offensive on

behalf of her eastern allies.

Finally, the aftermath of the Ruhr episode provided French and German industry with a chance

to normalize their relations. The evacuation of the Ruhr restored Germany’s coal leverage, and

Berlin recovered tariff sovereignty in 1925 under the Treaty of Versailles, but the French

inflation of 1924–26 shifted the export price advantage from Germany to France. Long and

complicated four-way negotiations (French and German public and private sectors) produced a

Franco-German steel syndicate in 1926 providing for coal-for-iron exchanges and an

international committee to fix production quotas quarterly. The latter awarded France a 31

percent share compared to 43 percent for Germany, a marked improvement over the 1 to 4

ratio France had suffered before 1914. Franco-German commercial treaties followed in 1926–

27.

The agreements of mid-decade ended the bickering and uncertainty of the immediate postwar

years and made Germany a partner in the new Europe. In every case, however, the compacts

replaced French rights under Versailles with voluntary agreements dependent on both Anglo-

American support and German goodwill.

ITALY AND EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

FASCISM AND ITALIAN REALITY

The peoples of east-central Europe enjoyed a degree of freedom in the 1920s unique in their

history. But the power vacuum in the region resulting from the temporary impotence of

Germany and Russia pulled in other Great Powers—chiefly Mussolini’s Italy and France—

seeking respectively to revise or uphold the 1919 order.

Fascism was the most striking political novelty of the interwar years. Fascism defied precise

definition. In practice it was an anti-Marxist, antiliberal, and antidemocratic mass movement

that aped Communist methods, extolled the leadership principle and a “corporatist”

organization of society, and showed both modern and antimodern tendencies. But the three

states universally acknowledged to be Fascist in the 1930s—Italy, Germany, and Japan—were

most similar in their foreign, rather than their domestic, ideology and policy. All embraced

extreme nationalism and a theory of competition among nations and races that justified their

revolts—as “proletarian nations”—against the international order of 1919. In this sense,

Fascism can be understood as the antithesis of Wilsonianism rather than of Leninism.

In the first decade of Mussolini’s rule, changes in Italian diplomacy were more stylistic than

substantive. But recent historiography argues that this decade of relatively good behaviour was

a function of the continuing constraints on Italian ambitions rather than moderation in Fascist

goals. Mussolini proclaimed upon taking power that “treaties are not eternal, are not

irremediable,” and declared loudly and often his determination to restore Italian grandeur. This

would be accomplished by revision of the “mutilated victory,” by the transformation of the

Mediterranean into an Italian mare nostrum, and by the creation of “a new Roman Empire”

through expansion and conquest in Africa and the Balkans. Such reveries reflected not only

Mussolini’s native grandiloquence but also Italy’s relative poverty and surplus rural population

and need for markets and raw materials secure from the competition of more developed

powers. In this sense, Italy was a sort of weak Japan. And like the Japanese, Italians bristled at

the tendency of the Great Powers to treat them, in Mussolini’s words, “as another Portugal.”
Still, Fascist bluster seemed safely unmatched in actions, and London in particular was pleased

with the tendency of the Fascist foreign minister Dino Grandi to “take refuge on rainy days

under the ample and capacious mantle of England” in traditional Italian fashion. More than

once Grandi dissuaded Il Duce from provocative actions, taking care not to offend his vanity.

The Italian navy’s inferiority to the British and French, and the army’s need for reorganization,

also suggested prudence.

FASCIST DIPLOMACY

Italian diplomacy in the 1920s, therefore, was a mix of bombast and caution. At the Lausanne

Conference, Mussolini dramatically stopped his train to oblige Poincaré and Curzon to come to

him. He made Italy the first Western power to offer a trade agreement and recognition to the

Bolsheviks and was proud of Italy’s role in the League (though he considered it “an academic

organization”) and as a guarantor of the Locarno Pact. In the Mediterranean, Mussolini

protested French rule in Tunis and asserted for Italy a moral claim to the province. But he

satisfied his thirst for action against weaker opponents. He broke the Regina Agreement with

the Sanūsī tribesmen of Libya, which had limited Italian occupation to the coast, and by 1928

completed Italy’s conquest of that poor and weak country.

Italy’s main sphere of activity was the Balkans. When an Italian general surveying the border of

a Greek-speaking district of Albania was killed in August 1923, Mussolini ordered a naval

squadron to bombard the Greek isle of Corfu. The League of Nations awarded Italy an

indemnity, but not the island. In January 1924, Wilson’s Free State of Fiume disappeared
when Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pašid granted Italian annexation in the Treaty of Rome.

Diplomatic attempts to regularize relations between Belgrade and Rome, however, could not

overcome Yugoslavia’s suspicion of Italian ambitions in Albania. In 1924 a coup d’état,

ostensibly backed by Belgrade, elevated the Muslim Ahmed Bey Zogu in Tiranë. Once in power,

however, Ahmed Zogu looked to Italy. The Tiranë Pact (Nov. 27, 1926) provided Italian

economic aid and was followed by a military alliance in 1927 and finally a convention (July 1,

1928) declaring Albania a virtual protectorate of Italy. Ahmed Zogu then assumed the title of

King Zog I.

To the north, Italian diplomacy aimed at countering French influence among the successor

states. In 1920 the French even courted Hungary and toyed with the idea of resurrecting a

Danubian Confederation, but when the deposed Habsburg King Charles appeared in Hungary in

March 1921, Allied protests and a Czech ultimatum forced him back into exile. Hungarian

revisionism, however, motivated Beneš to unite those states that owed their existence to the

Treaty of Trianon. A Czech–Yugoslav alliance (Aug. 14, 1920), Czech–Romanian alliance (April

23, 1921), and Romanian–Yugoslav alliance (June 7, 1921) together formed what was known as

the Little Entente. When Charles tried again in October to claim his throne in Budapest, the

Little Entente threatened invasion. While France had not midwived the combination, it

associated strongly with the successor states through Franco–Czech (Oct. 16, 1925), Franco–

Romanian (June 10, 1926), and Franco–Yugoslav (Nov. 11, 1927) military alliances. The latter

implied that France would side with Belgrade against Rome in case of war and exacerbated the

strained relations between France and Italy.

Mussolini had more luck in the defeated states of central Europe, Austria and Hungary. But in

the former case, Italy was not siding with the revisionists. In return for financial aid to end its

own hyperinflation, Austria had promised the League of Nations in 1922 that it would not

seek Anschluss with Germany. Mussolini proclaimed in May 1925 that he, too, would never

tolerate the Anschluss but set out to curry favour with the Austrian government. An Italo-

Hungarian commercial treaty (Sept. 5, 1925), a friendship treaty (April 5, 1927) moving Hungary

“into the sphere of Italian interests,” and a rapprochement with Bulgaria in 1930 completed

Italy’s alignments with the states defeated in the war. Hungary in particular attracted

Mussolini’s sympathy. But as long as the combined will of the Little Entente, backed by France,

opposed revisionism, Italy alone could force no alterations. On the other hand, military or

economic cooperation among the congeries of states in east-central Europe also proved

impossible. Czech–Polish rivalry continued, however illogical, and after Piłsudski’s coup d’état in

Poland in 1926 even the internationalist Beneš sought to steer German revisionism against

Poland rather than Austria and the Danubian basin. The Little Entente and French alliances,

therefore, amounted to a fair-weather system that would collapse in the first storm.

THE INVENTION OF SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

LENIN’S DIPLOMACY

In November 1920 Lenin surprised Western observers and his fellow Bolsheviks alike by

declaring that “we have entered a new period in which we have . . . won the right to our

international existence in the network of capitalist states.” By 1921, the generally accepted
turning point in Soviet policy, Bolshevism had made the transition from a revolutionary

movement to a functioning state. The Civil War was won, the New Economic Policy ended the

brutal “War Communism” and restored a measure of free market activity to peasants, and the

Soviet government was organized along traditional ministerial lines (though subject to the

dictates of the Communist Party). Russia was ready—needed—to pursue traditional relations

with foreign powers in search of capital, trade, and technology for reconstruction. The

emergence of what Stalin called “Socialism in one country” therefore obliged the Soviets to

invent out of whole cloth a “Communist” foreign policy.

That invention took shape as a two-track approach whereby Russia (from 1922 the U.S.S.R.)

would on the one hand continue to operate as the centre of world revolution, dedicated to the

overthrow of the capitalist powers, and yet conduct an apparently regular existence as a

nation-state courting recognition and assistance from those same powers. The first track was

the responsibility of the Comintern (Third International) under Grigory Zinovyev and Karl Radek;

the second, of the Narkomindel (foreign commissariat) directed from 1920 to 1930 by the timid

and cultured prewar nobleman, Georgy Chicherin. The Comintern enjoyed direct access to the

Politburo, whereas the Narkomindel had no voice even in the Central Committee until 1925. In

practice, however, the foreign policy interests of the U.S.S.R. dominated even the Comintern to

such an extent that other Communist parties were not factions in their own country’s politics so

much as Soviet fifth columns operating abroad. When subversive activity flagged, diplomacy

came to the fore; when diplomacy was unfruitful, revolution was emphasized. The goal was not

to encourage “peace” or “progressive reform” in the West, but solely to enhance Soviet power.
Thus Lenin instructed Comintern parties “to unmask not only open social patriotism but also

the falseness and hypocrisy of social pacifism”; in other words, to do all that was possible to

undermine Moscow’s rivals on the left as well as on the right through the infiltration and

subversion of Western labour unions, armed forces, newspapers, and schools. Yet Moscow

readily ignored or confounded the efforts of local Communists when diplomatic opportunities

with foreign countries seemed promising. The scent of betrayal this caused made mandatory

the secrecy, discipline, and purges demanded of Communist parties abroad.

At the third congress of the Comintern in 1921 even Trotsky, the impassioned advocate of

world revolution, admitted that the struggle of the proletariat in other countries was

slackening. At that time the mutiny of Russian sailors at Kronshtadt and widespread famine in

Russia impelled the party to concentrate on consolidating its power at home and reviving the

economy. The Soviets, therefore, turned to the capitalists who, Lenin jeered, would “sell the

rope to their own hangmen” in search of profits. Indeed, Western leaders, especially Lloyd

George, viewed the vast Russian market as a kind of panacea for Western industrial stagnation

and unemployment. But he and others misunderstood the nature of the Soviet state. Private

property, commercial law, and hard currency no longer existed in Russia; one did business, not

in a market, but on terms laid down by a state monopoly. What was more, by 1928 the whole

point of trade was to allow the Soviet economy to catch up to the West in the shortest possible

time and thus achieve complete self-sufficiency. It was, in George Kennan’s words, a “trade to

end all trade.”

The Anglo-Russian commercial pact of March 1921 and secret contacts with German military

and civilian agents were the first Soviet openings to the Great Powers. Both culminated the

following year in the Genoa Conference, where the Soviet representatives appeared, to the

relief of their counterparts, in striped pants and on good behaviour. Indeed, having seized

power as the minority faction of a minority party, the Bolsheviks sought legitimacy abroad as

the most adamant sticklers for etiquette and legalism. But the Western powers insisted on an

end to Communist propaganda and recognition of the tsarist debts as prerequisites to trade.

Chicherin countered with a fanciful claim for reparations stemming from the Allied

interventions, at the same time denying that Moscow bore any responsibility for the doings of

the Comintern. As Theodore von Laue has written, “To ask the Soviet regime . . . to refrain from

making use of its revolutionary tools was as futile as to ask the British Empire to scrap its fleet.”

Instead, a German-Russian knot was tied in the Treaty of Rapallo, whereby the U.S.S.R. was able

to take advantage of Germany’s bitterness over Versailles to split the capitalist powers. Trade

and recognition were not the only consequences of Rapallo; in its wake began a decade of

clandestine German military research on Russian soil.

Upon the occupation of the Ruhr the Soviets declared solidarity with the Berlin government. By

August 1923, however, with Stresemann seeking negotiations with France and German society

disintegrating, revolutionary opportunism again took precedence. The Politburo went so far as

to designate personnel for a German Communist government, and Zinovyev gave German

Communists the signal to stage a putsch in Hamburg. When it proved a fiasco, the Soviets

returned to their Rapallo diplomacy with Berlin. The political victories of the leftists MacDonald
in Britain and Herriot in France then prompted recognition of the Soviet government by Britain

(Feb. 1, 1924), Italy (February 7), France (October 28), and most other European states. Later in

1924, however, publication during the British electoral campaign of the infamous (and probably

forged) “Zinovyev letter” ordering Communists to disrupt the British army created a sensation.

British police also suspected Communists of subversive activities during the bitter General

Strike of 1926 and launched the “Arcos raid” on the Soviet trade delegation in London in May

1927. Anglo-Soviet relations did not resume until 1930.

STALIN’S DIPLOMACY

Lenin’s incapacity and death (Jan. 21, 1924) triggered a protracted struggle for power between

Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. In foreign policy their conflict seemed one of an emphasis on aiding

the European peoples “in the struggle against their oppressors” (Trotsky) versus an emphasis

on “building Socialism in one country” (Stalin). But that was largely a caricature meant to

discredit Trotsky as an “adventurer.” During the intraparty struggle, however, Soviet foreign

policy drifted. The “partial stabilization of capitalism in the West” through the Dawes Plan and

the Locarno treaties was a rude setback for Moscow. When Germany later joined the League of

Nations, the Soviet press warned Germany against this “false step” into “this wasp’s nest of

international intrigue, where political sharpers and thieving diplomatists play with marked

cards, strangle weak nations, and organize war against the U.S.S.R.” But the Germans were not

about to throw away their Russian card. Negotiations to expand the Rapallo accord produced

the Treaty of Berlin (April 24, 1926) by which Germany pledged neutrality in any conflict

between the U.S.S.R. and a third power, including the League of Nations. Germany also
provided a 300,000,000-mark credit and in the late 1920s accounted for 29 percent of Soviet

foreign trade.

From 1921 on, the Politburo judged Asia to be the region that offered the best hope for

Socialist expansion, although this required collaboration with “bourgeois nationalists.” The

Bolsheviks suppressed their own subject nationalities at the first opportunity, yet declared their

solidarity with all peoples resisting Western imperialism. In 1920 they paid homage to the

“great and famous Amīr Amānollāh” in cementing relations with the new Afghan leader, and

they were the first to sign treaties with Nationalist Turkey. In September 1920 the Comintern

sponsored a conference of “the peoples of the East” at Baku. Zinovyev and Radek presided over

a contentious lot of Central Asian delegates, whose own quarrels, of which the Armenian-

Turkish was the most vitriolic, made a mockery of any notion of regional or political solidarity.

Thereafter, Soviet Asian activity went underground, alternately aiding Communists against

nationalists like Reza Khan and Mustafa Kemal, and aiding nationalists against the European

powers.

The centrepiece of Soviet designs in Asia could only be China, whose liberation Lenin viewed in

1923 as “an essential stage in the victory of socialism in the world.” In 1919 and 1920 the

Narkomindel made much of its revolutionary sympathy for China by renouncing the rights

acquired by tsarist Russia in its concessionary treaties. But soon the Soviets were sending

troops into Outer Mongolia, allegedly at the request of local Communists, and concluding their

own treaty with Peking (May 31, 1924) that granted the U.S.S.R. a virtual protectorate over
Outer Mongolia—its first satellite—and continued ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway in

Manchuria.

The political disintegration of China, and their own devious tactics, inevitably complicated

Soviet policy. While pursuing superficially correct relations with Peking, the Politburo placed its

future hopes on the Canton-based Nationalists (KMT), whose members were impressed by the

Bolsheviks’ example of how to seize and master a vast undeveloped country. In 1922 the

Comintern directed Chinese Communists to enroll in the KMT even as Adolf Yoffe renounced all

Soviet intentions of importing Marxism into China. The Communist presence in the KMT grew

rapidly until, after Sun Yat-sen’s death in March 1925, Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin

became the main strategist for the KMT. Still, the Soviets were uncertain how to proceed. In

March 1926, Trotsky counseled caution lest precipitate attacks on foreign interests in China

impel the imperialists—including Japan—into anti-Soviet action. Indeed, Stalin did his best to

woo Tokyo, noting that Japanese nationalism had great anti-Western potential.

On March 20, 1926, Chiang Kai-shek turned the tables with a coup that elevated him within the

KMT and landed many Communists in prison. Ignoring the outrage of the Chinese Communists,

Borodin remained in Chiang’s good graces, whereupon Chiang staged the northern expedition

in which he greatly expanded KMT power with the help of Communist organizations in the

countryside. But Borodin also advised leftist KMT members to leave the south for a new base in

the Wu-han cities to escape Chiang’s immediate control. This “Left KMT” or “Wu-han Body”

was to steer the KMT in a Communist direction and eventually seize control. The Soviet Party
Congress in January 1927 even declared China the “second home” of world revolution, and

Stalin confided to a Moscow audience that Chiang’s forces were “to be utilized to the end,

squeezed out like a lemon, and then thrown away.” But Chiang preempted again by ordering a

bloody purge of Shanghai Communists on April 12–13, 1927. Trotsky blamed Stalin’s lack of

faith in revolutionary zeal for the debacle, declaring that he should have unleashed the

Communists sooner. Instead, the Left KMT eroded, many of its former adherents going over to

Chiang. With the party thus fractured, Stalin changed his mind and ordered an armed revolt by

Communists against the KMT. This, too, ended in carnage, and by mid-1928 only scattered

bands (one under Mao Zedong) remained to take to the hills.

Stalin’s triumph at home and failure in China ended the formative era of Soviet foreign policy.

The Politburo had expelled Zinovyev, Radek, and Trotsky by October 1926; the Party Congress

condemned all deviation from the Stalinist line in December 1927; and Trotsky went into exile

in January 1929. Thenceforth Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern line reflected the will of

one man. Communist parties abroad likewise purged all but Stalinists and reorganized in rigid

imitation of the U.S.S.R.’s ruthless dictatorship. The Sixth Party Congress (summer 1928)

anathematized social democracy in the strongest terms ever and strengthened its call for

subversive activities against democratic institutions. Above all, Stalin declared after an

ephemeral war scare of 1926 that the era of peaceful coexistence with capitalism was coming

to an end and ordered vigorous measures to prepare the U.S.S.R. for war. The New Economic

Policy gave way to the First Five-Year Plan (Oct. 1, 1928) for collectivization of agriculture and

rapid industrialization, which condemned millions of peasants to expropriation, starvation, or

exile to Siberia, but enabled the regime to sell wheat abroad to pay for industrial goods. Stalin

imported entire factories from the United States, France, Italy, and Germany as the basis for

the Soviet steel, automotive, aviation, tire, oil, and gas industries. In 1927 he launched the first

of the show trials of industrial “wreckers” who had allegedly conspired with reactionaries and

foreign agents, and in 1929 he purged all those—the “Right Opposition”—who questioned the

Five-Year Plan.

The Bolsheviks interpreted their survival and consolidation in the 1920s as confirmation of their

reading of the objective forces of history. In fact, Soviet foreign policy could boast of few

successes. It was the Allied defeat of Germany in 1918 and the Red Army’s military prowess

that permitted the revolution to survive; the Versailles restraints on Germany and cordon

sanitaire in eastern Europe that sheltered Russia from the West as much as it sheltered Europe

from Bolshevism; American pressure on Japan that restored Vladivostok to the U.S.S.R.; Anglo-

French recognition that opened much of the world to Soviet trade; and Western technology

that enabled Stalin to hope for rapid economic modernization. The link with Germany was a

Soviet achievement, but even it had a double edge, for it helped Germany to prepare for its

own remilitarization. Of course, Stalin was ultimately right that a crisis of capitalism and new

round of imperialism and war were just around the corner, but in part it was Comintern

assaults on Western liberals and Socialists that helped to undermine the fragile stability of the

1920s.

THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, AND WORLD MARKETS

U.S. LEVERAGE IN WORLD MARKETS

The economic dislocations and technological advances of the war, the relative rise of American

power, and territorial changes in the colonial world all made stabilization of world markets a

pressing issue in the 1920s. The resolution of this issue was chiefly the responsibility of the two

economies that bestrode the world: the United States and the British Empire. Their interests

diverged in many regions. At the Allied Economic Conference of 1916 the British and French

had projected a postwar Allied cartel to control raw materials, while in 1918 the British drafted

plans for excluding American capital from the British Empire. At the peace conference Wilson

and Lloyd George engaged in backstage debate over the allocation of United States and Allied

shipping with an eye to expanding their respective countries’ share of world trade. On the heels

of the merchant shipping rivalry came naval competition that culminated in the breaking of the

Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Washington Treaty limitations. Finally, the war debts raised

the issue of whether Britain would seek a “debtors’ cartel” with the French to defy Wall Street,

or join the United States in a “creditors’ cartel.” At stake in the U.S.–British disputes was their

relative global power in coming decades.

Traditional American protectionism triumphed after the electoral victory of the Republicans.

The Fordney–McCumber Tariff (September 1922) was the highest in U.S. history and angered

the Europeans, whose efforts to acquire dollars through exports were hampered even as the

United States demanded payment of war debts. In raw materials policy, however, the United

States upheld the Open Door. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover rejected both statist

economic competition that bred war and laissez-faire competition that bred cycles of boom and
bust. Instead, he advocated formal cooperation among firms of various nations to stabilize the

price and supply of commodities, raise living standards, and yet avoid the waste and oppression

of regulatory bureaucracies. This “third alternative” would create “a new economic system,

based neither on the capitalism of Adam Smith nor upon the Socialism of Karl Marx.” By dint of

leverage and persuasion, the United States gradually brought Britain around to this model of

informal entente. By late 1922 London bankers also took the American position on war debts,

and the two nations also cooperated in such new areas as transoceanic cables and radio. Of

surpassing importance for national power in the mechanized 20th century, however, was oil.

After the Great War, known oil reserves outside the industrial powers themselves were

concentrated in the British mandates of the Middle East, Persia, the Dutch East Indies, and

Venezuela. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Anglo-Persian Oil Company dominated oil

exploration and production in Asia, but increasingly they confronted revolutionary nationalism,

Bolshevik agitation (in Persia), and U.S. opposition to imperialism. When the British and French

agreed at San Remo (1920) to coordinate their oil policies in the Middle East, the American

Petroleum Institute and the U.S. State Department protested any exclusion of U.S. firms. What

was more, the United States invoked the Mineral Lands Leasing Act of 1920 against the Dutch,

denying them access to American reserves in retaliation for Shell’s monopoly in the East Indies.

In 1921, Hoover and Secretary of State Hughes encouraged seven private firms to form

an American Group, led by Standard Oil of New Jersey, to seek a share of Mesopotamian oil

reserves, while State Department expert Arthur Millspaugh outlined a plan for worldwide

Anglo-American reciprocity. The British, fearing American retaliation and anxious to have help
against native rebellions, granted the American Group a 20 percent share of the rich

Mesopotamian fields. In 1922 a similar arrangement spawned the Perso-American Petroleum

Company. In 1925 the Iranian nationalist Reza Khan, inspired in part by the Kemalist revolt in

Turkey, seized power and had himself proclaimed Reza Shah Pahlavi, but he was unable to play

the British and Americans off against each other. Oil politics and nationalism in the Middle East,

therefore, presaged events of the post-1945 era. (Another anticipation occurred in Palestine,

where the Balfour Declaration encouraged thousands of Jewish Zionists to immigrate, leading

to bloody clashes with Palestinian Arabs in 1921 and 1929.) Reciprocity also triumphed in U.S.–

Dutch oil diplomacy, and Standard Oil of New Jersey acquired a 28 percent share in the East

Indies by 1939.

U.S. LEVERAGE IN LATIN-AMERICAN AFFAIRS

In Venezuela and Central America the situation was the reverse. During the war the State

Department endorsed all-American oil concessions, but, in accordance with the principle of

reciprocity, Hughes instructed his Latin-American ambassadors in 1921 to respect foreign

interests. Latin America in general became far more of an American sphere of influence during

the war than ever before owing to the growth of American commerce at Britain’s expense.

Central American governments now relied on New York banks to manage their public finance

rather than those of London and Paris, while the U.S. share of Latin-American trade totaled 32

percent, double Britain’s share, though British capital still predominated in the economics of

Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

Ever since the 17 republics of mainland Latin America emerged from the wreck of the Spanish

Empire in the early 19th century, North Americans had viewed them with a mixture of

condescension and contempt that focused on their alien culture, racial mix, unstable politics,

and moribund economies. The Western Hemisphere seemed a natural sphere of U.S. influence,

and this view had been institutionalized in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 warning European

states that any attempt to “extend their system” to the Americas would be viewed as evidence

of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States itself. On the one hand, the doctrine

seemed to underscore republican familiarity, as suggested by references to “our sister

republics,” “our good neighbors,” our “southern brethren.” On the other hand, the United

States later used the doctrine to justify paternalism and intervention. This posed a quandary for

the Latin Americans, since a United States strong enough to protect them from Europe was also

strong enough to pose a threat itself. When Secretary of State James G. Blaine hosted the first

Pan-American Conference in 1889, Argentina proposed the Calvo Doctrine asking all parties to

renounce special privileges in other states. The United States refused.

After the Spanish–American War in 1898 the United States strengthened its power in the

Caribbean by annexing Puerto Rico, declaring Cuba a virtual protectorate in the Platt

Amendment (1901), and manipulating Colombia into granting independence to Panama (1904),

which in turn invited the United States to build and control the Panama Canal. In the Roosevelt

Corollary (1904) to the Monroe Doctrine the United States assumed “an international police

power” in cases where Latin-American insolvency might lead to European intervention. Such

“dollar diplomacy” was used to justify—and probably made inevitable—the later “gunboat
diplomacy” of U.S. military intervention in Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, and Haiti. In his first term

President Wilson also became embroiled in the Mexican Revolution. An affront to U.S. sailors

led to his bombardment of Veracruz (1914), and border raids by Pancho Villa prompted a U.S.

expedition into northern Mexico (1916). The Mexican Constitution of 1917 then granted to the

state all subsoil resources to prevent their exploitation by U.S. firms. Such revolutionary efforts

to nationalize resources, however, only meant that they went undeveloped or were exploited

at home by corrupt officials, while the United States retaliated by cutting off loans and trade.

The Latin-American dilemma of weakness and disunity in proximity to a mighty and united

power was thus insoluble through unilateral efforts or a Pan-American movement dominated

by Washington.

Wilson’s proposed League of Nations seemed to offer Latin America a means of circumventing

U.S. influence. But the United States inserted Article 21 to the effect that “Nothing in this

Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties

of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine.” Secretary of State Hughes

later defended U.S. behaviour by candidly questioning the ability of some Latin-American states

to maintain public order, sound finance, and the rule of law. When the Chaco dispute between

Bolivia and Paraguay erupted into war, League of Nations President Briand offered his personal

good offices, but he refused to assert League authority for fear of irritating the United States. In

the end, the Pan-American Commission of Inquiry assumed jurisdiction.

Latin-American protests grew in volume, especially in 1926, when a Mexican-supported leftist

rebellion in Nicaragua prompted U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg to report to the Senate

Foreign Relations Committee on “Bolshevist Aims and Policies in Mexico and Latin America.”

But intervention by United States marines in Nicaragua only paved the way for the dictatorial

regime of the Somozas. At the Pan-American Conference of 1928, rivalry between Argentina

and Brazil and the Chaco contestants, and the caution of other states, precluded their

presenting a united Latin-American front. But the U.S. administrations of the decade did labour

to improve the American image. The Clark Amendment of 1928 repudiated the Roosevelt

Corollary, while Hoover toured 10 Latin-American nations after his election as president and

repudiated the “big brother” role. In the 1920s, therefore, the United States continued to

squeeze out European influence in Latin America but was itself moving slowly toward the

“Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s.

THE LOCARNO ERA AND THE DREAM OF DISARMAMENT

The Locarno treaties promised a new era of reconciliation that seemed fulfilled in the mid-to-

late 1920s as the European and world economies recovered and the German electorate turned

its back on extremists of the right and left. Locarno had also anticipated Germany’s entry into

the League. But the prospect of expanding the League Council kicked off an indelicate scramble

for Council seats as Britain supported Spain, France supported Poland, and Brazil insisted that it

represent Latin America (angering the Argentines). Sweden and Czechoslovakia helped to break

the deadlock by magnanimously sacrificing their seats, although Brazil in the end quit the

League. Finally, on Sept. 8, 1927, Stresemann led a German delegation into the halls of Geneva,
pledging that Germany’s steadfast will was to labour for freedom, peace, and unity. Briand, by

now the statesman most associated with “the spirit of Geneva,” replied in like terms: “No more

blood, no more cannon, no more machine-guns! . . . Let our countries sacrifice their amour-

propre for the sake of the peace of the world.” The same month, Stresemann tried to capitalize

on the goodwill during an interview with Briand at Thoiry. He suggested a 1,500,000,000-mark

advance on German reparations payments (to ease the French fiscal crisis then nearing its

climax) in return for immediate evacuation of the last two Rhineland zones. The French

chamber would likely have rejected such a concession, and in any case Poincaré, again in

power, stabilized the franc soon after.

The very goodwill expressed at Geneva—and removal of the Interallied Military Control

Commission from Germany in January 1927—prompted London and Washington to ask why the

French (despite their pleas of penury when war debts were discussed) still maintained the

largest army in Europe. France clung firm to its belief in military deterrence of Germany, even

when isolated in the League of Nations Disarmament Preparatory Commission, but the German

demand for equality of treatment under the League Charter impressed the Anglo-Americans. To

avert U.S. suspicions, Briand enlisted Secretary Kellogg’s participation in promoting a treaty by

which all nations might “renounce the resort to war as an instrument of national policy.”

This Kellogg–Briand Pact, signed on Aug. 27, 1928, and eventually subscribed to by virtually the

entire world, marked the high point of postwar faith in paper treaties and irenic promises.
On July 3, 1928, Chancellor Hermann Müller (a Social Democrat) and Stresemann decided to

force the pace of Versailles revisionism by claiming Germany’s moral right to early evacuation

of the Rhineland. In return they offered a definitive reparations settlement to replace the

temporary Dawes Plan. The French were obliged to consider the offer—a revival of Thoiry—

because the French chamber had refused to ratify the 1926 agreement with the United States

on war debts on the ground that it did not yet know what could be expected of Germany in

reparations. So another committee of experts under another American, Owen D. Young,

drafted a plan that was approved at the Hague Conference of August 1929. The Young Plan

projected German annuities lasting until 1989. In return, the Allies abolished the Reparations

Commission, restored German financial independence, and promised evacuation of the

Rhineland by 1930, five years ahead of the Versailles schedule.

Why did Briand and even Poincaré make so many concessions between 1925 and 1929? Briand,

of course, had sincerely hoped for Germany’s “moral disarmament,” and both concluded that

France’s treaty rights had become a wasting asset. Better to sacrifice them now in return for

concessions and goodwill, since they would expire sooner or later anyway. But Stresemann was

far from accepting the status quo. His policy of accommodation was designed to achieve the

gradual abolition of the Versailles strictures until Germany recovered its prewar freedom of

action, at which time he could set out to restore its prewar boundaries as well. For instance, he

showed no interest in an “Eastern Locarno” ensuring the boundaries of the successor states.

That is not to say, however, that Stresemann anticipated the use of force or the revival of

Germany’s extreme war aims.

As the decade of the 1920s came to a close, most Europeans expected prosperity and harmony

to continue. Briand even went so far as to propose in 1929 that France and Germany explore

virtual political integration in a European union, asking only that Germany confirm her 1919

boundaries as immutable. But Stresemann died suddenly on Oct. 3, 1929, and three weeks later

the New York stock market crashed. In the storms to come, the need for firm, material

guarantees of security would be greater than ever. But on June 30, 1930, in accordance with

the Young Plan, the last Allied troops departed the German Rhineland for home.

THE ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR II, 1929–39

The 1930s were a decade of unmitigated crisis culminating in the outbreak of a second total

war. The treaties and settlements of the first postwar era collapsed with shocking suddenness

under the impact of the Great Depression and the aggressive revisionism of Japan, Italy, and

Germany. By 1933 hardly one stone stood on another of the economic structures raised in the

1920s. By 1935 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime had torn up the Treaty of Versailles and by 1936 the

Locarno treaties as well. Armed conflict began in Manchuria in 1931 and spread to Abyssinia in

1935, Spain in 1936, China in 1937, Europe in 1939, and the United States and U.S.S.R. in

1941. See the video.

The context in which this collapse occurred was an “economic blizzard” that enervated the

democracies and energized the dictatorial regimes. Western intellectuals and many common

citizens lost faith in democracy and free-market economics, while widespread pacifism,

isolationism, and the earnest desire to avoid the mistakes of 1914 left Western leaders without
the will or the means to defend the 1919 order. This combination of demoralized publics,

stricken institutions, and uninspired leadership led historian Pierre Renouvin to describe the

1930s simply as “la décadence.”

The militant authoritarian states on the other hand—Italy, Japan, and (after 1933) Germany—

seemed only to wax stronger and more dynamic. The Depression did not cause the rise of the

Third Reich or the bellicose ideologies of the German, Italian, and Japanese governments (all of

which pre-dated the 1930s), but it did create the conditions for the Nazi seizure of power and

provide the opportunity and excuse for Fascist empire-building. Hitler and Mussolini aspired to

total control of their domestic societies, in part for the purpose of girding their nations for wars

of conquest which they saw, in turn, as necessary for revolutionary transformation at home.

This ideological meshing of foreign and domestic policy rendered the Fascist leaders wholly

enigmatic to the democratic statesmen of Britain and France, whose attempts to accommodate

rather than resist the Fascist states only made inevitable the war they longed to avoid.

THE ECONOMIC BLIZZARD

POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEPRESSION

The debate over the origins of the Great Depression and the reasons for its severity and length

is highly political, given the implications for the validity of theories of free market, regulated,

and planned economies, and of monetary and fiscal policy. It is usually dated from the New

York stock-market crash of October 1929, which choked the domestic and international flow of

credit and severely damaged global trade and production. Wall Street prices fell from an index
of 216 to 145 in a month, stabilized in early 1930, then continued downward to a bottom of 34

in 1932. Industrial production fell nearly 20 percent in 1930. Unlike previous swings in the

business cycle, this financial panic did not eventuate in the expected period of readjustment,

but rather defied all governmental and private efforts to restore prosperity for years until it

seemed to a great many that the system itself was breaking down.

Mutual recriminations flew across the Atlantic. Americans blamed the Europeans for the

reparations tangle, for pegging their currencies too high upon the return to gold, and for misuse

of the American loans of the 1920s. Europeans blamed the United States for its insistence on

repayment of war debts, high tariffs, and the unfettered speculation leading to the stock-

market crash. Certainly all of these factors contributed. More tangibly, however, a sudden

contraction of international credit in June 1928 made an international emergency likely. Since

the Dawes Plan of 1924, Europe had depended for capital and liquidity on the availability of

American loans, but increasingly American investors were flocking to the stock market with

their savings, and new capital issues for foreign account in the United States dropped 78

percent, from $530,000,000 to $119,000,000. Loans to Germany collapsed from $200,000,000

in the first half of 1928 to $77,000,000 in the second half and to $29,500,000 for the entire year

of 1929. A world crisis was also brewing in basic commodities, a market in which prices had

been depressed throughout the decade. Mechanization of agriculture stimulated

overproduction, and Soviet dumping of wheat on the world market to earn foreign exchange

for the First Five-Year Plan compounded the problem.

The Smoot–Hawley Tariff, the highest in U.S. history, became law on June 17, 1930. Conceived

and passed by the House of Representatives in 1929, it may well have contributed to the loss of

confidence on Wall Street and signaled American unwillingness to play the role of leader in the

world economy. Other countries retaliated with similarly protective tariffs, with the result that

the total volume of world trade spiraled downward from a monthly average of $2,900,000,000

in 1929 to less than $1,000,000,000 by 1933. The credit squeeze, bank failures, deflation, and

loss of exports forced production down and unemployment up in all industrial nations. In

January 1930 the United States had 3,000,000 idle workers, and by 1932 there were more than

13,000,000. In Britain 22 percent of the adult male work force lacked jobs, while in Germany

unemployment peaked in 1932 at 6,000,000. All told, some 30,000,000 people were out of

work in the industrial countries in 1932.

The Depression naturally magnified European bitterness over the continuing international

obligations, but the weakest link in the financial chain was Austria, whose central bank,

the Creditanstalt, was on the verge of bankruptcy. In March 1931, Stresemann’s successor as

German foreign minister, Julius Curtius, signed an agreement with Vienna for a German–

Austrian customs union, but French objections to what they saw as a first step toward the

dreaded Anschluss provoked a run on the Creditanstalt and forced Berlin and Vienna to

renounce the union on September 3.

The panic then spread to Germany, rendering the Reichsbank unable to meet its obligations

under the Young Plan. President Hoover responded on June 20, 1931, with a proposal for a one-
year moratorium on all intergovernmental debts. Short of a general recovery or global

agreement on the restoration of trade, however, the moratorium could only be a stopgap.

Instead, every country fled toward policies of protection, self-sufficiency, and the creation of

regional economic blocs in hopes of isolating itself from the world collapse. On Sept. 21, 1931,

the Bank of England left the gold standard, and the pound sterling promptly lost 28 percent of

its value, undermining the solvency of countries in eastern Europe and South America. In

October a national coalition government formed to take emergency measures. The

Ottawa Imperial Economic Conference of 1932 gave birth to the British Commonwealth of

Nations and a system of imperial preferences, signaling the end of Britain’s 86-year-old policy of

free trade.

The Lausanne Conference of June–July 1932 took up the question of what should be done after

the Hoover Moratorium. Even the French granted the impossibility of further German

payments and agreed to make an end of reparations in return for a final German transfer of

3,000,000,000 marks (which was never made). The United States, however, still insisted that

the war debts be honoured, whereupon the French parliament willfully defaulted, damaging

Franco-American relations.

FAILURES OF THE LEAGUE

Panicky retrenchment and disunity also rendered the Western powers incapable of responding

to the first violation of the postwar territorial settlements. On Sept. 10, 1931, Viscount Cecil

assured the League of Nations that “there has scarcely ever been a period in the world’s history
when war seemed less likely than it does at the present.” Just eight days later officers of Japan’s

Kwantung Army staged an explosion on the South Manchurian Railway to serve as pretext for

military adventure. Since 1928, China had seemed to be achieving an elusive unity under Chiang

Kai-shek’s Nationalists (KMT), now based in Nanking. While the KMT’s consolidation of power

seemed likely to keep Soviet and Japanese ambitions in check, resurgent Chinese nationalism

also posed a threat to British and other foreign interests on the mainland. By the end of 1928,

Chiang was demanding the return of leased territories and an end to extraterritoriality in the

foreign concessions. On the other hand, the KMT was still split by factions, banditry continued

widespread, the Communists were increasingly well-organized in remote Kiangsi, and in the

spring of 1931 a rival government sprang up in Canton. To these problems were added

economic depression and disastrous floods that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

Japan, meanwhile, suffered rudely from the Depression because of her dependence on trade,

her ill-timed return to the gold standard in 1930, and a Chinese boycott of Japanese goods. But

social turmoil only increased the appeal of those who saw in foreign expansion a solution to

Japan’s economic problems. This interweaving of foreign and domestic policy, propelled by a

rabid nationalism, a powerful military-industrial complex, hatred of the prevailing distribution

of world power, and the raising of a racialist banner (in this case, antiwhite) to justify

expansion, all bear comparison to European Fascism. When the parliamentary government in

Tokyo divided as to how to confront this complex of crises, the Kwantung Army acted on its

own. Manchuria, rich in raw materials, was a prospective sponge for Japanese emigration
(250,000 Japanese already resided there) and the gateway to China proper. The Japanese public

greeted the conquest with wild enthusiasm.

China appealed at once to the League of Nations, which called for Japanese withdrawal in a

resolution of October 24. But neither the British nor U.S. Asiatic fleets (the latter comprising no

battleships and just one cruiser) afforded their governments (obsessed in any case with

domestic economic problems) the option of intervention. The tide of Japanese nationalism

would have prevented Tokyo from bowing to Western pressure in any case. In December the

League Council appointed an investigatory commission under Lord Lytton, while the United

States contented itself with propounding the Stimson Doctrine, by which Washington merely

refused to recognize changes born of aggression. Unperturbed, the Japanese prompted local

collaborationists to proclaim, on Feb. 18, 1932, an independent state of Manchukuo, in effect a

Japanese protectorate. The Lytton Commission reported in October, scolding the Chinese for

provocations but condemning Japan for using excessive force. Lytton recommended evacuation

of Manchuria but privately believed that Japan had “bitten off more than she can chew” and

would ultimately withdraw of its own accord. In March 1933, Japan announced its withdrawal

instead from the League of Nations, which had been tested and found impotent, at least in East

Asia.

The League also failed to advance the cause of disarmament in the first years of the Depression.

The London Naval Conference of 1930 proposed an extension of the 1922 Washington ratios for

naval tonnage, but this time France and Italy refused to accept the inferior status assigned to
them. In land armaments, the policies of the powers were by now fixed and predictable. Britain

and the United States deplored “wasteful” military spending, especially by France, while

reparations and war debts went unpaid. But even Herriot and Briand refused to disband the

French army without additional security guarantees that the British were unwilling to tender.

Fascist Italy, despite its financial distress, was unlikely to take disarmament seriously, while

Germany, looking for foreign-policy triumphs to bolster the struggling Republic, demanded

equality of treatment: Either France must disarm, or Germany must be allowed to expand its

army. The League Council nonetheless summoned delegates from 60 nations to a

grand Disarmament Conference at Geneva beginning in February 1932. When Germany failed

to achieve satisfaction by the July adjournment it withdrew from the negotiations. France,

Britain, and the United States devised various formulas to break the deadlock, including a No

Force Declaration (Dec. 11, 1932), abjuring the use of force to resolve disputes, and a five-

power (including Italy) promise to grant German equality “in a system providing security for all

nations.” On the strength of these the Disarmament Conference resumed in February 1933. By

then, however, Adolf Hitler was chancellor of the German Reich.

A common impression of Herbert Hoover is that he was passive in the face of the Depression

and isolationist in foreign policy. The truth was almost the reverse, and in the 1932 campaign

his Democratic opponent, Franklin Roosevelt, was the more traditional in economic policy and

isolationist in foreign policy. Indeed, Hoover bequeathed to his successor two bold initiatives

meant to restore international cooperation in matters of trade, currency, and security: the

London Economic Conference and the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The former convened
in June 1933 in hopes of restoring the gold standard but was undermined by President

Roosevelt’s suspension of the gold convertibility of the dollar and his acerbic message rejecting

the conference’s labours on July 3. At home, Roosevelt proposed the series of government

actions known as the New Deal in an effort to restore U.S. productivity, in isolation, if need be,

from the rest of the world. The Disarmament Conference came to a similar end. In March,

Ramsay MacDonald proposed the gradual reduction of the French army from half a million to

200,000 men and the doubling of Germany’s Versailles army to the same figure, accompanied

by international verification. But a secret German decree of April 4 created a National Defense

Council to coordinate rearmament on a massive scale. Clearly the German demand for equality

was a ploy to wreck the conference and serve as pretext for unilateral rearmament.

Negotiations were delayed by a sudden initiative from Mussolini in March calling for a pact

among Germany, Italy, France, and Britain to grant Germany equality, revise the peace treaties,

and establish a four-power directorate to resolve international disputes. Mussolini appears to

have wanted to downgrade the League in favour of a Concert of Europe, enhancing Italian

prestige and perhaps gaining colonial concessions in return for reassuring the Western powers.

The French watered down the plan until the Four-Power Pact signed in Rome on June 7 was a

mass of anodyne generalities. Any prospect that the new Nazi regime might be drawn to

collective security disappeared on Oct. 14, 1933, when Hitler denounced the unfair treatment

accorded Germany at Geneva and announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations.

THE RISE OF HITLER AND FALL OF VERSAILLES

FAILURE OF THE GERMAN REPUBLIC

The origins of the Nazi Third Reich must be sought not only in the appeal of Hitler and his party

but also in the weakness of the Weimar Republic. Under the republic, Germany boasted the

most democratic constitution in the world, yet the fragmentation of German politics made

government by majority a difficult proposition. Many Germans identified the republic with the

despised Treaty of Versailles and, like the Japanese, concluded that the 1920s policy of peaceful

cooperation with the West had failed. What was more, the republic seemed incapable of curing

the Depression or dampening the appeal of the Communists. In the end, it self-destructed. The

first Depression-era elections, in September 1930, reflected the electorate’s flight from the

moderate centrist parties: Communists won 77 seats in the Reichstag, while the Nazi delegation

rose from 12 to 107. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, unable to command a majority, governed by

emergency decree of the aged president, Paul von Hindenburg.

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) exploited the resentment and fear

stemming from Versailles and the Depression. Its platform was a clever, if contradictory,

mixture of socialism, corporatism, and virulent assertion in foreign policy. The Nazis outdid the

Communists in forming paramilitary street gangs to intimidate opponents and create an image

of irresistible strength, but unlike the Communists, who implied that war veterans had been

dupes of capitalist imperialism, the Nazis honoured the Great War as a time when the

German Volk had been united as never before. The army had been “stabbed in the back” by

defeatists, they claimed, and those who signed the Armistice and Versailles had been criminals;

worse, international capitalists, Socialists, and Jews continued to conspire against the German
people. Under Nazism alone, they insisted, could Germans again unify under ein Reich, ein Volk,

ein Führer and get on with the task of combating Germany’s real enemies. This amalgam of

fervent nationalism and rhetorical socialism, not to mention the charismatic spell of Hitler’s

oratory and the hypnotic pomp of Nazi rallies, was psychologically more appealing than flaccid

liberalism or divisive class struggle. In any case, the Communists (on orders from Moscow)

turned to help the Nazis paralyze democratic procedure in Germany in the expectation of

seizing power themselves.

Brüning resigned in May 1932, and the July elections returned 230 Nazi delegates. After two

short-lived rightist cabinets foundered, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on Jan. 30,

1933. The president, parliamentary conservatives, and the army all apparently expected that

the inexperienced, lower-class demagogue would submit to their guidance. Instead, Hitler

secured dictatorial powers from the Reichstag and proceeded to establish, by marginally legal

means, a totalitarian state. Within two years the regime had outlawed all other political parties

and coopted or intimidated all institutions that competed with it for popular loyalty, including

the German states, labour unions, press and radio, universities, bureaucracies, courts, and

churches. Only the army and foreign office remained in the hands of traditional elites. But this

fact, and Hitler’s own caution at the start, allowed Western observers fatally to misperceive

Nazi foreign policy as simply a continuation of Weimar revisionism.

Adolf Hitler recounted in Mein Kampf, the autobiographical harangue written in prison after his

abortive putsch of 1923, that he saw himself as that rare individual, the “programmatic thinker
and the politician become one.” Hitler distilled his Weltanschauung from the social

Darwinism, anti-Semitism, and racialist anthropology current in prewar Vienna. Where Marx

had reduced all of history to struggles among social classes, in which revolution was the engine

of progress and the dictatorship of the proletariat the culmination, Hitler reduced history to

struggle among biologic races, in which war was the engine of progress and Aryan hegemony

the culmination. The enemies of the Germans, indeed of history itself, were internationalists

who warred against the purity and race-consciousness of peoples—they were the capitalists,

the Socialists, the pacifists, the liberals, all of whom Hitler identified with the Jews. This

condemnation of Jews as a racial group made Nazism more dangerous than earlier forms of

religious or economic anti-Semitism that had long been prevalent throughout Europe. For if the

Jews, as Hitler thought, were like bacteria poisoning the bloodstream of the Aryan race, the

only solution was their extermination. Nazism, in short, was the twisted product of a secular,

scientific age of history.

Hitler’s worldview dictated a unity of foreign and domestic policies based on total control and

militarization at home, war and conquest abroad. In Mein Kampf he ridiculed the Weimar

politicians and their “bourgeois” dreams of restoring the Germany of 1914. Rather, the

German Volk could never achieve their destiny without Lebensraum (“living space”) to support

a vastly increased German population and form the basis for world power. Lebensraum, wrote

Hitler in Mein Kampf, was to be found in the Ukraine and intermediate lands of eastern Europe.

This “heartland” of the Eurasian continent (so named by the geopoliticians Sir Halford

Mackinder and Karl Haushofer) was especially suited for conquest since it was occupied, in
Hitler’s mind, by Slavic Untermenschen (subhumans) and ruled from the centre of the Jewish-

Bolshevik conspiracy in Moscow. By 1933 Hitler had apparently imagined a step-by-step plan

for the realization of his goals. The first step was to rearm, thereby restoring complete freedom

of maneuver to Germany. The next step was to achieve Lebensraum in alliance with Italy and

with the sufferance of Britain. This greater Reich could then serve, in the distant third step, as a

base for world dominion and the purification of a “master race.” In practice, Hitler proved

willing to adapt to circumstances, seize opportunities, or follow the wanderings of intuition.

Sooner or later politics must give way to war, but because Hitler did not articulate his ultimate

fantasies to the German voters or establishment, his actions and rhetoric seemed to imply only

restoration, if not of the Germany of 1914, then the Germany of 1918, after Brest-Litovsk. In

fact, his program was potentially without limits.

EUROPEAN RESPONSES TO NAZISM

European reaction to the rise of Nazism was cautious, but not at first overtly hostile. The Four-

Power Pact and a concordat with the Vatican (July 20, 1933), negotiated by the Catholic Franz

von Papen, conferred a certain legitimacy on the Nazi regime. (Hitler sought to end Vatican

support for the Catholic Centre Party while he proceeded to subordinate the churches and to

corrupt Christianity into a state-centred form of neo-paganism. Pope Pius XI, like every other

European statesmen after him, thought that he could appease and moderate the Nazis.) On

Jan. 26, 1934, Hitler shocked all parties by signing a nonaggression pact with Poland. This bit of

duplicity neutralized France’s primary ally in the east while helping to secure Germany over the

dangerous years of rearmament. The new Polish foreign minister, Józef Beck, was in turn
responding to the dilemma of Poland’s central position between Germany and the U.S.S.R. He

hoped to preserve a balance in his relations with the two giant neighbours (Poland signed a

three-year pact with Moscow in July 1932) but feared the Soviets (from whom Poland had

grabbed so much territory in 1921) more than the still-weak Germans. The pact with Germany

was meant to run for 10 years.

France was the nation most concerned by the Nazi threat and most able to take vigorous

action. But fear of another war, the defeatist mood dating from the failure of the Ruhr

occupation, the passivity engendered by the Maginot Line (due for completion in just five

years), and domestic strife exacerbated by the Depression and the Stavisky scandal of 1933, all

served to hamstring French foreign policy. As in the Weimar Republic, Communists and

monarchists or Fascist groups like the Croix de Feu and Action Française battled in the streets.

In February 1934 a crowd of war veterans and rightists stormed the parliament, and the

Édouard Daladier Cabinet was forced to resign to head off a coup d’état. The new foreign

minister, Louis Barthou, had been a friend of Poincaré and made a final effort to shore up

France’s security system in Europe: “All these League of Nations fancies—I’d soon put an end to

them if I were in power. . . . It’s alliances that count.” But alliances with whom? The French Left

was adamantly opposed to cooperation with Fascist Italy, the Right despised cooperation with

the Communist Soviet Union. Britain as always eschewed commitments, while Poland had

come to terms with Germany. Nevertheless, the moment seemed opportune; both Italy and the

U.S.S.R. now made clear their opposition to Hitler and desire to embrace collective security.
To be sure, Mussolini was gratified by the triumph of the man he liked to consider his younger

protégé, Hitler, but he also understood that Italy fared best while playing off France and

Germany, and he feared German expansion into the Danubian basin. In September 1933 he

made Italian support for Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss conditional on the latter’s

establishment of an Italian-style Fascist regime. In June 1934 Mussolini and Hitler met for the

first time, and in their confused conversation (there was no interpreter present) Mussolini

understood the Führer to say that he had no desire for Anschluss. Yet, a month later, Austrian

Nazis arranged a putsch in which Dollfuss was murdered. Mussolini responded with a threat of

force (quite likely a bluff) on the Brenner Pass and thereby saved Austrian independence. Kurt

von Schuschnigg, a pro-Italian Fascist, took over in Vienna. In Paris and London it seemed that

Mussolini was one leader with the will and might to stand up to Hitler.

Stalin, meanwhile, had repented of the equanimity with which he had witnessed the Nazi

seizure of power. Before 1933, Germany and the U.S.S.R. had collaborated, and Soviet trade

had been a rare boon to the German economy in the last years of the Weimar Republic. Still,

the behaviour of German Communists contributed to the collapse of parliamentarism, and now

Hitler had shown that he, too, knew how to crush dissent and master a nation. The Communist

line shifted in 1934–35 from condemnation of social democracy, collective security, and

Western militarism to collaboration with other anti-Fascist forces in “Popular Fronts,” alliance

systems, and rearmament. The United States and the U.S.S.R. established diplomatic relations

for the first time in November 1933, and in September 1934 the Soviets joined the League of
Nations, where Maksim Litvinov became a loud proponent of collective security against Fascist

revisionism.

Thus, Barthou’s plan for reviving the wartime alliance and arranging an “Eastern Locarno”

began to seem plausible—even after Oct. 9, 1934, when Barthou and King Alexander of

Yugoslavia were shot dead in Marseille by an agent of Croatian terrorists. The new French

foreign minister, the rightist Pierre Laval, was especially friendly to Rome. The Laval–Mussolini

agreements of Jan. 7, 1935, declared France’s disinterest in the fate of Abyssinia in implicit

exchange for Italian support of Austria. Mussolini took this to mean that he had French support

for his plan to conquer that independent African country. Just six days later the strength of

German nationalism was resoundingly displayed in the Saar plebiscite. The small, coal-rich

Saarland, detached from Germany for 15 years under the Treaty of Versailles, was populated by

miners of Catholic or social democratic loyalty. They knew what fate awaited their churches and

labour unions in the Third Reich, and yet 90 percent voted for union with Germany. Then, on

March 16, Hitler used the extension of French military service to two years and the Franco-

Soviet negotiations as pretexts for tearing up the disarmament clauses of Versailles, restoring

the military draft, and beginning an open buildup of Germany’s land, air, and sea forces.

In the wake of this series of shocks Britain, France, and Italy joined on April 11, 1935, at a

conference at Stresa to reaffirm their opposition to German expansion. Laval and Litvinov also

initialed a five-year Franco-Soviet alliance on May 2, each pledging assistance in case of

unprovoked aggression. Two weeks later a Czech-Soviet pact complemented it. Laval’s system,
however, was flawed; mutual suspicion between Paris and Moscow, the failure to add a military

convention, and the lack of Polish adherence meant that genuine Franco-Soviet military action

was unlikely. The U.S.S.R. was in a state of trauma brought on by the Five-Year Plans, the

slaughter and starvation of millions of farmers, especially in the Ukraine, in the name of

collectivization, and the beginnings of Stalin’s mass purges of the government, army, and

Communist party. It was clear that Russian industrialization was bound to overthrow the

balance of power in Eurasia, hence Stalin was fearful of the possibility of a preemptive attack

before his own militarization was complete. But he was even more obsessed with the prospect

of wholesale rebellion against his regime in case of invasion. Stalin’s primary goal, therefore,

was to keep the capitalist powers divided and the U.S.S.R. at peace. Urging the liberal Western

states to combine against the Fascists was one method; exploring bilateral relations with

Germany, as in the 1936 conversations between Hjalmar Schacht and Soviet trade

representative David Kandelaki, was another.

Italy and Britain looked askance at the Franco-Soviet combination, while Hitler in any case

sugar-coated the pill of German rearmament by making a pacific speech on May 21, 1935, in

which he offered bilateral pacts to all Germany’s neighbours (except Lithuania) and assured the

British that he, unlike the Kaiser, did not intend to challenge them on the seas. The Anglo-

German Naval Agreement of June 18, which countenanced a new German navy though limiting

it to not larger than 35 percent the size of the British, angered the French and drove a wedge

between them and the British.

ITALIAN AGGRESSION

The Stresa Front collapsed as soon as Paris and London learned the price Mussolini meant to

exact for it. By 1935 Mussolini had ruled for 13 years but had made little progress toward his

“new Roman Empire” that was to free Italy from the “prison of the Mediterranean.” What was

more, Il Duce concluded that only the crucible of war could fully undermine the monarchy and

the church and consummate the Fascist revolution at home. Having failed to pry the French out

of their North African possessions, Mussolini fixed on the independent African empire of

Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Italy had failed in 1896 to conquer Abyssinia, thus to do so now would

erase a national humiliation. This spacious land astride Italy’s existing coastal colonies on the

Horn of Africa boasted fertile uplands suitable for Italy’s excess rural population, and Mussolini

promised abundant raw materials as well. The conquest of Abyssinia would also appear to open

the path to the Sudan and Suez. Finally, this landlocked, semifeudal kingdom seemed an easy

target. In fact, Emperor Haile Selassie had begun a modernization program of sorts, but this

only suggested that the sooner Italy struck, the better.

The Italian army was scarcely prepared for such an undertaking, and Mussolini made matters

worse by ordering ill-trained blackshirt brigades to Africa and entrusting the campaign to a

Fascist loyalist, Emilio De Bono, rather than to a senior army officer. The military buildup at

Mitsiwa left little doubt as to Italian intentions, and Britain tried in June to forestall the invasion

by arranging the cession of some Abyssinian territories. But Mussolini knew that the British

Mediterranean fleet was as unready as his own and expected no interference.

De Bono’s absurdly large army invaded Ethiopia from Eritrea on Oct. 3, 1935. Adwa, the site of

the 1896 debacle, fell in three days, after which the advance bogged down and Mussolini

replaced De Bono with Marshal Pietro Badoglio. The League Council promptly declared Italy the

aggressor (October 7), whereupon France and Britain were caught on the horns of a dilemma.

To wink at Italy’s conquest would be to condone aggression and admit the bankruptcy of the

League; to resist would be to smash the Stresa Front and lose Italian help against the greater

threat, Germany. The League finally settled on economic sanctions but shied away from an

embargo on oil, which would have grounded the Italian army and air force, or closure of the

Suez Canal, which would have cut the Italian supply line. The remaining sanctions only vexed

Italy without helping Abyssinia. Germany, no longer a League member, ignored the sanctions

and so healed its rift with Rome.

In December, Laval and Sir Samuel Hoare, the British foreign secretary, contrived a secret plan

to offer Mussolini most of Abyssinia in return for a truce. This Hoare–Laval Plan was a realistic

effort to end the crisis and repair the Stresa Front, but it also made a mockery of the League.

When it was leaked to the press, public indignation forced Hoare’s resignation. The Italians

finally took the fortress of Mekele on November 8, but their slow advance led Mussolini to

order a major offensive in December. He instructed Badoglio to use whatever means necessary,

including terror bombing and poison gas, to end the war.

THE FIRST GERMAN MOVE

Hitler observed the Abyssinian war with controlled glee, for dissolution of the Stresa Front—

composed of the guarantors of Locarno—gave him the chance to reoccupy the Rhineland with

minimal risk. A caretaker government under Albert Sarraut was in charge of France during a

divisive electoral campaign dominated by the leftist Popular Front, and Britain was convulsed

by a constitutional crisis stemming from King Edward VIII’s insistence on marrying an American

divorcée. On March 7, 1936, Hitler ordered a token force of 22,000 soldiers back across the

bridges of the Rhine. Characteristically, he chose a weekend for his sudden move and then

softened the blow with offers of nonaggression pacts and a new demilitarized zone on both

sides of the frontier. Even so, Hitler assured his generals that he would retreat if the French

intervened.

German reoccupation and fortification of the Rhineland was the most significant turning point

of the interwar years. After March 1936 the British and French could no longer take forceful

action against Hitler except by provoking the total war they feared. Why did the French,

especially, not act to prevent this calamity to their defensive posture? They were not taken by

surprise—Hitler’s preparations had been noted—and Sarraut himself told French radio listeners

that “Strasbourg would not be left under German guns.” Moreover, the French army still

outnumbered the German and could expect support from Czechoslovakia and possibly Poland.

On the other hand, the French army commander, General Maurice Gamelin, vastly

overestimated German strength and insisted that a move into the Rhineland be preceded by

general mobilization. The French Cabinet also concluded that it should do nothing without the

full agreement of the British. But London was not the place to look for backbone. Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin shrugged, “They might succeed in smashing Germany with the aid of

Russia, but it would probably only result in Germany going Bolshevik,” while the editor of The

Times asked, “It’s none of our business, is it? It’s their own back-garden they’re walking into.”

By failing to respond to the violation, however, Britain, France, and Italy had broken the

Locarno treaties just as gravely as had Germany.

The strategic situation in Europe now shifted in favour of the Fascist powers. In June, Mussolini

appointed as foreign minister his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, who concluded an agreement with

Germany on July 11 in which Italy acquiesced in Austria’s behaving henceforth as “a German

state.” The Rome–Berlin Axis followed on November 1, and the German–Japanese Anti-

Comintern Pact, another vague agreement ostensibly directed at Moscow, on November 25.

Finally, Belgium unilaterally renounced its alliance with France on October 14 and returned to

its traditional neutrality in hopes of escaping the coming storm. As a direct result of the

Abyssinian imbroglio, the militant revisionists had come together and the status quo powers

had splintered.

Meanwhile, on May 5, 1936, Italian troops had entered Addis Ababa and completed the

conquest of Abyssinia, although the country was never entirely pacified, despite costly and

brutal repression. The Abyssinian war had been a disaster for the democracies, smashing both

the Stresa Front and the credibility of the League. As the historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote, “One day

[the League] was a powerful body imposing sanctions, seemingly more effective than ever
before; the next day it was an empty sham, everyone scuttling from it as quickly as possible.” In

December 1937, Italy, too, quit the League of Nations.

BRITISH APPEASEMENT AND AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM

THE RATIONALE OF APPEASEMENT

It is time to explore the roots of democratic lethargy in the face of Fascist expansionism in the

1930s. British policy, in particular, which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain would proudly

term “appeasement,” conjures up images of naive, even craven surrender to Nazi demands. In

the minds of British statesmen, however, appeasement was a moral and realistic expression of

all that was liberal and Christian in British culture. First, 1914 cast a dark shadow on the opinion

leaders of the 1930s, who determined this time to shun arms races and balance-of-power and

commercial competition, and so to spare the world another horrible war. Second, the

overextended British Empire lacked the resources to confront threats from Japan in Asia, Italy

in the Mediterranean, and Germany in Europe all at once. Wisdom dictated that Britain come to

terms with the greatest and closest to home of its potential adversaries, Germany. Third, the

British public was understandably provincial about central Europe and had no desire (in the

popular French phrase) “to die for Danzig.” This sentiment was even more pronounced in the

British dominions. Fourth, many Tory and Labour leaders, while put off by Hitler’s ideology and

brutality, shared his antipathy to Versailles and urged “fair play” in cases where German

nationals were separated from the fatherland. Thus, Wilsonian national self-determination

perversely made the Nazis appear to be on the side of principle. Fifth, the appeasers also
presumed that the Nazis would become less rambunctious once their grievances were

removed. Sixth, some demoralized Englishmen believed the propagandistic claim that Fascism

was the only bulwark against the spread of Bolshevism. Seventh, domestic opinion in Britain

favoured a passive reliance on the League of Nations somehow to prevent another

catastrophe—Baldwin’s policy of sanctions without war in Abyssinia, as the chief case in point,

earned his party a huge electoral victory in November 1935. Nor had pacifism flagged since

1933, when the Oxford Union “Resolved that this house refuses to fight for King and Country.”

Voices of dissent existed. Some Left-Labourites warned that Fascism must be stopped sooner or

later, while a few Tory backbenchers led by Winston Churchill demanded rearmament. In the

mid-1930s a source in the Air Ministry leaked data to Churchill suggesting that Germany’s air

force was rapidly overtaking Britain’s. Fear of the Luftwaffe only provided another excuse for

appeasement, however, for aviation had developed to the point that theorists like the Italian

Giulio Douhet could argue that air bombardment would win the next war in 48 hours by

leveling enemy cities. In an air age, the English Channel no longer sheltered Britain from

destruction.

Many of these same considerations afflicted French policy: fear of another total war and of

destruction from the air, apathy toward eastern Europe, and ideological confusion. The election

of May 3, 1936, brought victory for the Popular Front, which formed a Cabinet under the

Socialist Léon Blum, but his economic policies threw France into a turmoil of strikes, capital

flight, and recrimination. “Better Hitler than Blum,” said some on the right.
THE CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN

The Spanish Civil War highlighted the contrast between democratic bankruptcy and totalitarian

dynamism. In 1931 the Spanish monarchy gave way to a republic whose unstable government

moved steadily to the left, outraging the army and church. After repeated provocations on both

sides, army and air force officers proclaimed a Nationalist revolt on July 17, 1936, that survived

its critical early weeks with logistical help from Portugal’s archconservative premier, António

Salazar. The Nationalists, rallying behind General Francisco Franco, quickly seized most of Old

Castile in the north and a beachhead in the south extending from Córdoba to Cádiz opposite

Spanish Morocco, where the insurrection had begun. But the Republicans, or loyalists, a

Popular Front composed of liberals, Socialists, Trotskyites, Stalinists, and anarchists, took up

arms to defend the Republic elsewhere and sought outside aid against what they styled as the

latest Fascist threat. Spain became a battleground for the ideologies wrestling for mastery of

Europe.

The civil war posed a dilemma for France and Britain, pitting the principle of defending

democracy against the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states. The

ineffectual Blum at first fraternally promised aid to the Popular Front in Madrid, but he reneged

within a month for fear that such involvement might provoke a European war or a civil war in

France. The British government counseled nonintervention and seemingly won Germany and

Italy to that position, but Hitler, on well-rehearsed anti-Bolshevik grounds, hurriedly dispatched

20 transport planes that allowed Franco to move reinforcements from Morocco. Not to be

outdone, Mussolini sent matériel, Fascist “volunteers,” and, ultimately, regular army
formations. The Italians performed miserably (especially at Guadalajara in March 1937), but

German aid, including the feared Condor Legion, was effective. Hitler expected to be paid for

his support, however, with economic concessions, and he also saw Spain as a testing-ground for

Germany’s newest weapons and tactics. These included terror bombing such as that over

Guernica in April 1937, which caused far fewer deaths than legend has it but which became an

icon of anti-Fascism through the painting of Pablo Picasso. International aid to the Republicans

ran from the heroic to the sinister. Thousands of leftists and idealistic volunteers from

throughout Europe and America flocked to International Brigades to defend the Republic.

Material support, however, came only from Stalin, who demanded gold payment in return and

ordered Comintern agents and commissars to accompany the Soviet supplies. These Stalinists

systematically murdered Trotskyites and other “enemies on the left,” undermined the radical

government of Barcelona, and exacerbated the intramural confusion in Republican ranks. The

upshot of Soviet intervention was to discredit the Republic and thereby strengthen Western

resolve to stay out.

The war dragged on through 1937 and 1938 and claimed some 500,000 lives before the

Nationalists finally captured Barcelona in January 1939 and Madrid in March. During the final

push to victory, France and Britain recognized Franco’s government. By then, however, the

fulcrum of diplomacy had long since shifted to central Europe. The Nationalist victory did not, in

the end, redound to the detriment of France, for Franco politely sent the Germans and Italians

home and observed neutrality in the coming war, whereas a pro-Communist Spain might have

posed a genuine threat to France during the era of the Nazi–Soviet pact.
THE RETURN OF U.S. ISOLATIONISM

The extreme isolationism that gripped the United States in the 1930s reinforced British

appeasement and French paralysis. To Americans absorbed with their own distress, Hitler and

Mussolini appeared as slightly ridiculous rabble-rousers on movie-house newsreels and

certainly no concern of theirs. Moreover, the revisionist theory that the United States had been

sucked into war in 1917 through the machinations of arms merchants or Wall Street bankers

gained credence from the Senate’s Nye Committee inquiries of 1934–36. U.S. isolationism,

however, had many roots: liberal abhorrence of arms and war, the evident failure of

Wilsonianism, the Great Depression, and the revisionism of American historians, who were

among the leaders in arguing that Germany was not solely responsible for 1914. Nor were

isolationists restricted only to the Great Plains states or to one political party. Some members

of Congress favoured punctilious defense of U.S. interests in the world but rejected

involvement in the quarrels of others. Some were full-fledged pacifists even if it meant

surrendering certain U.S. rights abroad. Left-wing isolationists warned that another great war

would push the United States in the direction of Fascism. Conservative isolationists warned that

another great war would usher in socialism.

These factions disputed among themselves over the wording of legislation, but their collective

strength was enough to carry a number of bills designed to prevent a recurrence of the events

of 1914–17. The Johnson Act of 1934 forbade American citizens to lend money to foreign

countries that had not paid their past war debts. The Neutrality acts of 1935 and 1936

prohibited sale of war matériel to belligerents and forbade any exports to belligerents not paid
for with cash and carried in their own ships. Thus, the United States was not to acquire a stake

in the victory of any side or expose its merchant ships to submarines. (See the video.) The effect

of these acts, however, was to preclude American aid to Abyssinia, Spain, and China, and thus

hurt the victims of aggression more than the aggressors.

The United States did take steps in the 1930s, however, to mobilize the Western Hemisphere

for the purposes of fighting the Depression and resisting European, especially German,

encroachments. Roosevelt gave this initiative a name in his first inaugural address: the Good

Neighbor Policy. Building on steps taken by Hoover, Roosevelt pledged nonintervention in Latin

domestic affairs at the Montevideo Pan-American Conference of 1933, signed a treaty with the

new Cuban government (May 29, 1934) abrogating the Platt Amendment, mediated a truce in

the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1934 (with a peace treaty following in July

1938), and negotiated commercial treaties with Latin-American states. As war approached

overseas, Washington also promoted pan-American unity on the basis of nonintervention,

condemnation of aggression, no forcible collection of debts, equality of states, respect for

treaties, and continental solidarity. The Declaration of Lima (1938) provided for pan-American

consultation in case of a threat to the “peace, security, or territorial integrity” of any state.

JAPAN’S AGGRESSION IN CHINA

The first major challenge to American isolationism, however, occurred in Asia. After pacifying

Manchukuo, the Japanese turned their sights toward North China and Inner Mongolia. Over the

intervening years, however, the KMT had made progress in unifying China. The Communists
were still in the field, having survived their Long March (1934–35) to Yen-an in the north,

but Chiang’s government, with German and American help, had introduced modern roads and

communications, stable paper currency, banking, and educational systems. How might Tokyo

best round out its continental interests: by preemptive war or by cooperating with this

resurgent China to expel Western influence from East Asia? The chief of the operations section

of the Japanese general staff favoured collaboration and feared that an invasion of China

proper would bring war with the Soviets or the Americans, whose economic potential he

understood. Supreme headquarters, however, preferred to take military advantage of apparent

friction between Chiang and a North China warlord. In September 1936, when Japan issued

seven secret demands that would have made North China a virtual Japanese protectorate,

Chiang rejected them. In December Chiang was even kidnapped by the commander of

Nationalist forces from Manchuria, who tried to force him to suspend fighting the Communists

and to declare war on Japan. This Sian Incident demonstrated the unlikelihood of Chinese

collaboration with the Japanese program and strengthened the war party in Tokyo. As in 1931,

hostilities began almost spontaneously and soon took on a life of their own.

An incident at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking (then known as Pei-p’ing) on July 7, 1937,

escalated into an undeclared Sino-Japanese war. Contrary to the Japanese analysis, both Chiang

and Mao Zedong vowed to come to the aid of North China, while Japanese moderates failed to

negotiate a truce or localize the conflict and lost all influence. By the end of July the Japanese

had occupied Peking and Tientsin. The following month they blockaded the South China coast

and captured Shanghai after brutal fighting and the slaughter of countless civilians. Similar
atrocities accompanied the fall of Nanking on December 13. The Japanese expected the Chinese

to sue for peace, but Chiang moved his government to Han-k’ou and continued to resist the

“dwarf bandits” with hit-and-run tactics that sucked the invaders in more deeply. The Japanese

could occupy cities and fan out along roads and rails almost at will, but the countryside

remained hostile.

World opinion condemned Japan in the harshest terms. The U.S.S.R. concluded a nonaggression

pact with China (Aug. 21, 1937), and Soviet-Mongolian forces skirmished with Japanese on the

border. Britain vilified Japan in the League, while Roosevelt invoked the Stimson Doctrine in his

“quarantine speech” of October 5. But Roosevelt was prevented by the Neutrality acts from

aiding China even after the sinking of U.S. and British gunboats on the Yangtze.

On March 28, 1938, the Japanese established a Manchukuo-type puppet regime at Nanking,

and spring and summer offensives brought them to the Wu-han cities (chiefly Han-k’ou) on the

Yangtze. Chiang stubbornly moved his government again, this time to Chungking, which the

Japanese bombed mercilessly in May 1939, as they did Canton for weeks before its occupation

in October. Such incidents, combined with the Nazi and Fascist air attacks in Spain and

Abyssinia, were omens of the total war to come. The United States finally took a first step in

opposition to Japanese aggression on July 29, 1939, announcing that it would terminate its

1911 commercial treaty with Japan in six months and thereby cut off vital raw materials to the

Japanese war machine. It was all Roosevelt could do under existing law, but it set in train the

events that would lead to Pearl Harbor.

ANSCHLUSS AND THE MUNICH PACT

THE GERMAN-AUSTRIAN UNION

Heightened assertiveness also characterized foreign policies in Europe in 1937. But while

Hitler’s involved explicit preparations for war, Britain’s consisted of explicit attempts to satisfy

him with concessions. The conjuncture of these policies doomed the independence of Austria,

Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and set Europe on a slippery slope to war.

By the end of 1936, Hitler and the Nazis were total masters of Germany with the exceptions of

the army and the foreign office, and even the latter had to tolerate the activities of a special

party apparatus under the Nazi “expert” on foreign policy, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Nazi

prestige, bolstered by such theatrics as the Berlin Olympics, the German pavilion at the Paris

Exhibition, and the enormous Nürnberg party rallies, was reaching its zenith. In September

1936, Hitler imitated Stalin again in his proclamation of a Four-Year Plan to prepare the German

economy for war under the leadership of Hermann Göring. With the Rhineland secured, Hitler

grew anxious to begin his “drive to the east,” if possible with British acquiescence. To this end

he appointed Ribbentrop ambassador to London in October 1936 with the plea, “Bring me back

the British alliance.” Intermittent talks lasted a year, their main topic being the return of the

German colonies lost at Versailles. But agreement was impossible, since Hitler’s real goal was a

free hand on the Continent, while the British hoped, in return for specific concessions, to secure

arms control and respect for the status quo.

Meanwhile, Stanley Baldwin, having seen the abdication crisis through to a finish, retired in

May 1937 in favour of Neville Chamberlain. The latter now had the chance to pursue what he

termed “active appeasement”: find out what Hitler really wants, give it to him, and thereby

save the peace and husband British resources for defense of the empire against Italy and Japan.

By the time of Lord Halifax’s celebrated visit to Berchtesgaden in November 1937, Hitler had

already lost interest in the talks and begun to prepare for the absorption of Austria, a country in

which, said Halifax, Britain took little interest. Hitler had also taken measures to complete the

Nazification of foreign and defense policy.

On November 5, Hitler made a secret speech in the presence of the commanders of the three

armed services, War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath,

and Göring. The Führer made clear his belief that Germany must begin to expand in the

immediate future, with Austria and Czechoslovakia as the first targets, and that the German

economy must be ready for full-scale war by 1943–45. On November 19, Hitler replaced

Schacht as minister of economics. Two months later he fired generals Blomberg and Werner

von Fritsch in favour of the loyal Walther von Brauchitsch and Wilhelm Keitel and replaced

Neurath with Ribbentrop. Historians have debated whether the November 5 speech was a

blueprint for aggression, a plea for continued rearmament, or preparation for the purges that

followed. But there is no denying that the overheated Nazi economy had reached a critical turn

with labour and resources fully employed and capital running short. Hitler would soon have to

introduce austerity measures, slow down the arms program, or make good the shortages of

labour and capital through plunder. Since these material needs pushed in the same direction as
Hitler’s dynamic quest for Lebensraum, 1937 merely marked the transition into concrete time-

tables of what Hitler had always desired. Nazification of the economy, the military, and the

foreign service only removed the last vestige of potential opposition to a risky program of

ruthless conquest.

German intrigues in Austria had continued since 1936 through the agency of Arthur Seyss-

Inquart’s Nazi movement. When Papen, now ambassador to Vienna, reported on Feb. 5, 1938,

that the Schuschnigg regime showed signs of weakness, Hitler invited the Austrian dictator to a

meeting on the 12th. In the course of an intimidating tirade Hitler demanded that Nazis be

included in the Vienna government. Schuschnigg, however, insisted that Austria remain “free

and German, independent and social, Christian and united,” and scheduled a plebiscite for

March 13 through which Austrians might express their will. Hitler hurriedly issued directives to

the military, and when Schuschnigg was induced to resign, Seyss-Inquart simply appointed

himself chancellor and invited German troops to intervene. A last-minute Italian demarche

inviting Britain to make colonial concessions in return for Italian support of Austria met only

“indignant resignation” and Anthony Eden’s irrelevant complaints about Italy’s troops in Spain.

A French plea for Italian firmness, in turn, provoked Ciano to ask: “Do they expect to rebuild

Stresa in an hour with Hannibal at the gates?” Still, Hitler waited nervously on the evening of

March 11 until he was informed that Mussolini would take no action in support of Austria.

Hitler replied with effusive thanks and promises of eternal amity. In the nighttime invasion, 70

percent of the vehicles sent into Austria by the unprepared Wehrmacht broke down on the
road to Vienna, but they met no resistance. Austrians cheered deliriously on the 13th, when

Hitler declared Austria a province of the Reich.

THE TAKING OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The Anschluss outflanked the next state on Hitler’s list, Czechoslovakia. Once again Hitler could

make use of national self-determination to confuse the issue, as 3,500,000 German-speakers

organized by another Nazi henchman, Konrad Henlein, inhabited the Czech borderlands in

the Sudeten Mountains. Already on February 20, before the Anschluss, Hitler had denounced

the Czechs for alleged persecution of this German minority, and on April 21 he ordered Keitel to

prepare for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by October even if the French should intervene.

Chamberlain was intent on appeasing Hitler, but this meant “educating” him to seek redress of

grievances through negotiation, not force. He issued a stern warning to Germany during the

spring war scare while pressuring Beneš to compromise with Henlein. Germany, however, had

instructed Henlein to display obstinacy so as to prevent agreement. In August a worried British

Cabinet dispatched the elderly Lord Walter Runciman to mediate, but Henlein rejected the

program of concessions he finally arranged with Beneš. As the prospect of war increased, the

British appeasers grew more frantic. In the spring the editor of the leftist New

Statesman thought “armed resistance to the dictators was now useless. If there was a war we

should lose it.” General Edmund Ironside, ruing the prime minister’s reluctance to rearm,

sneered that “Chamberlain is of course right. . . . We cannot expose ourselves now to a German

attack. We simply commit suicide if we do.” And a shocking Timeseditorial called for the

partition of Czechoslovakia, a view shared by Hitler at the Nürnberg party rally, where he
condemned “Czechia” as an “artificial state.” Chamberlain then journeyed to Berchtesgaden

and proposed to give the Germans all they demanded. Hitler, nonplussed, spoke of the cession

of all Sudeten areas at least 80 percent German and agreed not to invade while Chamberlain

won over Paris and Prague.

The French Cabinet of Édouard Daladier and Georges-Étienne Bonnet agreed, after the latter’s

frantic pleas to Roosevelt failed to shake American isolation. The Czechs, however, resisted

handing over their border fortifications to Hitler until September 21, when the British and

French made it clear that they would not fight for the Sudetenland. Chamberlain flew to Bad

Godesberg the next day only to be met with a new demand that the entire Sudetenland be

ceded to Germany within a week. The Czechs, fully mobilized as of the 23rd, refused, and

Chamberlain returned home in a funk: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should

be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country

between people of whom we know nothing.” But his sorrowful address to Parliament was

interrupted by the news that Mussolini had proposed a conference to settle the crisis

peacefully. Hitler agreed, having seen how little enthusiasm there was in Germany for war and

on the advice of Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and the generals. Chamberlain and Daladier, elated,

flew to Munich on September 29.

The awkward and pitiful Munich Conference ended on the 30th in a compromise prearranged

between the two dictators. The Czechs were to evacuate all regions indicated by an

international commission (subsequently dominated by the Germans) by October 10 and were

given no recourse—the agreement was final. Poland took the opportunity to grab the Teschen

district disputed since 1919. Czechoslovakia was no longer a viable state, and Beneš resigned

the presidency in despair. In return, Hitler promised no more territorial demands in Europe and

consultations with Britain in case of any future threat to peace. Chamberlain was ecstatic.

Why did the Western powers abandon Czechoslovakia, which, by dint of its geography,

democracy, military potential (more than 30 divisions and the Škoda arms works), and

commitment to collective security, could rightly be called “the keystone of interwar Europe”?

No completely persuasive answer is possible, but this height of appeasement can be accounted

for by politics, principles, and pragmatism. There is no question that the Munich settlement

was extremely popular. Chamberlain returned to London claiming “peace for our time” and was

greeted by applauding throngs. So was Daladier. The relief was so evident even in Germany that

Hitler swore he would allow no more meddling by “English governesses” to cheat him of his

war. Of course, the euphoria was not universal: aside from the Czechs, who wept in the streets,

Churchill spoke for a growing minority when he observed that the British Empire had just

suffered its worst military defeat and had not fired a shot.

Could Czechoslovakia have been defended? Or was Munich a necessary evil to buy time for

Britain to rearm? Certainly British air defenses were unready, while France’s scarcely existed,

and the strength of the Luftwaffe, so recently discounted by the British Cabinet, was now

exaggerated. The French and Czech armies still outnumbered the German, but French

intelligence also magnified German strength, while the army had no plans for invading Germany
in support of the Czechs. The Munich powers were criticized for ignoring the U.S.S.R., which

had claimed readiness to honour its alliance with Prague. The U.S.S.R., however, would hardly

confront Germany unless the Western powers were already engaged, and the ways open to

them were few without transit rights across Poland. The West discounted Soviet military

effectiveness in light of Stalin’s 1937 purge of his entire officer corps down to battalion level.

The Soviets were also distracted by division-scale fighting that broke out with Japanese forces

on the Manchurian border in July–August 1938. At best, a few squadrons of Soviet planes might

have been sent to Prague.

Of course, the moral cause of liberating the Sudeten Germans was ludicrous in view of the

nature of the Nazi regime and was far outweighed by the moral lapse of deserting the doughty

Czechs. (French ambassador André François-Poncet, upon reading the Munich accord, choked,

“Thus does France treat her only allies who had remained faithful to her.”) That betrayal, in

turn, seemed more than outweighed by the moral cause of preventing another war. In the end,

the war was delayed only a year, and whatever the military realities of 1938 versus 1939, the

appeasement policy was an exercise in self-delusion. Chamberlain and his ilk did not begin their

reasoning with an analysis of Hitlerism and then work forward to a policy. Rather, they began

with a policy based on abstract analysis of the causes of war, then worked backward to an

image of Hitler that suited the needs of that policy. As a result, they gave Hitler far more than

they ever gave the democratic statesmen of Weimar and, in the end, the freedom to launch the

very war they slaved to prevent.

Hitler had no intention of honouring Munich. In October the Nazis encouraged the Slovak and

Ruthene minorities in Czechoslovakia to set up autonomous governments and then in

November awarded Hungary the 4,600 square miles north of the Danube taken from it in 1919.

On March 13, 1939, Gestapo officers carried the Slovak leader Monsignor Jozef Tiso off to

Berlin and deposited him in the presence of the Führer, who demanded that the Slovaks

declare their independence at once. Tiso returned to Bratislava to inform the Slovak Diet that

the only alternative to becoming a Nazi protectorate was invasion. They complied. All that

remained to the new president in Prague, Emil Hácha, was the core region of Bohemia and

Moravia. It was time, said Hácha with heavy sarcasm, “to consult our friends in Germany.”

There Hitler subjected the elderly, broken-spirited man to a tirade that brought tears, a fainting

spell, and finally a signature on a “request” that Bohemia and Moravia be incorporated into the

Reich. The next day, March 16, German units occupied Prague, and Czechoslovakia ceased to

exist.

TECHNOLOGY, STRATEGY, AND THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

REARMAMENT AND TACTICAL PLANNING

The Anglo-French defection from east-central Europe doomed the balance of power of interwar

Europe. That the Western powers were unwilling and unable to defend the balance was in part

the product of inadequate military spending and planning over the course of the decade. Still,

decisions were taken in the last 24 months of peace that would shape the course of World War

II.
The central problem posed for all defense establishments was how to respond to the lessons of

the 1914–18 stalemate. The British simply determined not to send an army to the Continent

again, the French to turn their border into an impregnable fortress, and the Germans to perfect

and synthesize the tactics and technologies of the last war into a dynamic new style of warfare:

the Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”). Blitzkrieg was especially suited to a country whose geostrategic

position made likely a war on two fronts and dictated an offensive posture: a Schlieffen solution

made plausible by the internal-combustion engine. Whether or not Hitler actually planned for

the type of war with which the general staff was experimenting is debatable. Perhaps he only

made a virtue of necessity, for the Nazis had by no means created a full war economy in the

1930s. Since Blitzkrieg attacks by tank columns, motorized infantry, and aircraft permitted the

defeat of enemies one by one with lightning speed, it required only “armament in width,” not

“armament in depth.” This in turn allowed Hitler to mollify the German people with a “guns and

butter” economy, with each new conquest providing the resources for the next. Blitzkrieg also

allowed Hitler to conclude that he might successfully defy other Great Powers whose combined

resources dwarfed those of Germany. After Munich, German rearmament accelerated. Hitler

may have been right to launch his war as soon as possible, on the calculation that only by

seizing the resources of the entire continent could the Reich prevail against the British Empire

or the Soviet Union.

After Versailles the British government had established the Ten-Year Rule as a rationale for

holding down military spending: Each year it was determined that virtually no chance existed of

war breaking out over the next decade. In 1931 expenditures were cut to the bone in response
to the worldwide financial crisis. The following year, in response to Japanese expansion, the

Ten-Year Rule was abolished, but Britain did not make even a gesture toward rearmament until

1935. These were “the years the locust hath eaten,” said Churchill. Understandably, British

strategy fixed on the imperial threats from Japan and Italy and envisioned the dispatch of the

Mediterranean fleet to Singapore. But Britain’s defensive posture, budgetary limits, and

underestimation of Japan’s capabilities, especially in the air, made for a desultory buildup in

battleships and cruisers rather than aircraft carriers. The British army in turn was tied up in

garrisoning the empire; only two divisions were available for the Continent.

After March 1936 the Defence Requirements Committee recognized that home air defense

must become Britain’s top priority and commanded development of a high-speed, single-wing

fighter plane. But two years passed before Sir Warren Fisher finally persuaded the Air Ministry

to concentrate on fighter defense in its Scheme M, adopted in November 1938. At the time of

Munich, therefore, the Royal Air Force possessed only two squadrons of Spitfires and

Hurricanes, lacked oxygen masks sufficient to allow pursuit above 15,000 feet, and had barely

begun deployment of that new wonder, radar. Only after Hitler’s occupation of Prague was

conscription reinstated (April 27, 1939) and a continental army of 32 divisions planned.

Throughout the era of appeasement the British expected to resist Japan and come to terms

with Germany. Instead, by dint of the mistaken choices in naval technology and the eleventh-

hour attention to air defense, Britain would be humiliated by Japan and withstand Germany.
Of all the Great Powers, France most expected the next war to resemble the last and so came

to rely on the doctrine of the continuous front, the Maginot Line, and the primacy of infantry

and artillery. The Maginot Line was also a function of French demographic weakness vis-à-vis

Germany, especially after military service was cut to one year in 1928. This siege mentality was

the polar opposite of the French “cult of the attack” in 1914 and ensured that Colonel Charles

de Gaulle’s 1934 book depicting an all-mechanized army of the future would be ignored. As late

as 1939 the French war council insisted that “no new method of warfare has been evolved since

the termination of the Great War.” Even though French military spending held steady through

the Depression, France’s army and air force were ill-designed and not deployed for offense or

mobile defense, even if their aged and hidebound commanders had had the will to conduct

them.

Soviet preparations and technical choices also presaged the defeats to come in the early years

of the war. Communist doctrine decreed that matériel, not generalship, was decisive in war,

and Stalin’s Five-Year plans concentrated on steel, technology, and weapons. Soviet planners

also benefited from the work of some outstanding aviation designers, whose experimental

planes broke world records and whose fighters performed well in the early days of the Spanish

war. But Stalin’s obsession with domestic security outweighed rational planning for national

security. In 1937 Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and his weapons research teams were

liquidated or consigned to the gulag.Then Stalin ordered the 1936-vintage fighter planes into

mass production at the very time the Germans were upgrading their Messerschmidts. The

Soviets were sufficiently impressed by Douhet’s theories to invest in heavy bombers that would
be of marginal use against a Blitzkrieg and defenseless without fighter cover. Stalin’s advisers

also misunderstood the use of tanks, placing them in the front line rather than in mobile

reserves. These mistakes almost spelled the death of Bolshevism in 1941.

Little need be said of Italian preparations. Italy’s industrial base was so small, and its leaders so

inept, that Mussolini had to order local Fascists to make a visual count of airplanes on fields

around the country to contrive an estimate of his air strength. In August 1939, Ciano appealed

to Mussolini not to join Hitler in unleashing war, given the deplorable state of Italian armed

forces. This apprehensiveness was shared by the Italian generals and indeed by most military

leaders of the 1930s. The Great War had revealed the vanity of planning, the vagaries of

technical change, and the terrible cost of industrial war. In 1914 the generals had pushed for

war while civilian leaders hung back; in the 1930s the roles were reversed. Only in Japan, which

had won easy victories at little cost in 1914, did the military push for action.

POLAND AND SOVIET ANXIETY

Hitler’s cynical occupation of Prague, giving the final lie to all his peaceful protestations after

Munich, prompted much speculation about the identity of his next victim: Romania with its oil

reserves, the Ukraine, Poland, or even the “Germanic” Netherlands, which suffered an invasion

scare in January? Chamberlain himself, offended in conscience and ego, attacked Hitler’s

mendacity and evident intention of dominating the continent by force. In a speech on March

17, 1939, he gave voice to the new conviction of “the man on the street” that Hitler could not

be trusted and must be stopped. Three days later Hitler renewed his demand for a “corridor
across the *Polish+ Corridor” to East Prussia and restoration of Danzig to the Reich. On the 22nd

he underscored his seriousness by forcing Lithuania to cede Memel (Klaipėda).

After 10 days of hand wringing, during which Colonel Beck repeated Poland’s opposition to

seeking help from Moscow, the British Cabinet declared a unilateral military guarantee of Polish

security on March 31, solemnized in a bilateral treaty on April 6. It seemed an extraordinary

turnaround in British policy: the apparent end of appeasement. In fact, it was a last desperate

effort by Chamberlain to preserve appeasement and teach Hitler to settle foreign disputes by

diplomacy, as at Munich, and not by force, as at Prague. But the pace of Fascist expansion was

irreversible and even contagious. Mussolini had grown irritable over Hitler’s succession of

coups and his own junior-partner status, so Italy occupied Albania on April 7 and expelled its

erstwhile client King Zog. Hitler, who reacted to the British guarantee with the oath, “I’ll cook

them a stew they’ll choke on!” renounced his 1934 pact with Poland and the Anglo-German

Naval Treaty on the 28th. Germany and Italy then turned their Axis into a military alliance

known as the Pact of Steel on May 22.

How could Britain and France ever make good on their pledges to defend Poland? British

planning called only for a naval blockade in the early stages of war, while the French (despite a

promise to attack) contemplated no action beyond French soil. The answer was that the Polish

guarantee was a military bluff unless the Red Army could somehow be enlisted. So finally, in

the late spring of 1939, the Western allies went in search of collaboration with Moscow.
Stalin had witnessed events during the era of appeasement with growing suspicion and moved

his pieces on the chessboard with deftness and cynicism. His overriding purpose was to deflect

the thrusts of Germany and Japan elsewhere or—if the U.S.S.R. were forced to fight—make

certain that the Western powers were likewise engaged. German reoccupation of the

Rhineland had been a military setback, since it freed Germany for adventures to the east, but a

diplomatic boon, since it enhanced the value of the Soviet alliance for France. The Anti-

Comintern Pact had opened the terrible possibility for the Soviet Union of a war on two fronts,

but it soon developed that Berlin and Tokyo were both expecting the other to stand guard over

Russia while they pursued booty in central Europe and China respectively. Now Britain

and France were promising to fight Hitler over Poland, thereby handing Stalin the choice of

joining the Western powers in war or dealing separately with Germany to avoid conflict

entirely. Fearing that war might unleash rebellion at home, Stalin chose to become the greatest

appeaser of all.

It is often said that Munich forced Stalin to conclude that the Western powers were pushing

Nazi Germany to the east and thus reluctantly to consider rapprochement with Hitler. But one

might just as well interpret Litvinov’s passionate pleas for collective security as a ploy to

provoke conflict between Germany and the West while the U.S.S.R. huddled in safety behind its

Polish buffer. The incident that made possible the union of the two dictators, as historian Adam

Ulam has shown, was not Munich but the British guarantee of Poland. Before that act Stalin

faced the prospect of an unopposed German march into Poland, whereupon the U.S.S.R. would

be in mortal danger. After that act, Hitler could seize Poland only at the cost of war with the
West, whereupon Hitler would need the U.S.S.R. as an ally. The British guarantee thus made

Stalin the arbiter of Europe.

In a contest for Soviet friendship, however, the Allies were at a distinct disadvantage. All they

could offer Stalin was the likelihood of war, albeit in alliance with them. On May 3, Stalin

replaced Foreign Minister Litvinov, pro-Western and a Jew, with Vyacheslav Molotov—a clear

signal of his willingness to improve relations with the Nazis. The Western powers accordingly

stepped up their appeals to Moscow for an alliance, but they faced two lofty hurdles. First,

Stalin demanded the right to occupy the Baltic states and portions of Romania. While

Westerners could scarcely expect to enlist the Red Army in their cause without giving

something in return, they could not justify turning free peoples over to Stalinist tyranny.

Second, the Poles, as always, refused to invite the Red Army onto lands they had wrested from

that same army just 18 years before. By July, Stalin was also demanding that a military

convention precede the political one to ensure that he was not left in the lurch. Ironically, the

only ploy likely to persuade Stalin of Western sincerity was a blunt threat that the West would

not fight for Poland unless the U.S.S.R. participated.

Since the spring of 1939 the U.S.S.R. had been sending signals to Berlin that Hitler alternately

acknowledged and ignored. His hatred for the Moscow regime was overcome, however, by the

urgings of Ribbentrop and the unease of his generals. The Soviets, for their part, were again

fighting heavy battles along the Manchurian border and were in need of security in Europe.

Soviet bargaining power was enhanced by the fact that Hitler had a timetable: He had ordered
the invasion of Poland by August 26. Negotiations dragged on from July 18 to August 21, when

Hitler insisted that Stalin receive Ribbentrop and conclude their business two days hence. On

Aug. 23, 1939, therefore, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the German–Soviet Nonaggression

Pact in Moscow, then raised their glasses as Stalin, the leader of world Communism, toasted

the German people and their beloved Führer and vowed never to betray them. This

nonagression pact was in fact a pact of aggression against Poland, which was to be partitioned,

roughly along the old Curzon Line. Hitler also granted the U.S.S.R. a free hand in Finland, the

Baltic states, and Bessarabia.

Hitler expected that his successful wooing of Russia would oblige Britain and France to

withdraw their pledge to Poland. The free peoples were indeed shocked by the news from

Moscow, but far from succumbing, they steeled their will to resist. The world situation, so

cloudy since 1933, suddenly seemed clear, and scales fell from many eyes. The abstract and

often effete ideological debate over democratic decadence and the relative merits of Fascism

and Communism came suddenly to an end. Both vaunted ideologies now seemed so much lying

propaganda, and their patrons so many gangsters. The day after the pact Chamberlain wrote to

Hitler to warn that British resolve was as firm as ever, and on the 25th he signed a full alliance

with Poland. British determination and the news that Italy was not ready for war prompted

Hitler to delay his invasion a week in hopes of detaching Britain with promises of treaties and

guarantees of the British Empire. When Chamberlain refused, Hitler demanded that a Polish

plenipotentiary be sent to Berlin on August 30 to settle the matter of Danzig and the Polish

Corridor. Should the Poles refuse, their obstinacy might give London an excuse to leave them to
their fate. Colonel Beck, however, had seen the fate of Schuschnigg and Hácha, and he would

not submit to a Hitlerian kidnapping or to another Munich. When Hitler’s ultimatum expired,

the German army staged a border incident and invaded Poland in force on the morning of Sept.

1, 1939. The British and French parliaments, confident that their governments had turned every

stone in search of peace, declared war on Germany on September 3.

HITLER’S WAR OR CHAMBERLAIN’S?

For two decades after 1939, German guilt for the outbreak of World War II seemed

incontestable. The Nürnberg war-crimes trials in 1946 brought to light damning evidence of

Nazi ambitions, preparations for war, and deliberate provocation of the crises over Austria, the

Sudetenland, and Poland. Revelation of Nazi tyranny, torture, and genocide was a powerful

deterrent to anyone in the West inclined to dilute German guilt. To be sure, there were bitter

recriminations in France and Britain against those who had failed to stand up to Hitler, and the

United States and the U.S.S.R. alike were later to invoke the lessons of the 1930s to justify Cold

War policies: Appeasement only feeds the appetite of aggressors; there must be “no more

Munichs.” Nonetheless, World War II was undeniably Hitler’s war, as the ongoing publication of

captured German documents seemed to prove.

The British historian A.J.P. Taylor challenged the thesis of sole Nazi guilt in 1961, coincidently

the same year in which Fritz Fischer revived the notion of German guilt for World War I. Taylor

boldly suggested that Hitler’s “ideology” was nothing more than the sort of nationalist ravings

“which echo the conversation of any Austrian cafe or German beer-house”; that Hitler’s ends
and means resembled those of any “traditional German statesman”; and that the war came

because Britain and France dithered between appeasement and resistance, leading Hitler to

miscalculate and bring on the accident of September 1939. Needless to say, revisionism on a

figure so odious as Hitler sparked vigorous rebuttal and debate. If Hitler had been a traditional

statesman, then appeasement would have worked, said some. If the British had been

consistent in appeasement—or resisted earlier—the war would not have happened, said

others.

Fischer’s theses on World War I were also significant, for, if Germany at that earlier time was

bent on European hegemony and world power, then one could argue a continuity in German

foreign policy from at least 1890 to 1945. Devotees of the “primacy of domestic policy” even

made comparisons between Hitler’s use of foreign policy to crush domestic dissent and similar

practices under the Kaiser and Bismarck. But how, critics retorted, could one argue for

continuity between the traditional imperialism of Wilhelmine Germany and the fanatical racial

extermination of Nazi Germany after 1941? At bottom, Hitler was not trying to preserve

traditional elites but to destroy the domestic and international order alike.

Soviet writers tried, without success, to draw a convincing causal chain between capitalist

development and Fascism, but the researches of the British Marxist T.W. Mason exposed the

German economic crisis of 1937, suggesting that the timing of World War II was partly a

function of economic pressures. Finally, Alan Bullock suggested a synthesis: Hitler knew where

he wanted to go—his will was unbending—but as to how to get there he was flexible, an
opportunist. Gerhard Weinberg’s exhaustive study of the German documents then confirmed a

neo-traditional interpretation to the effect that Hitler was bent on war and Lebensraum and

that appeasement only delayed his gratification.

Publication of British and French documents, in turn, enabled historians to sketch a subtler

portrait of appeasement. Chamberlain’s reputation improved during the 1970s as American

historians, conscious of U.S. overextension in the world and sympathetic to détente with the

Soviets, came to appreciate the plight of Britain in the 1930s. Financial, military, and strategic

rationalizations, however, could not erase the gross misunderstanding of the nature of the

enemy that underlay appeasement. The British historian Anthony Adamthwaite concluded in

1984 that despite the accumulation of sources the fact remains that the appeasers’

determination to reach agreement with Hitler blinded them to reality. If to understand is not to

forgive, neither is it to give the past the odour of inevitability. Hitler wanted war, and Western

and Soviet policies throughout the 1930s helped him to achieve it.

WORLD WAR II, 1939–45

War once again broke out over nationality conflicts in east-central Europe, provoked in part by

a German drive for continental hegemony, and it expanded, once again, into a global conflict

whose battle zones touched the waters or heartlands of almost every continent. The total

nature of World War II surpassed that of 1914–18 in that civilian populations not only

contributed to the war effort but also became direct targets of aerial attack. Moreover, in 1941

the Nazi regime unleashed a war of extermination against Slavs, Jews, and other elements
deemed inferior by Hitler’s ideology, while Stalinist Russia extended its campaign of terror

against the Ukrainians to the conquered Poles. The Japanese-American war in the Pacific also

assumed at times the brutal aspect of a war between races. This ultimate democratization of

warfare eliminated the age-old distinction between combatants and non-combatants and

ensured that total casualties in World War II would greatly exceed those of World War I and

that civilian casualties would exceed the military.

Once again the European war devolved into a contest between a German-

occupied Mitteleuropa and a peripheral Allied coalition. But this time Italy abandoned

neutrality for the German side, and the Soviet Union held out in the east, while France

collapsed in the west. Hence Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin took France’s place in meetings of the

“Big Three,” together with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The Japanese chose to

remain neutral vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R., while the Grand Alliance of anti-Fascist states simmered

with conflicts over strategy and war aims. World War II, therefore, comprised several parallel or

overlapping wars, while the war in Europe became a kind of three-way struggle among the

forces of democracy, Nazism, and Communism. As soon as German and Japanese power were

effaced, the conflicts among the victors burst into the open and gave birth to the Cold War.

World War II completed the destruction of the old Great Power system, prepared the

disintegration of Europe’s overseas empires, and submerged Europe itself into a world arena

dominated by the Soviet Union and the United States.

THE LAST EUROPEAN WAR, 1939–41

POLAND AND THE NORTHERN WAR

At first glance Germany might have seemed the underdog in the war launched by Hitler. The

Wehrmacht numbered 54 active divisions, compared to 55 French, 30 Polish, and two British

divisions available for the Continent. But the combination of German Blitzkrieg tactics, French

inactivity, and Russian perfidy doomed Poland to swift defeat. The German army command

deployed 40 of its divisions, including all six panzer (armoured) divisions and two-thirds of its

3,500 aircraft in the east. The so-called Siegfried Line in the west, manned by 11 active divisions

and reserve units as they became available, sufficed to block a French advance. Beginning on

September 1, 1939, General Fedor von Bock’s northern army corps pinched off the Polish

Corridor from East Prussia and Pomerania, while General Gerd von Rundstedt’s more powerful

southern army corps drove across the border from Silesia and Slovakia. Polish Marshal Edward

Śmigły-Rydz tried vainly to defend Poland’s industrial regions along the frontier, increasing his

army’s vulnerability to Blitzkrieg. German tanks quickly burst into the rear, while dive-bombing

Stukas disrupted Polish supply and reinforcements. The Polish air force was destroyed in 48

hours. Within a week two panzer corps advanced 140 miles to the outskirts of Warsaw and the

Bug River line to the south. Śmigły-Rydz’s order for a general retreat on the 10th came too late;

most Polish forces were already outflanked on the north by General Heinz Guderian’s rapid

thrust to Brest-Litovsk and on the south by Paul von Kleist’s panzers advancing from Lvov. On

September 17 the pincers closed, the Soviet army invaded from the east, and the Polish

government fled to Romania, whence it made its way to London as the first of many European

governments-in-exile. The Warsaw garrison surrendered on the 27th.

In a protocol of May 15, 1939, the French had promised to take the offensive two weeks after

mobilization. Instead, General Maurice Gamelin contented himself with a brief sortie into the

Saar, after which the French withdrew to the Maginot Line. The regime most upset by the

German walkover in Poland was Hitler’s new ally, the Soviets. On September 10, Stalin ordered

partial mobilization and loudly boasted of the Red Army’s “three million men.” Since a callup of

reserve troops was scarcely needed merely to occupy Moscow’s share of Poland under the

German-Soviet pact, this maneuver must have reflected Stalin’s fear that the Germans might

not stop at the prearranged line. Stalin told the German ambassador on September 25: “In the

final settlement of the Polish question anything that in the future might create friction between

Germany and the Soviet Union must be avoided.” Three days later Molotov signed a new

agreement granting Germany a somewhat larger share of Poland as well as extensive Soviet

trade in return for a free hand in Lithuania. Only after this second German-Soviet pact did

Communist parties in the West fully embrace their new Nazi ally and oppose Western military

resistance to Hitler. Henceforth, Stalin was a fearful and solicitous neighbour of the Nazi

empire, and he moved quickly to absorb the regions accorded him. By October 10, Latvia,

Lithuania, and Estonia had been forced to accept Soviet occupation. When Finland resisted

Soviet demands for border rectifications and bases, Stalin ordered the Red Army to attack on

November 30. He expected a lightning victory of his own that would impress Hitler and increase

Soviet security in the Baltic. Instead, the Finns resisted fiercely in this “Winter War,” holding the

fortified Mannerheim Line in the south and cutting off the road-bound Soviet columns in the

north with their mobile ski troops. The disorganized Red Army, by contrast, showed the effect
of the recent military purges. In some cases only the machine guns of NKVD (political police)

units kept the soldiers at the front. Soviet military prestige suffered a devastating blow.

No major fighting broke out in the West during this period, sardonically dubbed the “Sitzkrieg,”

or “Phony War.” After the fall of Poland, while hope still existed that a repetition of World War I

might be avoided, Hitler sought to persuade Britain to renege on its commitment to Poland’s

defense. In secret contacts and in his “Peace Address” to the Reichstag of October 6 he even

hinted at the possibility of restoring a rump Polish state. The Chamberlain Cabinet, betrayed so

often by Hitler, refused to acknowledge the demarches, however, and Hitler ordered

preparations for an attack in the west by November 12. The army high command protested

vigorously against a winter campaign, and bad weather did force a postponement first to

January 1940 and then to the spring. Since the French and British were loath to take initiative,

the Phony War dragged on. Gamelin’s lame proposal of an advance through the Low Countries

was moot given the Dutch and Belgian commitments to neutrality. Combat occurred only at

sea. In 1939 alone Germany’s U-boats sank 110 merchant vessels as well as the aircraft

carrier Courageous (September 17) and the battleship Royal Oak (October 14). The battle

cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and pocket battleship Deutschland eluded British pursuit

and returned safely to port. The Graf Spee, however, caught in the South Atlantic, sank nine

merchantmen before sustaining damage from British cruisers. It then put in at Montevideo,

Uruguay, causing a diplomatic crisis for the South American states. The naval situation,

therefore, came quickly to resemble that of World War I, with the British fleet maintaining a
distant blockade in the North Sea and the Germans waging a submarine war against British

shipping.

The Russo-Finnish War, however, suggested that Scandinavia might provide a theatre in which

to strike a blow at the German-Russian alliance. Beyond the feckless expulsion of the Soviet

Union from the League of Nations on December 14, Britain and France contemplated helping

the brave Finns—even at the risk of war with Russia—and perhaps cutting the flow of Swedish

iron to Germany. The French wanted to send several divisions to Narvik in Norway and thence

by land to Finland. The British demurred at such a violation of neutral rights, but Churchill, now

first lord of the Admiralty, insisted that “humanity, rather than legality, must be our guide.” In

the event, the Allies dithered (as did the United States, which debated granting a loan to

Finland, the only nation to pay interest on its World War I debt) until a massive Soviet offensive

broke the Mannerheim Line in February. Stalin had given a hint of the future by setting up a

Finnish Democratic Republic during the war, under the Comintern agent Otto Kuusinen, but he

settled for a treaty with Helsinki on March 12, 1940, in which Finland ceded the Karelian

isthmus and leased a naval base to the U.S.S.R. on the Hangö peninsula.

The Finnish fiasco toppled Daladier’s government in favour of a Cabinet under Paul Reynaud.

He and Neville Chamberlain hoped at least to deny the Germans possible U-boat bases by

mining or occupying Norwegian ports. But the German navy, too, had persuaded Hitler of the

strategic importance of Norway, and on April 9, the day after British minelaying began, the

Germans suddenly seized the ports from Oslo to Narvik in a brilliant sea and air operation, and
occupied Denmark by Blitzkrieg. British troops contested Norway and managed to capture

Narvik on May 27, but by then greater events were unfolding on the Continent. The British

evacuated Narvik on June 6, and Vidkun Quisling’s collaborationists assumed control of Norway.

THE WESTERN FRONT

The Allies’ bungling in Scandinavia lost Chamberlain the confidence of Parliament, and King

George VI selected Winston Churchill to head the War Cabinet. In the first of many ringing

speeches that would sustain the British spirit, Churchill told his nation: “I have nothing to offer

but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

In eight months of warfare all the belligerents had vastly expanded their frontline strength. In

May 1940 the German army concentrated 134 divisions on the Western front, including 12

panzer divisions, 3,500 tanks and 5,200 warplanes. The French army totalled 94 divisions, the

British 10, and the neutral Belgians and Dutch 22 and eight respectively. The French army

possessed some 2,800 tanks, but less than a third were concentrated in armoured units. The

French air force, disrupted during the Popular Front, was in any case antiquated, and 90

percent of the artillery dated from World War I. More important, French morale was low,

sapped by the memory of the first war’s carnage, by political decadence, and by over-reliance

on the Maginot Line. Britain’s Royal Air Force had become a prodigious force thanks to 1,700

new planes, but commanders were loath to deflect them from home defense to the Continent.

The German plan of attack in the west, meanwhile, had evolved since the previous autumn.

Originally favouring a Schlieffen-type attack with the mass concentrated on the right wing
in Belgium, the Führer had been won to General Erich von Manstein’s scheme for a panzer

attack through the rugged Ardennes Forest of southern Belgium and Luxembourg. Either route

bypassed the Maginot Line, but the latter plan took advantage of the panzer army’s ability to

pierce French defenses, disrupt the enemy rear, and split Allied forces in two. The concomitant

risk was that Allied counterattacks might pinch off and destroy the armoured spearheads at a

blow.

The German offensive struck with devastating effect on May 10. Within days the Dutch

surrendered. Göring’s Luftwaffe did not get the message and proceeded to devastate the

central city of Rotterdam, killing numerous civilians and sending a signal to the city of London.

Meanwhile, General Gerd von Rundstedt’s panzer army picked its way through the Ardennes

and emerged in force at Sedan. By May 20, German tanks reached the coast at Abbeville and

cut the Allied armies in two. On the 28th, King Leopold III instructed the Belgian army to

surrender, while the British government ordered Lord Gort, commanding the British

Expeditionary Force, to make for Dunkirk and prepare for evacuation by sea.

As the Blitzkrieg in Poland had shocked Stalin, so the German victory in France shocked

Mussolini. For 17 years he had preached the necessity and beauty of war, believing that a

neutral Italy would cease to be regarded as a Great Power and that he needed war in order to

fulfill his expansionist fantasies and permit the full triumph of Fascism at home. Yet in August

1939 he demanded from Germany 6,000,000 tons of coal, 2,000,000 tons of steel, and

7,000,000 tons of oil before he could honour the Pact of Steel. In fact, war preparations under
the corrupt and incompetent Fascists remained feeble, and during these months of

nonbelligerence, Mussolini himself took sick and at times even considered joining the Allies. On

March 18 he met Hitler at the Brenner Pass and was told that the Germans did not need him to

win the war but that he would be allowed to participate and thus escape second-rate status in

the Mediterranean. Still Mussolini tried to have it both ways, telling his military chiefs that Italy

would not fight Hitler’s war, but a “parallel war” to forge “a new Roman Empire.” In reality, he

would enter the war only when it seemed clear the Allies were finished and his regime would

not be put to the test.

That moment seemed to arrive in June 1940. With French defeat assured, Mussolini declared

war on France and Britain on the 10th. “The hand that held the dagger,” said President

Roosevelt, “has struck it into the back of its neighbor.” As Mussolini put it to Marshal Pietro

Badoglio, “All we need is a few thousand dead” to win a place at the peace conference. The

Italian offensive on the Alpine front met contemptuous resistance from the French—Italy’s

gains were measured literally in yards—but Mussolini was right about the proximity of victory.

With German forces streaming east and south, the French government fled on the 11th to

Bordeaux and debated three courses of action: request an armistice; transfer the government

to North Africa and fight on from the colonies; ask Germany for its terms and temporize. The

choice was complicated by a French promise to Britain not to exit the war without London’s

consent. Churchill, concerned that the French fleet not fall into German hands, went so far as to

offer Anglo-French political union on June 16. Reynaud wanted to continue the war but was

outvoted. He resigned on the 16th, whereupon the ancient Marshal Pétain asked for an
armistice. From London, General Charles de Gaulle broadcast a plea to the French people to

fight on and set about organizing Free French forces in France’s sub-Saharan colonies. But

the armistice was signed at Compiègne, in the same railway car used for the German armistice

of 1918, on June 22. The Germans occupied all of northern France and the west coast—60

percent of the country—and the rest was administered by Pétain’s quasi-Fascist

collaborationist regime at Vichy. The French navy and air force were neutralized. In another

meeting of dictators on the 18th, Hitler disappointed Mussolini with his talk of a mild peace lest

French forces be driven to defect to Britain. Instead, Pétain broke relations with London on July

4, following a British attack on the French fleet moored at Mers el-Kebir in Algeria. Hitler at

once toyed with the notion of winning the Vichy French to an active alliance, thrusting

Mussolini farther into the background.

Britain’s refusal to give up frustrated Hitler, especially since his ultimate goal—Lebensraum—

lay in the east. The chief of the army general staff quoted Hitler on May 21 as saying that “we

are seeking contact with Britain on the basis of partitioning the world.” But when the carrot

failed, Hitler tried the stick, authorizing plans on July 2 for Operation Sea Lion, the cross-

Channel invasion. Such an operation required complete air superiority, and Göring promised

that the Luftwaffe could smash British air defenses in four days. The Battle of Britain that

followed in August 1940 was a massive air duel between Germany’s 1,200 bombers and a

thousand fighter escorts and the RAF’s 900 interceptors. But the British Hurricanes and Spitfires

were technically superior to all the German fighters except the Me-109, which was restricted in

its range to the zone south of London. The British radar screen and ground control network
permitted British fighters to concentrate on each German attack. On September 7 Göring made

the fatal error of shifting the attack from airfields to London itself (in retaliation for a

September 4 raid on Berlin). For 10 days the blitz continued night and day over London, the

climax coming on the 15th when nearly 60 German planes were shot down. Two days later

Hitler granted that air superiority was not to be had and postponed Operation Sea Lion.

For a full year—June 1940 to June 1941—the British Empire fought on alone (though with

growing U.S. aid) against Germany, Italy, and the threat of Japanese action in Asia. Frustrated

on sea and in the air, Hitler pondered how his overwhelming land power might be used to

persuade Britain to call it quits. A Mediterranean strategy based on the capture of Gibraltar,

Malta, and the Suez Canal, did not seem likely to be decisive, nor did it satisfy the Nazis’ Blut

und Boden (“blood and earth”) lust for Lebensraum. To be sure, the Germans raised the

prospect of an occupation of Gibraltar numerous times with Franco, but the latter always found

an excuse to remain neutral. In fact, Franco knew that the Spanish were exhausted after their

civil war and that Spain’s Atlantic islands would be lost to the British if it joined the Axis. A

Catholic authoritarian, he was also contemptuous of the neo-pagan Fascists. After their last

meeting, Hitler confessed that he would rather have his teeth pulled than go through another

bout with Franco. Hitler also negotiated with Pétain in July and October 1940 and May 1941, in

hopes of enticing France into alliance. But Pétain, too, played a double game, pledging “genuine

collaboration” with Germany but reassuring the British that he sought a “cautious balance”

between the belligerents.

Hitler’s troublesome ally Italy, however, ensured that Germany would be involved in

complications to the south. On July 7, 1940, Ciano visited Hitler seeking approval for an

expansion of the war to Yugoslavia and Greece. The Führer instead encouraged the occupation

of Crete and Cyprus, which would further the war against Britain. But three days later Italy’s

inability to chase the British out of the Mediterranean became apparent when a British convoy

off Calabria bumped into an Italian force that included two battleships and 16 cruisers. The

Italian commander broke off the action after one hit on one of his battleships, whereupon the

Fascist air force arrived to bomb indiscriminately friend and foe alike, doing little damage to

either. Frustrated in the Balkans and at sea, Mussolini ordered his Libyan army to cross the

Western desert and conquer Egypt. This adventure soon turned to disaster.

THE EASTERN FRONT

The end of hostilities in western Europe also provoked a jockeying for position in eastern

Europe, where Stalin’s fear of the all-conquering Nazis had grown apace. In 1940 Germany

signed a pact with Romania for oil and arms transfers. Stalin then forced the Romanian

government to hand over Bessarabia and northern Bukovina (June 26, 1940), and

annexed Estonia, Latvia (July 12), and Lithuania (August 3) to the U.S.S.R. Hungary and Bulgaria

now demanded Romanian territories for themselves, but Hitler intervened to prevent

hostilities, lest Stalin see the chance to occupy the Romanian oil fields around Ploieşti.

The Treaty of Craiova (August 21) awarded the Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, and the so-

called Vienna Award by Hitler and Mussolini ceded northern Transylvania to Hungary.
Romania’s King Carol II abdicated in protest, General Ion Antonescu took power, and a German

military mission arrived in Bucharest on October 12.

The Romanian coup provoked Mussolini’s next rash act. “Hitler always faces me with faits

accomplis,” he raged. “This time I will pay him back in his own coin.” On October 13, Mussolini

ordered Marshal Badoglio to prepare the long-desired attack on Greece for two weeks hence.

He would declare his independence from Hitler and consummate his “parallel war.” On October

28, 1940, seven Italian divisions crossed the Albanian border into Greece, provoking Hitler’s

adjutant to record: “Führer enraged…this is revenge for Norway and France.” In fact,

Mussolini’s impetuous attack, combined with the reversals in Africa, would only ensure his

humiliation and utter dependence on his northern ally. For the Greek campaign was predictably

disastrous, given Italy’s bare numerical superiority and lack of planning and equipment, the

rough terrain, and the determination of the Greeks. On November 8, General Alexandros

Papagos counterattacked, and within a month the Greeks had turned the tables, occupying

one-third of Albania. Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas refused to let the British into Greece for

fear of provoking the Germans; indeed, he hoped to drive Italy out of the Balkans before

German help might arrive, and to induce Yugoslavia and Turkey to make common cause with

Greece against the Fascists.

The Balkan situation seriously interfered with Hitler’s evolving continental strategy. Ribbentrop

still hoped to persuade him that Britain could be induced to relent through diplomacy, and his

last achievement was the Tripartite (or Axis) Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan on
September 27, 1940. Presumably, this alliance would deflect U.S. attention from Europe,

threaten the U.S.S.R. with a war on two fronts, and thus drive the British to despair over the

prospect of facing Germany alone. But London stood firm, and Hitler grew impatient to get on

with his real chore of seizing a Ukrainian empire for the German master race. Upon his return

from unsuccessful conferences with Franco at Hendaye (October 23) and Pétain at Montoire

(24th), Hitler played host to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in Berlin (November 12–14).

Though Stalin had meticulously observed his pact with Hitler, their rivalry in the Balkans

strained relations. Hitler and Ribbentrop tried to persuade the Soviets to pursue their “natural

tendency” to expand in the direction of the Indian Ocean, but Molotov repeatedly interrupted

to ask the Germans why they were sending troops to Finland and Romania. These

conversations confirmed Hitler’s intention to turn his idle military machine to the east.

Conquest of the U.S.S.R. might serve now as both means and end, convincing the British of the

hopelessness of their situation, allowing Hitler to realize Nazi racist fantasies, and forging a

territorial basis for global empire. On December 18 he ordered the army to prepare Operation

Barbarossa by May 15, 1941.

This latest timetable, however, fell victim to Mussolini’s folly and the need to secure Germany’s

flank in the Balkans. German troops entered Romania on January 7, 1941, and Bulgaria on

February 27. But Italy’s disasters brought into question the very survival of the Fascist regime.

Mussolini made Badoglio a scapegoat and in November 1940 issued the first of his pitiful

appeals to Hitler to bail him out. At their Berghof meeting on January 20, 1941, Hitler informed

Mussolini of his plans to invade Greece. The death of Metaxas in the following days, in turn, led
the Greeks to accept a British expeditionary force. Accordingly, Hitler pressured Yugoslavia to

permit the passage of German troops, but air force officers in Belgrade staged a coup on March

27 and signed a treaty with Moscow. Furious over such defiance, Hitler ordered a Blitzkrieg for

April 6 that broke Yugoslav resistance in five days and overran Greece by the 22nd. Crete then

succumbed to a spectacular German airborne assault (May 20–31). Hitler set up puppet

regimes in Serbia and “Greater Croatia” and partitioned the rest of Yugoslavia among his client

states.

The Balkan campaign postponed “Barbarossa” for six weeks. This did not overly perturb Hitler,

who promised his generals victory within a month and denied the need to prepare for cold-

weather warfare in Russia. But some generals were skeptical of Blitzkrieg in the vastness of

Russia, while others debated whether to force narrow spearheads deep into Russia, emulating

the campaign in France, or fight classic battles of envelopment close to the frontier. Hitler’s

“infallible intuition” dictated the latter, lest his armies, like Napoleon’s, be sucked too deep into

Russia before enemy forces were destroyed. In the spring of 1941 the Wehrmacht assembled

4,000,000 men—the greatest invasion force in history—including 50 Finnish and Romanian and

207 German divisions armed with 3,300 tanks. They faced a Red Army of some 4,500,000 men

and perhaps 15,000 tanks. German success depended heavily on surprise, but preparations of

such magnitude could scarcely be hidden. Stalin seemed alive to the danger when he signed a

neutrality pact with Japan on April 13 (knowing of Japan’s preference for a southern strategy

from the espionage of Richard Sorge in Tokyo), then pleaded with Foreign Minister Matsuoka

Yosuke: “We must remain friends and you must now do everything to that end.” Yet Stalin also
redoubled his efforts to assure Hitler of his good intentions and discounted British warnings of a

German attack (they had been making such predictions since June 1940, and even the British

thought a German strike against Turkey or England more likely). Stalin may also have dismissed

the warnings as attempts to poison his relations with Germany. In any case, the Germans

achieved complete tactical surprise, while the Soviets’ forward deployments exposed them to

the full force of Blitzkrieg.

The Germans struck on June 22, 1941, along a 2,000-mile-front. Three army groups drove deep

into the Soviet Union, occupying vast territories and capturing huge numbers of Soviet troops.

But gradually the momentum deserted the invaders. Many myths surround the 1941 campaign.

It is said that the Germans were wrong in making for Moscow like Napoleon. But Moscow was

of far more military value in 1941 than in 1812; it was the hub of Soviet railroads,

communications, and government, and its capture might have crippled the Soviet effort to

reinforce the front from the Asian hinterland or have undermined the Communist regime. It is

also said that winter defeated the Germans. But they would have had ample time to reach

Moscow before winter had they not wasted almost two months in diversions and debate. It is

also said that the size of the Soviet Union made swift German victory impossible. But the

endless Russian plain actually aided the panzer armies by giving them limitless room to

maneuver and form the huge pockets that cost the Red Army 2,500,000 men in the first six

months. What did stop the Germans was their own dilatoriness, the mud and unpaved roads,

their underestimation of Soviet reserves and resilience, and the Nazis’ own brutality, which

alienated a population otherwise hostile to Stalinism.

By December 1941 the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. and the latter’s survival had confirmed

precisely that British hope which Hitler had meant to quash. The entry into the war of the

United States that same month made German defeat virtually certain—and also brought to a

close the last purely European war.

ORIGINS OF AMERICAN BELLIGERENCE

FROM NEUTRALITY TO ACTIVE AID

The outbreak of war brought a swift change of mood to the United States. While isolationism

was still widespread, the vast majority of Americans were sympathetic to Britain, and Roosevelt

did not follow Wilson in asking Americans to be neutral in thought as well as deed. Instead he

set out to lead public opinion and gradually expand his ability to aid the Allies. On September

21, 1939, his brilliant speech to Congress laid the groundwork for passage of the Pittman Bill,

which became law on November 4 and repealed the arms embargo on belligerent nations.

Henceforth, the United States might trade with Britain and France, but only on a “cash and

carry” basis. Senator Arthur Vandenberg rightly noted that the United States could not

“become the arsenal for one belligerent without becoming the target for another.” Still, the

President made clear to Churchill (with whom he struck up close relations by correspondence)

his desire to aid Britain in every way consonant with the American mood. Only once did

Roosevelt make a feint at mediation: In March 1940 he sent Undersecretary of State Sumner

Welles to Europe on a fact-finding mission that revealed “scant immediate prospect” of peace.

When Hitler’s Western offensive followed, even that dubious prospect disappeared, and
Churchill assured his House of Commons that Britain would fight on “until, in God’s good time,

the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the

Old.”

In January 1940, Roosevelt asked for a mere $2,000,000,000 in defense spending, a slight

increase over the year before. But the fall of France pushed the pace of U.S. rearmament up to

$10,500,000,000 by September. Opinion polls showed the American public heavily favouring a

policy of “all aid short of war” to Britain. On May 15, Churchill sought to capitalize on the

shifting sentiment with an emergency request for 40 or 50 overage destroyers with which to

counter German U-boats. Roosevelt hesitated because of the legal complications, while

continuing his efforts to shape opinion by encouraging William Allen White’s Committee to

Defend America to foster the idea that “Between Us and Hitler Stands the British Fleet!” On

September 2 the United States transferred 50 warships to Britain in return for long-term leases

on British naval bases in the Western Hemisphere. Despite Roosevelt’s public relations,

isolationist sentiment remained strong. On September 4 the America First Committee arose to

challenge Roosevelt’s deceptive campaign for intervention, and Wendell Willkie charged during

the presidential campaign that Roosevelt’s reelection would surely mean war. The president

responded that “your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars,” gliding over the fact

that if the United States were attacked, it would no longer be a foreign war.

The next step in U.S. involvement stemmed from Churchill’s warning of December 9, 1940, that

Britain was near bankruptcy. Roosevelt responded with lend-lease, a plan to “eliminate the
dollar sign” by lending, not selling, arms. If your neighbour’s house is on fire, he argued, you do

not sell him a hose, you lend it to him until the fire is out. “If Great Britain goes down,” he

warned, “all of us in the Americas would be living at the point of a gun…. We must be the great

arsenal of democracy.” Churchill added his own ringing appeal on February 9, 1941: “Give us

the tools and we will finish the job.” Willkie asked Republicans to back lend-lease, which

became law on March 11.

Unknown to the public, Roosevelt authorized joint U.S.–British staff talks. The two countries

also collaborated on how to meet the U-boat menace. Admiral Karl Dönitz’s wolfpack

technique, by which eight to 10 U-boats would strike a convoy from the surface at night

(thereby avoiding the British Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee device [ASDIC

sonar]), cost the British and Americans 320,048 tons of shipping in January 1941 and 653,960

tons in April. American Admiral Harold R. Stark considered the situation “hopeless except as

*the United States+ take strong measures to save it.” In Hemispheric Defense Plan No. 1 (April 2)

Roosevelt authorized the navy to attack German submarines west of 25° longitude and by

executive agreement with the Danish government-in-exile placed Greenland under American

protection (April 9). U.S. marines also occupied Iceland in July.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union posed the problem of whether to extend lend-lease to

the U.S.S.R. Only 35 percent of Americans polled favoured underwriting the Communist regime,

but Roosevelt, supporting his acting secretary of state, Sumner Welles, said “Of course we are

going to give all aid we possibly can to Russia,” on the theory that anything that contributed to
the defeat of Germany enhanced the security of the United States. Aid to the Soviet Union

began in July, and a formal agreement followed on August 2. But the initial supplies were too

meagre to affect the battles of 1941. Roosevelt meanwhile pressed for amendments to the

Selective Service Act to remove the ceiling of 900,000 men on U.S. armed forces and the ban on

use of troops beyond the Western Hemisphere and to permit the president to retain draftees in

service. This provoked the last great Congressional debate on isolationism versus

interventionism; the House passed the bill by a single vote on August 12.

It was during this debate that Roosevelt and Churchill met secretly off the coast of

Newfoundland and drafted a manifesto of the common principles that bound their two

countries and all free peoples. In this eight-point Atlantic Charter (announced on August 14),

reminiscent of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the signatories renounced territorial aggrandizement

and endorsed the restoration of self-government to all captured nations and equal access to

trade and raw materials for all. According to Churchill, Roosevelt also promised to “wage war

but not declare it” and to look for an incident that would justify open hostilities. When the

Congress voted on November 7 to arm merchant ships and allow them into the war zone, it

seemed that submarine warfare would again be casus belli for the United States. U-boats had

already torpedoed the destroyers Kearneyand Reuben James (the latter was attacking the

submarine, but sank with 115 hands on October 31). But in fact it took dramatic events in

another theatre altogether to make Roosevelt’s undeclared war official.

JAPAN’S CHALLENGE
When war broke out in Europe, the Japanese occupation of China was nearing its greatest

extent, and there was no sign of Chinese capitulation. Japan was understandably incensed

when its ally in the Anti-Comintern Pact, Germany, joined with Moscow at a time when the

Japanese were fighting the Soviets in Manchuria and Mongolia. On the other hand, the German

victories of 1940 made orphans of the French and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, including

mineral-rich Indochina and oil-rich Indonesia. These sources of vital raw materials were all the

more tempting after the United States protested Japan’s invasion of China by allowing its 1911

commercial treaty with Japan to expire in January 1940. Thereafter trade continued on a day-

to-day basis while U.S. diplomacy sought peaceful ways to contain or roll back Japanese power.

But the territorial and trade hegemony that Japan would come to term the “Greater East Asia

Co-Prosperity Sphere” in 1941 increasingly appeared to be a cover for brutal imperialism and

exclusionist trade policies. In June 1940, as France was crumbling, Japan insisted that the new

Vichy regime cut off the flow of supplies to China over Indochinese railways. The beleaguered

British, fearful of simultaneous war in Asia and Europe, also agreed to close down the Burma

Road to China for three months, isolating Chiang Kai-shek. Japanese militarists then arranged a

new government in Tokyo under the weak Konoe Fumimaro, expecting that Foreign

Minister Matsuoka and War Minister Tōjō Hideki would dominate. On July 27 the Cabinet

decided to ally with the Axis and strike into Southeast Asia even as it sought to resume normal

trade with the United States.

Japanese assertion posed a dilemma for Washington. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and

Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., believed an embargo on oil and scrap iron would
cripple the Japanese war machine, but Secretary of State Cordell Hull feared an embargo would

provoke Japan into seizing Southeast Asia. On July 26, 1940, after lengthy debate, the United

States banned export of high-grade scrap iron and aviation fuel to Japan. On August 1, Japan

forced Vichy to permit a limited occupation of northern Indochina, and the following month it

signed the Tripartite (Axis) Pact in which Germany, Italy, and Japan pledged aid to each other

should any be attacked by a power not at present involved in the Pacific War (i.e., the United

States). But this act of defiance only stoked American indignation. In November, Roosevelt

approved a loan of $100,000,000 to the Nationalist Chinese and began to allow American pilots

to volunteer for Chinese service in Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers. In December and January all

forms of iron, copper, and brass were added to the embargo.

Civilian government had eroded in Japan until censorship, propaganda, and intimidation

overwhelmed moderates and placed policy in the hands of militarists devoted to traditional

Japanese exclusivism, xenophobia, and the Bushidō code of combat. Of the latter mentality

Americans had barely a clue, just as the Japanese looked upon Western notions of self-

determination and the Open Door as so much hypocrisy. But although reciprocal

misunderstanding and racialist thinking inhibited the quest for peace in the Pacific, Japan’s

determination to carve out an Asian empire was clearly the source of the crisis, while American

policy was essentially reactive.

The latest U.S. trade restrictions sparked the final peace initiative of the moderate faction

composed of Konoe and leading Japanese industrialists. Two American Catholic missionaries
served as intermediaries for an alleged Japanese offer to evacuate China and break the

Tripartite Pact in return for normal trade with the United States. This was exactly what

Roosevelt wanted, and he urged that the offer be placed in writing. A new Japanese

ambassador, Nomura Kichisaburo, then arrived in Washington and met privately with Hull 40

times after March 1941. On April 9 the Catholic missionaries delivered a written offer, but it

contained no promise of troop withdrawals and instead asked the United States to cut off aid to

China. Hull clearly informed Nomura that any accord must be founded on four principles:

respect for territorial integrity, noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries,

commercial equality, and respect for the status quo in the Pacific. Nomura unfortunately failed

to understand and reported that the United States had accepted the April 9 proposal. The

Tokyo Cabinet then drafted an even tougher note as a basis for negotiation, prompting Hull to

conclude that the Japanese were incorrigible.

Meanwhile, the Japanese military debated the merits of a northern advance against the Soviet

Union’s maritime provinces or a southern advance against the French, Dutch, and British

colonies. The Russo-Japanese neutrality pact of April 1941 indicated a southern advance, but

the German invasion of the Soviet Union indicated a northern one. The course of the war—and

the survival of the U.S.S.R.—hung in the balance. Heretofore, Hitler had been at pains to keep

Japan out of his Soviet sphere of influence, but at the height of German success in the Soviet

Union, Hitler suggested to Ambassador Oshima Hiroshi that the two join forces to liquidate the

Soviet empire, a plan endorsed by Matsuoka. If Hitler meant it, he was too late, for the Cabinet

in Tokyo decided again after the invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22) to exploit German
victories rather than take part in them. The Japanese army and navy would move south and

establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Emperor endorsed the plan on July 2,

and the Americans, having broken the Japanese code with the MAGIC process, knew of the

decision at once. On July 26, Japan occupied all of French Indochina, and the United States

impounded Japanese assets. On September 5, Hull sanctioned a complete embargo on

petroleum.

Japan now faced a choice of abandoning all the conquests made since 1931 or seizing the

necessary war matériel to defend its empire. Konoe tried desperately to reverse the tide and

requested a summit meeting with Roosevelt. But Roosevelt, on Hull’s advice, insisted on prior

Japanese acceptance of the four principles. Konoe was obliged on September 7 to make a deal

with his militarists: He could try once more for an agreement, but if the United States did not

relent by early October, Konoe would then support the military solution. When the deadlock

was confirmed Konoe in fact resigned on October 16, and Tōjō became prime minister. The

veteran diplomat Kurusu Saburo then flew to Washington with two final options, Plan A and

Plan B. The latter held out some hope, since in it Japan at least promised to make no military

moves to the south. But MAGIC deciphered a cable revealing the secret deadline of November

29, while the British, Dutch, and Chinese vetoed any modus vivendi that left Japan a free hand

in China. On November 27, American warnings of war were dispatched to the Pacific, and on

December 1 a Japanese Imperial conference ratified Tōjō’s conclusion that “Japan has no other

way than to wage war…to secure its existence and self-defense.”

The final diplomatic exchanges were superfluous, but they included a 10-part American note of

November 26 and Roosevelt’s personal appeal to the Emperor on December 6. That same day a

13-part Japanese reply arrived in Washington, which MAGIC deciphered even before the

Japanese embassy did. That war was imminent was clear; where the first blow would fall was

not. On Sunday, December 7, a 14th part arrived, which the Japanese embassy was slow in

translating and typing. By the time the diplomats arrived at Hull’s office at 2:00 PM, news of the

treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, had already arrived. Hull delivered his opinion of

Japanese diplomacy in vitriolic terms and told the ambassadors to get out. The following day

Roosevelt named it “a day which will live in infamy” and asked Congress for a declaration of

war.

Revisionist historians have argued that Roosevelt should have known of the danger of Japanese

attack from the secret intercepts and reports of Japanese fleet movements, or that he did know

and purposely suppressed the information so that the United States might enter the European

war, unified and irate, “through the back door.” To be sure, American blunders marked the final

years of neutrality, and a cover-up of those blunders may have occurred. But certainly no one

forced the Japanese to make a direct attack on U.S. territory, nor did anyone expect an attack

so bold as that on Hawaii. Nor did the Congress even take that opportunity to enter the

European war. That was accomplished on December 11, when Hitler and Mussolini, honouring

the Tripartite Pact, declared war on the United States. Hitler considered the “half-Judaized and

half-negrified” Americans to be of little military account, especially since, he believed, the

Japanese war would prevent U.S. intervention in Europe. His gratuitous declaration of war was

in fact a folly surpassing Ludendorff’s provocations of the United States in 1917.

Japan’s war plan was marked by operational brilliance but strategic folly. The notion that Japan

could take on the British Empire and the United States at the same time, and win, was the

equivalent (in the Japanese simile for courage) of “jumping with eyes closed off the veranda of

Kiyomizu Temple.” Still, Admiral Yamamoto devised a bold campaign to destroy Allied striking

power for the foreseeable future, whereupon the Americans would presumably sue for peace.

He assigned all six of his aircraft carriers to a surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl

Harbor. The rest of the navy—eight battleships, four auxiliary carriers, 20 cruisers, and 112

destroyers—was earmarked for the south, together with 11 infantry divisions and 795 planes.

The first force struck at dawn, its dive-bombers penetrating Pearl Harbor’s defenses through

the mountain passes of Oahu. They sank four of eight U.S. battleships, damaged four others,

sank or disabled 10 other ships and 140 planes, and killed 2,330 troops. By chance, the three

U.S. aircraft carriers were at sea and escaped destruction. A second Japanese force destroyed

50 percent of the U.S. aircraft in the Philippines, landed on Luzon on December 10, took Manila

on January 2, 1942, and drove the remaining U.S. and Filipino forces into redoubts on the

Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island. The Japanese also bombed Hong Kong on December 8,

took the British outpost from the mainland on the 25th and occupied Bangkok on December 9

and southern Burma on the 16th. Most damaging to the British were the Japanese landings in

Malaya after December 8 and the advance through the jungle to Singapore. This mighty

fortress, considered impregnable, was the keystone of British strategy in Asia, and Churchill had
ordered out the battleship Prince of Wales and battle cruiser Repulse in the expectation of

intimidating the Japanese. Instead, Japanese aircraft sank the two ships on December 10. On

February 9, 1942, three Japanese divisions overran Singapore, whose defenses were directed

seaward, and captured the 90,000-man force. The fall of Singapore crippled British

communications and naval power in Asia.

Supporting the assault on the Philippines, the Japanese bombed Wake Island on December 8

and overcame fierce resistance from the tiny U.S. garrison on December 23. By February 10,

Guam and Tarawa in the Gilberts and Rabaul and Gasmata on New Britain were occupied. Japan

was now master of a vast empire stretching from Manchuria to the East Indies and the border

of India deep into the western Pacific.

THE TURNING POINT, 1942

Within a year after American entry into the war Axis power crested and began to ebb, for

critical battles were fought in 1942 in every major theatre. The year also saw the forging of a

Grand Alliance among the United States, Britain, and the U.S.S.R. and the first sign of

disagreement on strategy and war aims.

After Pearl Harbor, Churchill requested an immediate conference with Roosevelt. The two met

for three weeks at the Arcadia Conference in Washington after December 22, 1941. They

reaffirmed the “Europe first” strategy and conceived “Gymnast,” a plan for Anglo-American

landings in North Africa. They also created a Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee and issued,
on January 1, 1942, the United Nations Declaration in the spirit of the Atlantic Charter. But Sir

Anthony Eden had traveled to Moscow in late December and returned with troubling news:

Stalin demanded retention of all the territory gained under the German–Soviet Nonaggression

Pact and grumbled that the Atlantic Charter was apparently directed against him, not Hitler.

The Soviets also first made what was to become their incessant demand that the Allies open a

second front in France to take the pressure off the Red Army. Roosevelt sent Army Chief of

Staff George C. Marshall to London to argue for a cross-Channel invasion by April 1943, but the

British deemed it impossible. London reassured Molotov by concluding an Anglo-Soviet alliance

(May 26, 1942) to last for 20 years. In late June, Churchill and Roosevelt met again in

Washington, D.C., and confirmed plans for a joint operation in Africa despite the misgivings of

American generals, who suspected the British of being more concerned for the defense of their

empire than the rapid defeat of Hitler. In the end the British won, and on July 25 the Allies

approved the renamed operation “Torch”—a combined invasion of North Africa planned for the

autumn. Churchill then traveled to Moscow in August 1942, where Stalin berated him for

postponing the second front and suspending Arctic convoys because of German naval action.

Despite his suspicions and fears, Stalin could take grim satisfaction from the events of 1942, for

by December of that year the German advance into the Soviet Union had been stopped, though

at enormous cost.

The Allied landings in North Africa, where British forces had finally turned back General Erwin

Rommel’s Afrika Korps at el-Alamein, were targeted for Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. (Hence,

the first American initiative in the war was to be an unprovoked and undeclared attack against
neutral territory.) Vichy France promptly severed diplomatic relations with Washington and

ordered French forces in North Africa to resist. Brief but serious fighting resulted at Oran and

Casablanca. The allies had been seeking a French leader with the prestige and willingness to

rally French Africa against the Axis, but the nominal commander was Admiral François Darlan,

an ardent collaborationist in the Vichy Cabinet. The Allies preferred General Henri Giraud, a

heroic escapee from a prison camp, but he insisted on being given command of the whole

Allied invasion force. When Darlan surprisingly turned up in Algiers, U.S. Ambassador Robert

Murphy negotiated a deal whereby Eisenhower recognized Darlan as political chief of North

Africa in return for Darlan’s ordering French forces to cease resistance. The Americans soon

escaped the embarrassment of having bargained with a leading Fascist when a French royalist

shot Darlan on December 24. De Gaulle was able to outmaneuver the vain but inept Giraud to

become de facto leader of Free French forces.

In the Pacific, the naval Battle of Midway in June, the landing of U.S. forces on Guadalcanal in

August, and the creation of an “island-hopping” strategy against Japan’s sudden and far-flung

empire similarly blunted the string of the Axis’ early victories. Meanwhile, General Douglas

MacArthur rallied Allied forces in Australia in anticipation of fulfilling his departing promise to

the Filipinos: “I shall return.” A Japanese invasion force landed near Gona at the southeastern

end of New Guinea in July 1942 and drove Australian troops back to within 32 miles of Port

Moresby. But MacArthur executed a series of landings behind the Japanese and secured the

entire Papuan coast by late January 1943. Thenceforth Japan, too, went on the strategic

defensive.
THE ECONOMIC AND SCIENTIFIC WARS

How could the Axis powers have imagined that they might win the war, given their narrow base

of land area, population, and production, and the size and strength of the enemies they

themselves forced into the war? The answer was Blitzkrieg, which involved more than simply a

set of tactics for mobile combat but was rather an encompassing theory of total war. The

theory posited a strategically mobilized and organized economy meant to avoid a repetition of

the war of attrition that wore Germany down in 1914–18. By overrunning their neighbours one

by one in swift assaults, the Germans constantly added to their own manpower and resource

base while shrinking that available to the enemy. In addition, armament in breadth rather than

depth provided the flexibility necessary to shift production from one set of weapons to another

depending on the needs of the next campaign, and it permitted constant innovation of

weapons systems. Most tellingly, Blitzkrieg shifted the burdens of war from Germany to the

conquered peoples. By June 1940 the British were unable to budge a Nazi empire that drew on

the resources of the entire continent. But Hitler also realized by late 1940 that all the resources

of America would eventually be made available to Britain; hence his decision to break the

stalemate by unleashing Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union. Soviet survival, however, turned

the Blitzkrieg into a gigantic war of attrition after all, one in which Germany could never prevail.

THE GERMAN ECONOMY AND THE JEWS

Cut off from foreign sources of capital, Germany paid for World War II through taxes and

ruthless exploitation of occupied regions. Levies on conquered peoples amounted to 40 percent

of the income raised by internal taxation, and 42 percent of that tribute came from France. The

number of slave labourers deployed by various arms of the regime peaked at 7,100,000 in

1944; this figure included prisoners of war and “racial enemies” condemned to slavery until

death in SS camps.

Seen only in cold economic terms, Nazi genocide against Jews and other groups, racially or

ideologically or otherwise defined, was the height of irrationality. As early as January 1939

Hitler gave vent to his pathological hatred and fear of the Jews before the Reichstag: “If the

international Jewish financiers…succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war the

result will be the obliteration of the Jewish race in Europe.” The war gave Hitler the opportunity

to seek a “final solution.” In 1939–40 the Nazis considered using Poland or Madagascar as

dumping grounds for Jews. But the invasion of the U.S.S.R. emboldened Hitler, Göring, and SS

leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to decide instead on mass extermination in

camps at Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. Large numbers of SS troops, as

well as railroads and rolling stock, were absorbed in capturing, transporting, and putting to

death as many as 12,000 Jews per day. The total by war’s end would reach 6,000,000, almost

half from Poland, and some 2,000,000 others including Gypsies, clergy, Communists, and other

resisters. SS troops accompanied the regular army into the Soviet Union in 1941 and made

racial war on the Slavs as well in order to prepare the farmlands of the Ukraine for German

settlement.
News of the Holocaust reached the West slowly but surely, although Auschwitz was able to

keep its monstrous secret for more than two years after the first gassings in May 1942. Richard

Lichtheim of the Jewish Agency in Geneva served as a conduit for information about what was

occurring in Nazi Europe, but his and others’ efforts to promote action on the part of the Allies

broke against political and practical barriers. The British, worried by the prospect of Arab revolt,

limited Jewish emigration to Palestine, while quotas elsewhere in the world meant that even

those Jews who managed to escape Europe sometimes had nowhere to go. Reports appearing

in Western newspapers inspired the Allies to make a declaration on December 17, 1942,

condemning “this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination,” and on January 22, 1944,

Roosevelt established a War Refugee Board “to forestall the plan of the Nazis to exterminate all

Jews and other minorities.” But the Allies were unable to take direct action of any sort until the

capture of Italy brought Allied bombers within range of the camps. Jewish leaders were then

misled by hints that the Germans might negotiate about the Jews. Finally, after June 1944,

when escapees confirmed the existence and nature of Auschwitz, the World Jewish Congress

requested bombing of the gas chambers. But the Allied Bomber Command judged that its

efforts should be directed only at military targets and that the best way of helping the Jews was

to hasten the defeat of Nazi Germany.

STRATEGIC BOMBING

Allied strategic bombing was the most deadly form of economic warfare ever devised and

showed another side of the indiscriminateness of industrial war. But in mid-1941 the British

Chiefs of Staff soberly concluded that morale, not industry, was Germany’s most vulnerable
point and ordered Sir Arthur Harris of the RAF Bomber Command to concentrate on “area

bombing” of cities. Churchill’s scientific adviser Professor L.A. Lindemann of Oxford (later Lord

Cherwell) concurred in April 1942 that one-third of all Germans could be rendered homeless in

15 months by strategic bombing of cities. The Royal Air Force accordingly assigned its new

Lancaster four-engine bombers to a total war on German civilians. After attacks on Lübeck and

the Ruhr, Harris sent a thousand planes against Cologne on May 30–31 in an attack that

battered one-third of the city. In 1943, after an interlude of bombing German submarine pens,

the Lancasters launched the Battle of the Ruhr totaling 18,506 sorties and the Battle of

Hamburg numbering 17,021. The fire raids in Hamburg killed 40,000 people and left a million

homeless. The Royal Air Force then hit Berlin (November 1943 to March 1944) with 20,224

sorties, avenging many times over all the damage done by the Luftwaffe to London.

By early 1943 the U.S. 8th Air Force joined in the air campaign but eschewed terror bombing. Its

B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators conducted daylight precision bombing of industrial

targets. As a result, they suffered heavy losses that climaxed in October 1943 over the

Schweinfurt ball-bearing plants, when the United States lost 148 bombers in a week. The Army

Air Forces suspended daylight sorties for months until the arrival of a long-range fighter, the P-

51 Mustang. Bombing then resumed and concentrated on the German oil industry, creating a

serious shortage that virtually grounded the Luftwaffe by the time of the D-Day invasion. The

effectiveness of strategic bombing is a subject of great debate, since German war production

actually increased over the years 1942–44. German engineers became masters at shielding

equipment, restoring it to operation in a matter of days, or even moving plants underground.

Nor did the German people crack under British devastation of their towns and homes. But the

air offensive did force the Germans to divert as many as 1,500,000 workers to the constant task

of rebuilding and established the Allied mastery of the air that permitted the success of the

Normandy landings.

ALLIED ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT

Britain was only in the early stages of rearmament when the war broke out, but after the fall of

France the transition to a World-War-I-type command economy was precipitous. Churchill

replaced some 60 interdepartment committees for war economics with the single Lord

President’s Committee under Sir John Anderson. Within 18 months Anderson organized the

most centralized and complete war mobilization of any nation. It included controls on trade,

foreign exchange, wages and prices, and raw materials. The National Service Act of December

1941 outdid even the U.S.S.R. by making every man under 50 and every woman under 30 liable

to government assignment. Of the 2,800,000 new war workers, 79 percent were female. The

state also cut consumer production to a minimum: 67 percent of the work force was employed

in war-related jobs. Once again, the British exercised financial responsibility by raising taxes,

deferring wages, and compelling savings.

Even before the war, and despite the Depression, the American gross national product (GNP) of

$88,600,000,000 dwarfed that of any other country. Under the impulse of war it increased by

1944 to $135,000,000,000, of which 40 percent was directed to military purposes. About 60

percent of all the munitions used by the Allies in 1944 was made in the United States. In
addition to arming its own immense air and sea forces, the United States provided

$32,500,000,000 in lend-lease support, including $13,500,000,000 to Britain and

$9,000,000,000 to the U.S.S.R. Total U.S. production included 300,000 aircraft, 51,400,000 tons

of shipping, 8,500,000 tons of warships, and 86,700 tanks. The government financed this

phenomenal buildup largely through war bonds in the early years and later through taxation.

The American war effort was also achieved without the rigid centralized control of Britain. In

January 1942 the War Production Board emerged, staffed with “dollar-a-year” volunteers from

business, while the Office of War Mobilization (May 1943) under James F. Byrnes served less as

a dictator than an umpire in matters involving labour, business, and the military.

The Soviet Union also made a stupendous economic effort in the war despite conditions as

difficult as the American ones were favourable. Within a few months in 1941 the U.S.S.R. lost to

the enemy over half its industrial capacity and richest farmland and countless skilled workers.

Yet the Soviets rebounded quickly, relocating over 1,300 factories to the Urals region in an

effort that involved perhaps 10,000,000 people. Coal, oil, electricity, and food never regained

prewar levels, but arms production boomed. The Soviets managed to turn out 136,800 aircraft

and 102,500 tanks by 1945, surpassing the Germans in both. The centrally directed Gosplan and

party apparatus, of course, had initiated a ruthless command economy as early as 1928, and

Soviet appeals to patriotism (as opposed to Marxism), the network of forced-labour camps, and

severe austerity made the effort possible. Despite punishing taxation and subsistence wages

(40 percent of the 1940 level) state income covered only half the budget over 1941–45, laying
the basis for the inflation that would lead to postwar devaluation. The Soviet war economy,

however, like that of the United States, prepared the country for postwar superpower status.

Japan’s strategy was similar to Germany’s Blitzkrieg in that the swift conquest of isolated

territories was designed to create a self-sufficient empire capable of withstanding any blow

from without. Once again, precise operational planning permitted Japan to increase weapons

production steadily from the inception of a full war economy in 1942 to early 1945, when U.S.

bombing intensified. By 1944, naval ordnance production was more than five times that of 1941

and aviation more than four and a half times. The Japanese, like the Nazis, exploited their

conquered peoples and even more than the Nazis subjected prisoners of war to slavery or

death. But the fact that attacking Pearl Harbor would “awaken a sleeping giant” was lost on

Japanese planners. By 1944 military expenditures absorbed 50 percent of the Japanese GNP, a

degree of concentration second only to that of the Soviet Union. Yet the United States, with

half its effort diverted to Europe, still overwhelmed the Co-Prosperity Sphere.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN WARTIME

Of the many wartime innovations, those in macroeconomics and management techniques were

among the most important, for the rapid increase achieved in labour productivity would make

possible the economic miracles of many nations after the war as well. U.S. merchant vessels

that took 35 weeks to build before the war were being launched in 50 days by 1943. The Soviet

Ilyushin II-4 airplane absorbed 20,000 man-hours before the war and 12,500 in 1943. By the

end of the war the British government was choosing contractors on the basis of management,
rather than technical, experience. The industrial world was reaching a new plateau of

efficiency.

World War II was unprecedented in the fillip it delivered to science and technology and the

maturation of planned research and development (R and D). What Churchill called “the wizard

war” between scientists to devise new weapons and electronic countermeasures for air and sea

combat began before 1939 in the R and D laboratories of German and British firms and

institutes. The Soviet Union had since 1919 made the “scientific pursuit of science” a pillar of

the regime, and the 1,650,000,000 rubles budgeted for R and D in 1941 was far and away the

largest effort in the world. The Fascist regimes also made a fetish of technological progress.

Mussolini established a National Council of Research in 1936 under the famed radio pioneer

Guglielmo Marconi. Hitler took for granted the preeminence of German science, and he showed

a lively interest in new weapons technology. The totalitarian regimes’ insistence on

“Communist science” or “Fascist science,” their secrecy, persecutions, and suppression of

intellectual freedom, however, meant that their R and D investment yielded less than that of

the liberal states. Stalin’s fear that technical experts might turn to political opposition led him

to consign thousands of scientists and engineers to the Gulag, where they worked under the

eye of the secret police. Nazi persecution chased dozens of brilliant Jews and others (especially

nuclear physicists) out of Europe, thereby enriching the brain pool of Britain and the United

States. The dictators’ personal interventions in matters of weapons research and deployment,

while sometimes breaking bottlenecks and ending jurisdictional feuding, more often skewed

the work of scientists in less productive or dead-end directions. In short, World War II made
planned R and D a permanent and mighty tool of state power while demonstrating that too

much state control or ideological content in research inevitably brought diminishing returns.

The liberal states, by contrast, responded quickly and effectively to the scientific challenge.

Nowhere was this more evident than in cryptanalysis and espionage, in which the Allies

repeatedly bested the otherwise secretive and devious Axis. As early as 1931, Captain Gustave

Bertrand of French intelligence procured documents from a German traitor concerning

the cryptographic rotor device Enigma. The brilliant Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski

cracked Enigma by 1938, only to have the unsuspecting Germans add two rotors to the

machine. Britain’s scientists in the Ultra project then worked on methods to generate keys for

Enigma until they devised the cumbersome Colossus machines, which some consider the first

electronic computers. Ultra not only compromised every German spy in Britain but also

provided the British with decryptions of German directives and deployments for the whole of

occupied Europe for the entire war.

Following the Battle of Britain, to which radar made such a vital contribution, Churchill

established a Scientific Advisory Committee under L.A. Lindemann. He and his rival Sir Henry

Tizard helped to direct the research programs that discovered various means of jamming the

German bombers’ radio navigation systems. By autumn 1940 the Germans countered with their

X-Gerät, which broadcast its signal on several frequencies, but this was overcome in turn by

British airborne radar that allowed fighters to home in on bombers individually. A similar

situation occurred in the air battles over Germany and inspired the development of devices that
guided night bombers to their targets despite jamming, the H2S system that permitted crews to

“see” through cloud cover, and the use of billows of aluminum strips dropped from bombers to

confuse German radar. Microwave radar helped search planes locate submerged U-boats after

March 1943.

Roosevelt entrusted the American effort to Vannevar Bush’s Office of Scientific Research and

Development (OSRD), which channeled contracts of $1,000,000 or more to over 50 universities

during the war. The OSRD, the Naval Research Laboratory, and army arsenals produced such

innovations as the antitank bazooka rocket, the proximity fuse, the DUKW amphibious vehicle,

the first use of DDT to combat malaria, and mass production of the antibiotic penicillin for war

wounds (1943). Soviet researchers, despite the handicaps imposed by invasion and their own

regime, developed the devastating Katyusha rocket-cluster (its launcher was called the Stalin

Organ), the sturdy T-34 tank, and, by war’s end, a prototype jet fighter. The Germans eased

their shortages of vital materials through processes for coal gasification (5,700,000 tons’ worth

in 1943) and for producing synthetic rubber. They were also first with an operational combat jet

aircraft, the Me-262, but the Nazi regime instead chose to allocate steel and fuel to submarines,

ending any chance that Germany might regain control of the skies.

The four technological developments that would come to define the postwar strategic

environment were radio-electronics, the electronic computer, the ballistic missile, and the

atomic bomb. The medium-range ballistic missile A-4 (called the Vengeance weapon, V-2, by

Goebbels) was the brainchild of German rocket engineers who had first come together as
amateur spaceflight enthusiasts in the 1920s. The German army began funding their research in

1932 and built a large test range at Peenemünde after 1937. There, Commander Walter

Dornberger and Chief Engineer Wernher von Braun developed and tested the A-4 by 1942. The

program did not receive top priority until 1943, however, at which time a British air raid on

Peenemünde forced construction of an underground factory in the Harz mountains to construct

the rockets. The V-2s, of which 4,300 were fired (half of them at Antwerp) after September

1944, did considerable damage until the Allies captured the launch sites in the Netherlands.

Nuclear physics had advanced to the point by 1938 that the German physicists Otto Hahn and

Fritz Strassmann were able to demonstrate nuclear fission. Scientists in Britain, France,

Germany, the U.S.S.R., and the United States all speculated on the possibility of building an

atomic explosive device, and in 1939 Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt personally,

urging a crash program to perfect such a bomb before the Nazis. The resulting Manhattan

Project absorbed $2,000,000,000 of the $3,850,000,000 spent by the United States on R and D

in World War II. Churchill, too, approved a nuclear program, code-named the Directorate of

Tube Alloys, in Britain’s dark days of 1941. But by 1943 the Americans had built up a sizeable

lead and agreed at the Quebec Conference to share results with the British. German atomic

research depended on heavy water from Norway, but British commandos and the Norwegian

underground sabotaged the plant in 1943. The scientists also failed to press for top priority,

which went instead to the missile program. Soviet atomic research kept abreast of the West

until the invasion, and in June 1942, Stalin authorized a crash program that by war’s end had

begun to produce fissionable uranium in quantity. In no country was much official thought
apparently given to the moral and long-range consequences of this potentially devastating

invention.

A final, though lesser known, scientific breakthrough of World War II was the application of

methods from the physical and social sciences to problems of production, logistics, and combat.

Known as “operational research,” this application of science to practical problems was a major

step in the process by which military men in the 20th century lost primacy in their profession to

civilian specialists. Whether in the scientific study of various antisubmarine tactics, the selection

of targets for strategic bombing, or the optimal size and pattern for naval convoys, operational

research completed the mobilization by governments of the world’s intellectual community.

STRATEGY AND DIPLOMACY OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE

ALLIED STRATEGY TO THE FALL OF ITALY

In the wake of Operation “Torch,” Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca (January 1943) to

determine strategy for the coming year. Once again Roosevelt conciliated Churchill, agreeing to

put off opening a second front in France in favour of more modest operations against Sicily,

Italy, and the “soft underbelly” of Europe after the liberation of North Africa. General George

Marshall and Admiral Ernest King succeeded in winning approval for offensives in Burma and

the southwest Pacific. The French rivals, de Gaulle and Giraud, were persuaded at least to feign

unity and later to create a French Committee of National Liberation under their joint

chairmanship (May 1943). But the main event was Roosevelt’s parting announcement that

“peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese military
power…(which) means unconditional surrender.” This surprise declaration was not

spontaneous, as Roosevelt claimed; it was a considered signal to Stalin of Allied resolve,

especially necessary after General Eisenhower’s ignominious “Darlan deal.” But it also rashly

committed the United States to a power vacuum, rather than a balance of power, in postwar

Europe, and may have discouraged Germans from attempting to oust Hitler in hopes of

escaping utter defeat.

Stalin’s reaction to Casablanca was predictably sour. In March he expressed great anxiety about

repeated postponement of the second front in France. On the other hand, the Battle of

Stalingrad had more or less assured eventual Soviet victory. Would it not have served Soviet

interests more to delay the Allied presence in Europe as long as possible? It is likely that Stalin’s

continued pressure for a second front was a function of his perennial fears for internal Soviet

security. Stalin may have wanted to recapture his lost ground, especially the Ukraine, as quickly

as possible lest anti-Soviet movements take hold there or in neighbouring countries. At this

time Stalin also began to denounce the London Poles as reactionaries and sponsored a new

Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow as a rival government-in-exile. The final breach between the

London Poles and Stalin followed in April 1943, when the Germans uncovered a mass grave in

the Katyn forest containing the corpses of over 4,000 Polish officers captured by the Russians in

1939. (Another 10,000 Polish officers were killed in Soviet secret police concentration camps.)

Churchill advised Władysław Sikorski, prime minister in the London government-in-exile, not to

pursue the issue out of deference to Stalin, who blamed the massacre on the Germans. But the

Poles invited an International Red Cross investigation that strongly suggested the Soviets had
committed the crime in the spring of 1940, presumably to exterminate Poland’s non-

Communist leadership class. Stalin’s seemingly benign dissolution of the Comintern in May

1943 was likewise inspired by postwar planning. The party purges and the assassination of

Trotsky in Mexico (August 1940) placed foreign Communists so securely under Moscow’s

thumb that the formal apparatus of control was no longer needed, while the appearance of

independence on the part of Communist parties would ease their participation in coalition

governments after the war.

At the Trident Conference in Washington (May 1943) Churchill and Roosevelt finally projected a

29-division invasion of France for May 1944. The long delay was the consequence of the need

to build up troop strength, landing craft, and supplies, and to ensure complete command of air

and sea. But Stalin again castigated Allied bad faith and initiated a series of vitriolic

communications with Churchill.

The final defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps opened the way for the invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

The Allies’ rapid success there gradually undermined Mussolini’s eroding Fascist

regime. Badoglio, Ciano, and Grandi had all denounced Mussolini’s leadership and had been

sacked by February 1943. Other Fascist leaders insisted on convening the Grand Council in July

and after violent debate voted 19 to 8 in favour of restoring “the prerogatives of the King and

parliament.” Mussolini resigned the next day, and Badoglio took power in the face of a complex

dilemma. Italy wanted peace, but to break the alliance with Hitler might provoke a German

attack and condemn Italy to prolonged fighting. Thus, while feigning continued loyalty to
Germany, Badoglio made secret contact with Eisenhower in the hope of synchronizing an

armistice and an Allied occupation. But the Americans insisted on August 11 that Italy give an

unconditional surrender and would not promise to land as far north as Rome. With tension and

German suspicions mounting—and two British corps crossing the Straits of Messina—Badoglio

agreed secretly to invite Allied occupation on September 3. The armistice was announced on

the 8th, and Allied landings followed that night in the Bay of Salerno south of Naples. Four days

later Hitler sent a crack team of commandos under Otto Skorzeny to rescue Mussolini and set

him up as a puppet dictator in the north of Italy.

The new Italian government, far from exiting the war, was obliged to do a volte-face and

declare war on Germany on October 13. The Allies did not take Naples until October 1 and

made no dent in the Germans’ reinforced Gustav Line until 1944.

EARLY WAR-AIMS AGREEMENT

The Quebec Conference (August 14–24, 1943) was the first in which Roosevelt and Churchill

spent more time discussing the Pacific War than the European. They gave green lights to

General MacArthur to fight northward toward the Philippines and to the U.S. Navy to drive

straight across the Pacific to the Ryukyu Islands. The British even reluctantly accorded the U.S.

Navy program top priority. The Allies also confirmed the invasion of France for May 1944, and

thenceforth the American strategy of concentration would take precedence over British

peripheral strategy. Eden and Hull then journeyed to Moscow (October 19–30), where they

assured Stalin of the date for a second front. They also won his approval of the arrangements
made for Italy, according to which the interallied commission requested by Stalin would merely

advise the Anglo-American commanders on the spot rather than govern on its own. When

Soviet armies later entered eastern European states, Stalin would point to the Italian precedent

to justify unilateral Soviet military control.

At the Cairo Conference (November 22–26), Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang discussed the

Burma theatre and made the Cairo Declaration, which prescribed as terms for ending the

Pacific War the Japanese surrender of Manchuria, Formosa, Korea, the Pescadores, and Pacific

islands acquired since 1914. It also established Chiang as one of the Great Power allies, a point

that did not please Churchill.

The first Big Three summit meeting followed in Tehrān from November 28 to December 1,

1943. From the Soviet point of view, the results could only have been satisfactory, for Stalin

saw with his own eyes the conflicts that Communist theory predicted must erupt between the

“imperialist” powers. In fact, Roosevelt and Churchill displayed the inevitable divergences

between a moralizing democracy recently forced out of isolation and a world empire

committed for 250 years to preserving the balance of power. What was more, Churchill had no

illusions about the Soviet dictator, whereas Roosevelt preferred to believe that he could reason

with “Uncle Joe” if only he could allay Soviet suspicions. Roosevelt made a point of chiding

Churchill in Stalin’s presence and advocating an end to European colonialism after the war. For

his part, Stalin again demanded his 1941 frontiers, and the Baltic coast of East Prussia as well,

and the others acquiesced in the restoration of the Curzon Line frontier, provided Poland was
compensated with territories taken from Germany in the west. As to Germany itself, the

Western powers had discussed breaking up the country and turning the Danubian regions of

Austria, Hungary, and Bavaria into a “peaceful, cowlike confederation,” while Churchill spoke of

similar federations for eastern Europe. Stalin viewed such notions with suspicion, since they

were reminiscent of the cordon sanitaire idea of 1918 and in any case would interfere with the

piecemeal communization of the small states. His plan was to Balkanize eastern Europe, punish

France for her surrender and strip her of her colonies, and keep Poland and Italy weak. As U.S.

diplomat Charles E. Bohlen recorded at Tehrān: “The result would be that the Soviet Union

would be the only important military power and political force on the continent of Europe.”

Roosevelt did win an agreement in principle on formation of a postwar international

organization to be led by the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China. Whether unity

among them would survive victory was a question Churchill and others brooded on in silence.

THE DEFEAT OF NAZI GERMANY

In 1944 the German forces in Soviet territory shrank from attrition and transfers to the west,

while geography and Hitler’s reluctance to authorize retreats gave his generals no prospect of

shortening the front. Soviet advances were limited only by their own supply capacity. A three-

pronged offensive in March squeezed the Germans out of the southern Ukraine. Only the

Carpathian Mountains kept the Red Army from the Hungarian Plain, and on March 20 Hitler

ordered German occupation of Hungary to prevent the regent Admiral Miklós Horthy from

defecting to the Allies. The Red Army entered Bessarabia and northern Romania in April. In the

south, Odessa fell on April 10, and Sevastopol on May 9. In the far north, German forces
withdrew from Leningrad to Lake Peipus, relieving that city after more than two years of siege

and combat that killed 632,000 civilians, mostly from starvation. A two-month pause followed

in the Soviet Union, during which the western Allies finally opened the second front in France.

THE ALLIED INVASION OF EUROPE

While preparations for D-Day reached their final stages the Allies made a fateful decision to

campaign vigorously on the Italian front in hopes of drawing off German reserves from France.

But German resistance was fierce, and by October autumn rains curtailed Allied attacks, ending

their dream of bursting into Austria from the south.

By spring 1944 the Germans had mustered 59 divisions in France and the Low Countries, but

only 10 were motorized and almost 30 were in static defense positions. As the Allied buildup in

England reached huge proportions, the Germans tried to divine where the blow would come.

Hitler and Rommel thought Normandy; the theatre commander, Rundstedt, believed Calais.

Their deployments reflected a compromise. Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Marshall

chose Eisenhower to command Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), and

he managed the preparation of “Overlord,” the cross-Channel invasion, with tact and skill.

More than 3,000,000 men crowded into southern English bases and ports, anxiously awaiting a

D-Day on which 176,475 soldiers, 20,111 vehicles, 1,500 tanks, and 12,000 planes would move

by air and sea across the Channel. Eisenhower described them as being “as tense as a coiled

spring.” Elaborate deceptions kept the Germans guessing about the point of attack, and

Normandy was chosen in part because it was not the easiest or nearest French beachhead. On
June 6, American, British, and Canadian forces went ashore, but seven tense and bloody weeks

passed before the Allies broke out of the Norman peninsula. The initial campaign, thanks to

Allied courage and matériel and German blunders, removed more divisions from the

Wehrmacht’s order of battle than even the great Soviet offensive of June 1944.

As Allied armies raced westward and northward to liberate France, Eisenhower faced the

problem of what to do with Paris. He had no desire to interrupt the drive for a difficult urban

battle, nor to undertake the chore of feeding 4,000,000 inhabitants. But the Parisian police

went on strike on August 19, and de Gaulle secretly ordered French forces to seize the capital.

Meanwhile, Hitler had ordered that the landmarks of Paris be blown up before the Germans

retreated. But garrison commander Dietrich von Choltitz refused to carry out the order and

negotiated a surrender that opened the city to Allied forces on the 25th. Eisenhower gave the

honour of leading the parade to de Gaulle and General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc.

SOVIET ADVANCES IN THE EAST

In five months from D-Day the Western Allies liberated France and Belgium and advanced 350

miles. In the midst of the Normandy campaign, on June 22, the Red Army launched its summer

offensive. Armoured spearheads chased German remnants to the East Prussian border and the

banks of the Vistula by July 31, an advance of 450 miles in five weeks. By October the Baltic

coast was cleared of Germans. These massive victories carried the Red Army to the borders of

nine states that had been independent before 1939, making possible the sovietization of

eastern Europe. The first episode in that process stemmed from an uprising by the Polish Home
Army in Warsaw, underground allies of the London Poles. Expecting momentary liberation from

across the Vistula, the Home Army rebelled against the German occupation and seized control

of the city. But Stalin called it a “reckless venture,” and the Soviets sat idly by while Hitler

ordered in SS divisions to crush the resistance and flatten the ancient city. To be sure, the Red

Army had just finished a huge advance that stretched its supply lines to the limit. But Stalin

shed no tears over the slaughter of the non-Communist Warsaw Poles, who held out bravely for

eight weeks, and even hindered U.S. and British planes from supplying Warsaw by denying

them landing rights in Soviet territory. On August 22, Stalin simply dismissed the Warsaw Poles

as “criminals” and set up his Moscow Poles in Lublin as the acting government of “liberated

Poland.” In the north, the Finns sued for peace in early September, accepting their 1940 losses

and giving up in addition the Arctic port of Petsamo (Pechenga), and a $300,000,000 indemnity,

terms confirmed in the treaty of peace concluded in 1947. The U.S.S.R. allowed the Finns self-

rule so long as Helsinki coordinated its foreign policy with that of the U.S.S.R. Latvia, Lithuania,

and Estonia, however, were reannexed.

The Soviets unleashed another major offensive in August through Bessarabia, even though the

Balkan front was irrelevant to the quick defeat of Germany. King Michael concluded an

armistice with Moscow on September 12. Citing the Italian precedent, Molotov brushed aside

the Western Allies’ attempts to win a share of influence over Romanian affairs. Bulgaria, which

was not at war with the U.S.S.R., tried to establish its neutrality, but the Red Army occupied it

anyway and set up a “Fatherland Front” in which Communists were predominant. When Soviet

and Romanian troops invaded Hungary in October, Horthy tried to extract his country from the
war. But the SS arranged his overthrow, and fighting continued until the fall of Budapest on

February 13, 1945. A foolish waste of troops for the Nazis, the battle of Budapest was equally

irrational for Stalin unless his true goal was political. Meanwhile, Yugoslav partisans under a

local Communist, Josip Broz Tito, captured Belgrade on October 20, 1944, and evicted the

Germans.

One by one the states of eastern Europe were falling to Communist forces in circumstances

prejudicing their future independence. When Churchill arrived in Moscow on October 9, 1944,

he tried to contain the march of Communism into central Europe by making a deal with Stalin

on spheres of influence: Romania to be 90 percent Soviet; Greece 90 percent British; Yugoslavia

and Hungary 50–50; Bulgaria 75 percent Soviet, 25 British. While apparently a realistic response

to Soviet ambitions—and presence—in contrast to Roosevelt’s reliance on vague principles,

Churchill’s proposal was in fact rather silly. Stalin was unlikely to grant Western influence in

countries under Soviet occupation (like Hungary), while the meaning of such numbers as “75–

25” was unfathomable. Poland was not mentioned at all. On the other hand, Churchill did

forestall Soviet aid to the Communist partisans in Greece and may have helped to shield the

crucial Mediterranean from Soviet influence for years after the war.

THE FINAL ALLIED AGREEMENTS

In February 1945 the Big Three held their last summit conference, at Yalta on the Crimean

Peninsula. It was a last chance to forestall the disintegration of the alliance upon victory or,

conversely, for the British and Americans to take firm measures against Soviet control in
eastern Europe. Roosevelt was now mortally ill and exhausted by the strenuous journey.

Controversy later raged over his decision to attend the conference at all, his eagerness to

conciliate Stalin, and the sinister presence in his entourage of Communist agent Alger Hiss.

Postwar critics would charge that Roosevelt had been duped at Yalta and had “sold out”

eastern Europe to the Communists. Doubtless if Churchill’s advice had been followed, the policy

of trust might have given way to one of hard bargaining and clear haggling over boundaries and

governments in Europe and Asia. But in fact there was little the Western powers could have

done to frustrate Stalin other than threatening a new world war. Nor could Churchill and

Roosevelt have openly relinquished any liberated states to Stalin without abrogating the

principles on which the war had been fought and alienating the millions of U.S. voters of

eastern European descent. As for Asia, the United States was yet facing a campaign that might

cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Purchasing Soviet help against Japan seemed

both realistic and humane. Roosevelt could not predict that the atomic bomb would render

Soviet aid superfluous.

Of the three great allies Britain was the weakest and most interested in restoring a balance of

power in Europe. Churchill, a keen critic of Bolshevism since 1919, had lobbied all throughout

the summer of 1944 for an Italian campaign in hopes that the Allies might reach the Danube

before the Red Army, and in October he had made the “spheres of influence” deal with Stalin.

But the war map—and Roosevelt’s unwillingness to strain the alliance—defeated all these

tactics. On the eve of Yalta, Churchill wondered whether “the end of this war may well prove to

be more disappointing than was the last.” American war aims, by contrast, were nebulous to
nonexistent, except for a reprise of Wilsonian internationalism. There is little evidence of

economic motives in U.S. policy and, incredibly, no contingency plans for a breakdown in

relations with the U.S.S.R. While Roosevelt feared another American retreat into isolationism,

he also believed in the possibility of a postwar Great Power condominium. He was prepared to

show Stalin that the Anglo-Saxons were not ganging up on him and wanted Soviet participation

in a United Nations Organization. But Stalin pursued the old-fashioned way of postwar security:

military and political control of eastern Europe to create a buffer for the U.S.S.R. and to ensure

Soviet domination over its own repressed nationalities.

At the Yalta Conference, Big Three unity seemed intact, but only because the participants

resorted to vagueness or postponements on the most explosive issues. A joint European

Advisory Commission, it was decided, would divide Germany into occupation zones, with the

Soviet zone extending to the Elbe and a French zone carved out of the Anglo-American spheres.

Berlin would likewise be placed under four-power control. The Western Allies repudiated the

extreme plans broached at Quebec for the pastoralization of Germany and favoured German

industrial recovery under international control. But the Soviets insisted on the right to strip

Germany of $20,000,000,000 worth of machinery and raw materials. The issue was assigned to

a reparations commission. As for the political future of Germany, Stalin revived earlier Big Three

talk of breaking Germany into several states, but the Western Allies now perceived the danger

of further Balkanization in central Europe in light of Soviet power. This matter, too, was left for

study.
Poland was, as always, a most difficult problem. The Western Allies reiterated their Tehrān

approval of the Curzon Line, now modified slightly in Poland’s favour, as the Soviet–Polish

border. But the assignment of 2,700,000 Germans to Poland in the West worried Churchill: “It

would be a pity to stuff the Polish goose so full of German food that it died of indigestion.”

Hence Poland’s western frontier would be left to a peace conference. As for the Polish

government, the most the Western Allies achieved was a vague promise from Stalin that he

would reorganize the Lublin Committee and permit free elections among “non-Fascist

elements” within a month after peace. But Stalin reserved the right to decide who was “Fascist”

and rejected international supervision of the elections. Roosevelt proposed a Declaration on

Liberated Europe, by which the Big Three promised to help all liberated peoples “to solve by

democratic means their pressing political and economic problems” through “free elections of

Governments responsive to the will of the people.” Stalin signed, probably considering this

more high-flown American rhetoric meant for domestic consumption. In the Communist lexicon

words like democratic and free implied conditions virtually the opposite of what Roosevelt

intended. Since Roosevelt also announced (to Churchill’s despair) that the United States would

evacuate its troops from Europe within two years, Stalin may have felt that he could safely

ignore the Declaration on Liberated Europe.

Stalin did prove conciliatory on the United Nations, which had already been discussed at the

Dumbarton Oaks Conference between August 21 and October 7, 1944. The Soviets had

demanded that all 16 constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. be represented (ostensibly to

balance the British Empire nations that would vote with London) and that permanent members
of the Security Council retain a veto on all issues, not just those involving sanctions or threats to

peace. At Yalta, Stalin settled for three seats in the General Assembly and a limited veto. Like

Wilson at Versailles, Roosevelt put great stock in international organization and was prompted

to remark, “The Russians have given in so much at the conference that I don’t think we should

let them down.” Finally, Stalin promised to declare war on Japan within 90 days of the German

surrender in return for southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, retention of Outer Mongolia,

and a promise of U.S. support for Soviet rights at Dairen (Lü-ta) and Port Arthur (Lü-shun)—all

the old objects of Russian imperialism in east Asia. Within a month news from the various

commissions established at Yalta indicated that the Soviets did not intend to meet Western

expectations. When Molotov announced on March 23 that most of the London Poles were

disqualified from Polish elections, Roosevelt reportedly banged his fist on his wheelchair:

“Averell *Harriman, ambassador in Moscow+ is right. We can’t do business with Stalin. He has

broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” Roosevelt then retreated, disillusioned, to

Warm Springs, Georgia, where he died on April 12.

The Allied advance from the west was stalled for six weeks by the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s

last offensive, but by February 1945 German resistance was near its end. Some Soviet and

Western leaders were openly describing the last campaigns as a “land-grab” directed as much

against their distrustful allies as against the Germans. But the commanders in the West still

took steps to prove that they were supporting the Soviet advance. The worst product of this

policy was the Allied bombing of Dresden on February 13–14, 1945, allegedly to destroy a key

communications centre for Germans facing the Red Army. The two-day incendiary raid created
a firestorm, however, that consumed the medieval city and killed up to 25,000 civilians, to

virtually no military purpose.

Another product of Western efforts to reassure Stalin was the refusal to order British and

American armies to race the Soviets to Berlin. On March 7, 1945, General George Patton’s tanks

broke through weak German lines and the 1st Army infantry captured intact a Rhine bridge at

Remagen. Churchill pleaded for a rapid thrust in order to secure Berlin and Prague: “Highly

important that we shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible.” Stalin, in turn,

tried to lull his allies by saying that “Berlin has lost its former strategic importance,” while in

fact ordering his generals to make for it as soon as possible. Eisenhower, backed by Marshall,

confined himself to military considerations alone, however. The Allied armies would close the

Ruhr pocket, then advance in breadth in case the rumours were true of a Nazi “Alpine redoubt”

in the south. When the Western armies exceeded the limits of their occupation zones in April,

Eisenhower even called them back. Soviet forces, meanwhile, captured Vienna and Königsberg

on April 9 and encircled Berlin by the 25th. Five days later a despairing Hitler declared

that Germany had proved unworthy of him and committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Hitler’s

successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, opened negotiations with the Western powers, hoping to save

as many troops and refugees as possible from Soviet reprisals. But the U.S.S.R. refused to

recognize the surrender ceremony at Eisenhower’s headquarters on May 7, necessitating a

second surrender, and a separate Soviet V-E Day, in Berlin on May 8. The war in Europe was

over.
THE DEFEAT OF JAPAN

THE ENCIRCLEMENT OF JAPAN

By January 1944 the American buildup in the Pacific permitted both the army and navy

commands to accelerate the rollback of Japanese power. Indeed, the United States had by then

deployed as many men and planes and more ships in the Pacific theatre as in the European. The

army under General MacArthur aimed at the liberation of the Philippines, thereby cutting

Japanese communications with the East Indies and the sea route to Southeast Asia. The navy

under Admiral Chester Nimitz moved up the Marshall and Mariana chains to bring U.S. bombers

within range of the Japanese home islands. In both cases the Americans employed the tactic of

island-hopping and relied on superior firepower to inflict appalling casualties on fanatical

Japanese defenders who preferred death to the shame of surrender.

In the central Pacific, the navy’s material superiority allowed Nimitz to pierce Japan’s “absolute

national defense sphere” almost at will. By 1943 the United States was producing 100,000

planes per year, compared to Japan’s total of 63,000 for the entire war. By the summer of 1944

the United States had nearly 100 carriers of all types in the Pacific, compared to Japan’s total of

20 for the war. The Japanese also lost more than 80 percent of the 6,000,000 tons of shipping

with which they had begun the war (half to U.S. submarines) and were forced to expose their

proud navy to destruction in a vain effort to supply their far-flung garrisons. The U.S. advance

was limited only by its own supply lines, which stretched 5,000 miles from Pearl Harbor and

8,000 from the continental bases of California.

The bombing of the Japanese home islands achieved a new plateau of horror when the U.S.

Army Air Forces adopted Britain’s European tactics of low-level nighttime raiding on urban

areas. On the night of March 9–10, 1945, napalm area bombing of largely wooden Tokyo stoked

fire storms that destroyed a quarter of the city, killed 80,000 civilians, and left 1,000,000

homeless. Similar devastating fire raids were launched against Ōsaka, Kōbe, Yokohama, and

other cities.

THE ATOMIC DECISION

By April, Japan lay open to direct assault by land as well as air and sea. How could the United

States bring Tokyo to surrender? Three means suggested themselves: invasion, inducement,

and shock. The first would involve a lengthy, brutal campaign in which, it was estimated,

hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps 2,000,000 Japanese lives would be lost. Yet

the Joint Chiefs had no choice but to prepare for this eventuality, and by May 25 they had

instructed MacArthur to plan Operation “Olympic,” an invasion of Kyushu, for November 1. The

second means, inducement, was clearly preferable, and on May 8, the day after the German

surrender, President Harry S. Truman tried it. Unconditional surrender, he said, would mean

“the termination of the influence of the military leaders who have brought Japan to the present

brink of disaster,” but did not mean “the extermination or enslavement of the Japanese

people,” who would be free to “return to their families, their farms, their jobs.” Unfortunately,

Truman did not include (as the State Department advised) a promise that the Japanese might

retain their emperor, the god-king of their Shintō state religion. On the other hand, the
Japanese government foolishly dismissed Truman’s appeal as propaganda and began to

mobilize the home front to resist an invasion.

The third means of achieving a surrender—by shock—had become a possibility on December

30, 1944, when General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, reported that it was

“reasonably certain” that a gun-type atomic bomb equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT and an

implosion-type bomb would be ready for testing by the summer of 1945. On April 25, soon

after Truman’s accession to the presidency, Secretary of War Stimson impressed on him the

significance of this development: “Within four months we shall in all probability have

completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could

destroy a whole city.” He then formed an Interim Committee of statesmen and scientists to

debate how the bomb should be employed. On May 31 and June 1 the committee received

scientific briefings and held discussions on whether to share the secret with the Soviets, how

long it would take other nations to develop their own atomic bomb, how international control

might be achieved, whether the U.S. monopoly might help Washington in its relations with

Moscow, and whether the bomb would be a universal blessing or a Frankenstein’s monster.

In the matter at hand, however, the committee concluded that the bomb should be used to end

the war as soon as possible; that it should be dropped on a military-urban target so as to

demonstrate its full force; and that a demonstration or warning should not be made

beforehand, lest the bomb lose its shock value. The scientific panel under J. Robert

Oppenheimer concurred on June 16. As he later said, “We didn’t know beans about the military
situation in Japan…. We did say that we did not think exploding one of these things as a

firecracker over a desert was likely to be very impressive.”

The first atomic test near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, yielded an explosion

equivalent to that of 15,000 tons of TNT and stunned Oppenheimer and his colleagues with its

elemental power. At that moment Truman was attending the final Big Three meeting

at Potsdam, and he casually mentioned to Stalin that the United States had “a new weapon of

unusual destructive force.” Stalin said that he was glad to hear of it and hoped that the United

States would make good use of it against the Japanese. Though little else was agreed upon at

Potsdam, the Big Three did jointly invite Japan on July 26 to surrender unconditionally or face

“prompt and utter destruction.” When no surrender was forthcoming, Truman gave the Army

Air Forces on Tinian Island the green light. He wrote later that he never lost a moment’s sleep

over his decision.

A specially equipped B-29, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on the military port

of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The heat and blast effaced everything in the vicinity, burned

4.4 square miles, and killed some 70,000 people (lingering injuries and radiation sickness

brought the death toll past 100,000 by the end of the year). Two days later the U.S.S.R.

declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. On August 9 the second atomic bomb fell on

Nagasaki, killing 39,000 people. On that day the Voice of the Sacred Crane—the emperor’s

command—summoned the Cabinet to an audience. Hirohito expressed his wish that Japan

accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration on the sole condition that the emperor remain
sovereign. To continue the war, he said, would be suicidal. And then, perhaps realizing the irony

of that remark, he turned to the military men and noted that their performance had fallen

rather short of their promises. Even at that late date some fanatical officers attempted a coup

on the palace grounds rather than submit. On September 2, 1945, however, General MacArthur

received the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and the greatest war

in history came to a close.

THE COMING OF THE COLD WAR, 1945–57

The symbolic first meeting of American and Soviet soldiers occurred at Torgau, Ger., on April

25, 1945. Their handshakes and toasts in beer and vodka celebrated their common victory over

Nazi Germany and marked the collapse of old Europe altogether; but their inarticulate grunts

and exaggerated smiles presaged the lack of communication in their relationship to come.

Grand wartime coalitions invariably break up once the common fight gives way to bickering

over division of the spoils, but feuding victors after the wars of Louis XIV and Napoleon or

World War I at least negotiated treaties of peace, while the rancour among them was

moderated by time or the danger that the common enemy might rise again. After 1945,

however, no grand peace conference convened, no common fear of Germany or Japan

survived, and the quarrels among the victors only grew year by year into what the U.S.

presidential adviser Bernard Baruch and the pundit Walter Lippmann termed a Cold War.

The U.S.–Soviet conflict began in 1945 over treatment of occupied Germany and the

composition of the Polish government. It grew during 1946 as the Soviets communized the
lands under their occupation and the victors failed to agree on a plan for the control of atomic

energy. From 1947 to 1950 the reactions of Washington and Moscow to the perceived threats

of the other solidified the division of Europe and much of the world into two blocs, and the Cold

War became universalized, institutionalized, and militarized.

The settlement after World War II, therefore, was a peace without treaties, and the Cold War

magnified, distorted, or otherwise played upon the other historical trends given impetus by the

world wars of the 20th century: Asian nationalism, decolonization, the seeming culmination of

the 37-year-old Chinese Revolution, the evolution of independent Communist parties in

Yugoslavia and Asia, and western Europe’s drive to end four centuries of conflict through

economic integration. The early Cold War was not a decade of fear and failure alone but also a

creative time that gave birth to the closest thing to a world order that had existed since 1914.

With the sole major exception of the later Sino-Soviet split, the boundaries, institutions, and

relationships fashioned in the late 1940s were very nearly the same ones that shaped world

politics through the 1980s.

THE COLD WAR GUILT QUESTION

As early as 1948 American left-liberals blamed the Truman administration for the icy tone of its

relations with Moscow, while rightists blamed the Communists but accused Roosevelt and

Truman of appeasement. Moderates of both parties shared a consensus that

Truman’s containment policy was, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote, “the brave and

essential response of free men to communist aggression.” After all, Stalin’s tyranny was
undeniable, and his seizure of countries in eastern Europe one by one was reminiscent of

Hitler’s “salami tactics.” To be sure, Roosevelt may have helped to foster mistrust by refusing to

discuss war aims earlier and then relying on vague principles, and Truman may have blundered

or initiated steps that solidified the Cold War. Those steps, however, were taken only after

substantial Soviet violation of wartime agreements and in fearful confusion over the

motivations for Soviet policy. Was the U.S.S.R. implacably expansionist, or were its aims

limited? Was it executing a plan based on Communist faith in world revolution, or reflecting the

need of the regime for foreign enemies to justify domestic terror, or merely pursuing the

traditional aims of Russian imperialism? Or was it only Stalin’s own paranoia or ambition that

was responsible for Soviet aggression?

The fact that Western societies tended to parade their disagreements and failures in public, in

contrast to the Soviet fetish for secrecy, guaranteed that historical attention would fix on

American motivations and mistakes. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, traditional left-liberal

scholars smarting from the excesses of McCarthyism and new leftists of the Vietnam era began

publishing revisionist interpretations of the origins of the Cold War. The “hard revisionism”

of William Appleman Williams in 1959 depicted the Cold War in Marxist fashion as an episode

in American economic expansion in which the U.S. government resorted to military threats to

prevent Communists from closing off eastern European markets and raw materials to American

corporations. Less rigidly ideological “soft revisionists” blamed the Cold War on the irascible

Truman administration, which, they charged, had jettisoned the cooperative framework built

up by Roosevelt at Tehrān and Yalta and had dropped the atomic bombs on Japan as a means
of frightening the Russians and forcing an “American peace.” These revisionist interpretations

were based not so much on new evidence as on new assumptions about U.S. and Soviet

motives, influenced in turn by the protest movements against the Vietnam War, nuclear

weapons, and the alleged domination of American society by the “military-industrial complex.”

Looking back to the years after 1945, the revisionists argued that Stalin was not a fanatical

aggressor but a traditional Soviet statesman. After all, the Soviet Union had been brutally

invaded and had lost 20,000,000 lives in the war. Stalin could thus be excused for insisting on

friendly governments on his borders. He was betrayed, said revisionists, by American militancy

and Red-baiting after the death of Roosevelt.

Traditional historians countered that little evidence existed for most of the revisionist positions.

To be sure, American hostility to Communism dated from 1917, but the record proved

Roosevelt’s commitment to good relations with Stalin, while no proof at all was forthcoming

that American policy makers were anxious to penetrate eastern European markets, which were,

in any case, of minor importance to the U.S. economy. Williams rebutted that policy makers so

internalized their economic imperialism that they did not bother to put their thoughts on

paper, but this “argument from no evidence” made a mockery of scholarship. The

preponderance of evidence also indicated that the atomic decision was made for military

considerations, although isolated advisers did hope that it would ease negotiations with

Moscow. These and other examples led most historians to conclude that, while the revisionists

brought to light new issues and exposed American aimlessness, inconsistency, and possible
overreaction at the end of World War II, they failed to establish their primary theories of

American guilt.

Historians with a longer perspective on the Cold War transcended the passions of Vietnam-era

polarization and observed that deeper forces must have been at work for the Cold War to have

persisted for so long after 1945. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how leaders of the two

countries could have sat down agreeably and settled the affairs of the world. The new

superpowers were wrenched out of isolationism and thrust into roles of world leadership, they

nurtured contrary universalist ideologies, and they mounted asymmetrical military threats (one

based on conventional weapons, sheer numbers, and land power; the other on nuclear might,

technological superiority, and air and sea power). To these liabilities could be added the fact

that both countries had been forced into World War II by sneak attacks and had resolved never

again to be seduced into appeasement or to be taken by surprise.

Even such a balanced long-range view should not be taken uncritically. It remains the case that

the Cold War grew out of specific diplomatic disputes, among them Germany, eastern Europe,

and atomic weapons. Could those disputes have been avoided or amicably resolved? Certainly

some prior agreement on war aims might have softened the discord after 1945, but Roosevelt’s

policy of avoiding divisive issues during the war, while wise in the short run, enhanced the

potential for conflict. It might, without undue exaggeration, be said that the United States

entered the postwar period with only a vision of a postwar economic world and few political

war aims at all, and thus had little excuse for indignation once Stalin set out methodically to
realize his own aims. But this does not justify a Soviet policy bent on denying self-rule to

neighbouring peoples and imposing police states as cruel as those of Hitler. Although the

Soviets had lost 20,000,000 in the war, Stalin had killed at least an equal number of his own

citizens through deliberate famine and purge. American hegemony, if it can be called that, was

by contrast liberal, pluralistic, and generous.

The question has been posed: Is it not an expression of American exclusivism, self-

righteousness, or cultural imperialism to insist that the rest of the world conform to Anglo-

Saxon standards of political legitimacy? Even if so, critics must take care not to indulge in a

double standard: excusing the U.S.S.R. for being “realistic” and damning the United States for

being insufficiently “idealistic.”

WASTELAND: THE WORLD AFTER 1945

THE RUIN OF EUROPE AND JAPAN

Harry Truman had been an artilleryman in World War I and remembered well the lunar

landscape of the Western Front. Yet, while driving from Potsdam to Berlin in July 1945, he

exclaimed, “I never saw such destruction!” Almost all the great cities of central and

eastern Europe were jagged with ruined buildings, pitted roads, wrecked bridges, and choked

waterways. Amid it all were the gaunt survivors, perhaps 45,000,000 of them homeless,

including 25,000,000 in those lands—Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia—that had been overrun

and scorched two or three times. European communications and transportation reverted to

19th-century levels: 90 percent of French trucks and 82 percent of French locomotives were out
of commission, as were over half the rolling stock in Germany and two-thirds of the Balkan

railroads. European coal production was at 40 percent of prewar levels, and more than half the

continent’s merchant marine no longer existed. Some 23 percent of Europe’s farmland was out

of production by war’s end. Of course, people could be fed with American aid while the rubble

was cleared away and utilities restored, but World War II cost Europe more in monetary terms

than all its previous wars put together. The war also set in train the

greatest Völkerwanderung—movement of peoples—since the barbarian incursions of the late

Roman Empire. During the Nazi onslaught some 27,000,000 people fled or were forced out by

war and persecution, and 4,500,000 more were seized for slave labour. When the Red Army

advanced westward, millions more fled before it to escape reprisals or Communism. All told,

about 60,000,000 people of 55 ethnic groups from 27 countries were uprooted. Finally,

7,000,000 Axis prisoners of war were in Allied hands, along with 8,000,000 Allied prisoners of

war liberated from the Axis and 670,000 survivors of Nazi death camps.

The landscape in much of Japan was just as barren, its cities flattened by bombing, its industry

and shipping destroyed. Large parts of China had been under foreign occupation for up to 14

years and—like Russia after World War I—still faced several years of destructive civil war.

Indeed, World War II had laid waste every major industrial region of the globe except North

America. The result was that in 1945–46 the United States accounted for almost half the gross

world product of goods and services and enjoyed a technological lead symbolized by, but by no

means limited to, its atomic monopoly. On the other hand, Americans as always wanted to

demobilize rapidly and return to the private lives and careers interrupted by Pearl Harbor. The
Soviet Union, by contrast, was in ruin, but its mighty armies occupied half a dozen states in the

heart of Europe, while local Communist parties agitated in Italy and France. The United States

and the Soviet Union thus appeared to pose asymmetrical threats to each other.

U.S. VISION OF RECONSTRUCTION

American planners envisioned postwar reconstruction in terms of Wilsonian internationalism

but were determined to avoid the mistakes that resulted after 1918 in inflation, tariffs, debts,

and reparations. In 1943 the United States sponsored the United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Administration to distribute food and medicine to the stricken peoples in the war

zones. At the Bretton Woods Conference (summer of 1944) the United States presided over the

creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The dollar was returned to

gold convertibility at $35 per ounce and would serve as the world’s reserve currency, while the

pound, the franc, and other currencies were pegged to the dollar. Such stability would permit

the recovery of world trade, while a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (ratified in 1948)

would ensure low tariffs and prevent a return to policies of economic nationalism. Treasury

Secretary Henry Morgenthau tried to entice the Soviets to join the Bretton Woods system, but

the U.S.S.R. opted out of the new economic order.

The American universalist program seemingly had more luck in the political realm. Roosevelt

was convinced that the League of Nations had been doomed by the absence of the United

States and the Soviet Union and thus was anxious to win Soviet participation in the

compromises at Yalta. The Big Four powers accordingly drafted the Charter of the United
Nations at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945. Roosevelt wisely appointed several

leading Republicans to the U.S. delegation, avoiding Wilson’s fatal error and securing the

Senate ratification of the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89–2. Like Wilson, Roosevelt

and Truman hoped that future quarrels could be settled peacefully in the international body.

THE END OF EAST–WEST COOPERATION

By the time of the Potsdam Conference, Truman was already aware of Soviet unwillingness to

permit representative governments and free elections in the countries under its control. The

U.S.S.R. compelled the King of Romania to appoint a Communist-dominated government, Tito’s

Communists assumed control of a coalition with royalists in Yugoslavia, Communists dominated

in Hungary and Bulgaria (where a reported 20,000 people were liquidated), and the Red Army

extended an invitation to “consult” with 16 underground Polish leaders only to arrest them

when they surfaced. As Stalin said to the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas: “In this war each

side imposes its system as far as its armies can reach. It cannot be otherwise.” On April 23,

1945, Truman scolded Molotov for these violations of the Yalta Accords and, when Molotov

protested such undiplomatic conduct, replied, “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get

talked to like that.” On May 11, three days after the German surrender, Truman abruptly

ordered the termination of Lend-Lease aid to the U.S.S.R. Two weeks later Stalin replied in like

terms to the envoy Harry Hopkins by way of protesting the suspension of Lend-Lease,

Churchill’s alleged plan to revive a cordon sanitaire on Russia’s borders, and other matters.

Hopkins, however, assured him of American goodwill and acquiesced in the imprisonment of

the Polish leaders and the inclusion of only a few London Poles in the new government. The
United States and Britain then recognized the Warsaw regime, assuring Soviet domination of

Poland.

The short-lived détente was to be consummated at Potsdam, the last meeting among the Big

Three. In the midst of the conference, however, the British electorate rejected Churchill at the

polls, and the Labour Party leader Clement Attlee replaced him in the councils of the great.

Aside from the Soviet promise to enter the war against Japan and Truman’s hint that the United

States had developed the atomic bomb, the Potsdam Conference dealt with postwar Europe.

The U.S.S.R. was authorized to seize one-third of the German fleet, extract reparations-in-kind

from its eastern German occupation zone, and benefit from a complicated formula for delivery

of industrial goods from the western zones, 15 percent to be counted as payment for foodstuffs

and other products sent from the Soviet zone. The conference provided for peace treaties with

the defeated countries once they had “recognized democratic governments” and left their

drafting to the Council of Foreign Ministers. Finally, the Potsdam nations agreed to prosecute

Germans for war crimes in trials that were conducted at Nürnberg for a year after November

1945. Potsdam, however, left the most divisive issues—the administration of Germany and the

configuration of eastern European governments—to future discussion. At the first such

meeting, in September, the new U.S. secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, asked why Western

newsmen were not allowed into eastern Europe and why governments could not be formed

there that were democratic yet still friendly to Russia. Molotov asked on his own account why

the U.S.S.R. was excluded from the administration of Japan.

Truman enumerated the principles of American foreign policy in his Navy Day speech of

October 27. Its 12 points echoed the Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson, including national

self-determination; nonrecognition of governments imposed by foreign powers; freedom of the

seas, commerce, expression, and religion; and support for the United Nations. Confusion

reigned in Washington, however, as to how to implement these principles in league with

Moscow. As the political commentator James Reston observed, two schools of thought seemed

to compete for the ear of the President. According to the first, Stalin was committed to limitless

expansion and would only be encouraged by concessions. According to the second, Stalin was

amenable to a structure of peace but could not be expected to loosen his hold on eastern

Europe so long as the United States excluded him from, for instance, Japan. Truman and the

State Department drifted between these two poles, searching for a key to unlock the secrets of

the Kremlin and hence the appropriate U.S. policy.

Truman’s last attempt to win the Soviets to his universalist vision was the Byrnes mission to

Moscow in December 1945. There the Soviets promptly accepted an Anglo-American plan for a

UN Atomic Energy Agency meant to control the development and use of nuclear power. Stalin

also conceded that it might prove possible to make some changes in the Romanian and

Bulgarian parliaments, though conceding nothing that might weaken his hold on the

satellites. George F. Kennan of the U.S. embassy in Moscow called the concessions “fig leaves of

democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship,” while Truman’s own

dissatisfaction with the results at Moscow and growing domestic criticism of his “coddling” of

the Russians were pushing him toward a drastic reformulation of policy.

Why, in fact, did Stalin engage in such a hurried takeover of eastern Europe when it was bound

to provoke the United States (magnifying Soviet insecurity) and waste the opportunity for

access to U.S. loans and perhaps even atomic secrets? Was not Stalin’s policy, in retrospect,

simply unwise? Such questions cannot be answered with assurance, since less is known about

the postwar Stalinist era (1945–53) than any other in Soviet history, but the most tempting clue

is again to be found in Stalin’s domestic calculations. If the Soviet Union were to recover from

the war, not to mention compete with the mighty United States, the population would have to

be spurred to even greater efforts, which meant intensifying the campaign against alleged

foreign threats. What was more, the Soviets had only recently regained control of populations

that had had contact with foreigners and, in some cases, collaborated with the invaders.

Ukrainians in particular had tried to establish an autonomous status under the Nazis, and they

persisted in guerrilla activity against the Soviets until 1947. If Soviet citizens were allowed

widespread contact with foreigners through economic cooperation, international institutions,

and cultural exchanges, loyalty to the Communist regime might be weakened. Firm control of

his eastern European neighbours helped assure Stalin of firm control at home. Indeed, he now

ordered the utter isolation of Soviet life to the point that returning prisoners of war were

interned lest they “infect” their neighbours with notions of the outside world. Perhaps Stalin

did not really fear an attack from the “imperialists” or consider a Soviet invasion of western

Europe, but neither could he welcome the Americans and British as genuine comrades in peace

without undermining the ideology and the emergency that justified his own iron rule.
A swift return to Communist orthodoxy accompanied the clampdown on foreign contacts.

During the war the U.S.S.R.’s leading economist, Evgeny Varga of the Institute of World

Economy and World Politics, argued that government controls in the United States had

moderated the influence of monopolies, permitting both dynamic growth and a mellower

foreign policy. The U.S.S.R. might therefore benefit from East–West cooperation and prevent

the division of the world into economic blocs. Stalin appeared to tolerate this nontraditionalist

view as long as large loans from the United States and the World Bank were a possibility. But

the suspension of Lend-Lease, opposition to a Soviet loan in the State Department, and Stalin’s

renewed rejection of consumerism doomed these moderate views on the world economy. The

new Five-Year Plan, announced at the start of 1946, called for continued concentration on

heavy industry and military technology. The war and victory, said Stalin, had justified his harsh

policies of the 1930s, and he called on Soviet scientists to overtake and surpass Western

science. Soviet economists perforce embraced the traditional view that Western economies

were about to enter a new period of inflation and unemployment that would increase the

imperialist pressure for war. Andrey Zhdanov, the Communist leader of Leningrad, was a

bellwether. In 1945 he wanted to reward the Soviet people with consumer goods for their

wartime sacrifices; in early 1947 he espoused the theory of the “two camps,” the peace-loving,

progressive camp led by the Soviet Union and the militaristic, reactionary camp led by the

United States.

American confusion came to an end after Feb. 9, 1946, when Stalin’s great speech inaugurating

the Five-Year Plan reiterated clearly his implacable hostility to the West. Kennan responded
with his famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow (February 22), which for years to come served

as a primer on Soviet behaviour for many in Washington. The Kremlin’s “neurotic view of world

affairs,” he wrote, was the product of centuries of Russian isolation and insecurity vis-à-vis the

more advanced West. The Soviets, like the tsars, viewed the influx of Western ideas as the

greatest threat to their continued power, and they clung to Marxist ideology as a cover for their

disregard for “every single ethical value in their methods and tactics.” The U.S.S.R. was not Nazi

Germany—it would not seek war and was averse to risk taking—but it would employ every

means of subverting, dividing, and undermining the West through the actions of Communists

and fellow travelers. Kennan’s advice was to expect nothing from negotiations but to remain

confident and healthy, lest the United States become like those with whom it was contending.

Kennan’s analysis implied several important conclusions: that the Wilsonian vision inherited

from Roosevelt was fruitless; that the United States must take the lead in organizing the

Western world; that the Truman administration must prevent a renewal of isolationism and

persuade the American people to shoulder their new responsibilities. Churchill, though out of

office, aided this agenda when he warned the American people (with Truman’s confidential

endorsement) from Fulton, Mo., on March 5, 1946, that an “iron curtain” had descended across

the European continent.

THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE

PEACE TREATIES AND TERRITORIAL AGREEMENTS

The early spring of 1946 was a turning point when the United States gave up its hopes of

cooperation in favour of what would soon be called “containment.” The first manifestation

occurred in March 1946, when the U.S.S.R. failed to evacuate Iran on schedule and Secretary of

State Byrnes was obliged to go to the UN Security Council and even hint at hostilities to get

Moscow to retreat. This incident, together with Soviet pressure on Turkey and Yugoslav

involvement in the Greek civil war, seemed to indicate that Communists were prepared to use

force to expand.

The year 1946 saw many meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers, which ultimately

produced treaties of peace with Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, and Bulgaria, signed on Feb.

10, 1947. Border questions after World War II were comparatively minor—a somewhat ironic

fact, given the interwar attacks on Versailles by all parties. Romania ceded northern Bukovina

and Bessarabia back to the U.S.S.R., which also claimed Petsamo and the Karelian Isthmus

from Finland and the Carpatho-Ukraine region from Czechoslovakia. Hungary returned northern

Transylvania to Romania. Italy ceded the Dodecanese islands to Greece and surrendered its

overseas colonies, although a Soviet demand for a trusteeship over Libya was denied. Trieste

was contested by Italy and Yugoslavia and remained under Western occupation until 1954. The

major change affected Poland, which was figuratively picked up and moved some 150 miles to

the west. This meant that large portions of eastern Germany came under Polish administration,

while the U.S.S.R. absorbed the entire Baltic coast as far as the venerable German port of

Königsberg (Kaliningrad). The U.S.S.R. was the only power to make significant territorial gains

from the war.

Four-power cooperation in Germany continued to deteriorate. The Americans had agreed at

Potsdam to reparations-in-kind but opposed extreme efforts by the Soviets and the French to

pauperize the Germans lest the burden of feeding them fall entirely on the American taxpayer.

What was more, the Soviets would be unwilling (in Kennan’s view) to countenance centralized

German institutions unless they were in a position to use them to communize the entire

country. In early May 1946, General Lucius Clay, commanding the U.S. zone, refused to

authorize shipments out of western Germany until agreement was reached on treating

Germany as a unit under four-power control. On September 6, Byrnes then announced a new

policy: if unification of all Germany proved impossible, the United States would instead

promote “maximum possible unification” (i.e., in the western zones only). This ensured that

Germany would remain divided long afterward.

ATOMIC ENERGY

The superpowers also failed to join hands on atomic energy. Despite resistance from powerful

circles in the press, Congress, and the military against any giveaway of atomic secrets, Byrnes

appointed a committee in January 1946 to draft proposals for international control of atomic

energy. The resulting (Dean) Acheson–(David) Lilienthal Report called for a UN authority to

survey and control all uranium deposits and ensure that atomic research was conducted for

peaceful purposes only. Once controls were in place, the United States would relinquish its

arsenal and scientific information to the world community. Truman entrusted the

diplomatic task to Baruch, who insisted that nations not be allowed to employ their Security

Council veto in atomic matters. He then appealed to the UN on June 14, 1946: “We are here to
make a choice between the quick and the dead.” The Soviet plan, presented by Andrey

Gromyko, called instead for immediate prohibition of all manufacture and use of atomic

weapons. Measures to ensure compliance would follow, but there could be no tampering with

the Security Council veto. Western delegates pointed out that the Soviets were asking the

United States to give up its monopoly and make public all its data in return for a paper promise

of compliance. Gromyko countered that the United States was asking all other countries to

reveal the state of their own research before it gave up its own arsenal. At the final vote in

December, the U.S.S.R. and Poland vetoed the Baruch Plan, and international control of atomic

energy ceased to be a possibility. While the United States was not as forthcoming as it might

have been, the Soviet refusal to allow on-site inspection would frustrate disarmament for the

next 40 years.

THE ECONOMIC BATTLE WITH COMMUNISM

By the turn of 1947 it appeared that Truman’s foreign policy was foundering. His secretary of

agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, had been outspoken in criticism of the Baruch Plan and of the

policy of “getting tough” with the Soviets. Upon resigning he became a leader of those whom

Truman privately described as the “Reds, phonies and the parlour pinks” that he feared were “a

sabotage front for Uncle Joe Stalin.” The 1946 elections then returned a Republican Congress

bent on cutting costs and “bringing the boys home.” Yet the United States was on the verge of

the greatest reversal of its foreign policy traditions since 1917. On Feb. 21, 1947, the British

government announced that its economic difficulties would force it to suspend economic and

military aid to Greece and Turkey by March 31. Greece was embroiled in civil war provoked by
Communists. Turkey was under Soviet pressure for bases and naval passage through the

Dardanelles. If those countries succumbed to Communist influence, the Mediterranean and the

entire Middle East might follow. Truman, his new secretary of state, George C. Marshall, and

Marshall’s deputy, Dean Acheson, resolved at once that the United States must step in. On

February 27 Acheson impressed congressional leaders with a vivid account of the Soviet

strategy of expansion and its implications for American security. After a tense silence,

Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg vowed to support the new policy if Truman would

explain it with equal clarity to the American people. On March 12, Truman accordingly told

Congress that “at the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose

between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. . . . It must be the policy

of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed

minorities or by outside pressure.” He asked for $400,000,000 in aid specifically for Greece and

Turkey, but the Truman Doctrine thus propounded universalized the American commitment to

contain the spread of Communism.

The mobilization of American might for this task followed swiftly. On June 5, 1947, at Harvard

University, Marshall called for a massive program of foreign aid to help the European states

recover. In July, Kennan, signing himself “X,” educated the public on “The Sources of Soviet

Conduct” and outlined the strategy of containment in the journal Foreign Affairs. The National

Military Establishment Act of 1947 (in the works since the war) created a permanent Joint

Chiefs of Staff, a single secretary of defense, the U.S. Air Force as a separate service with its

nuclear-armed Strategic Air Command, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Kennan
himself soon criticized the Truman Doctrine as indiscriminate and excessively military. Drawing

on classical geopolitics, he narrowed U.S. interests to the protection of those industrial regions

not yet in the hands of the Soviet Union (North America, Britain, Germany, and Japan). In

practice, however, defense of those regions seemed to require defense of contiguous areas as

well. Japanese security, for instance, depended on the fate of Korea, and European security on

not being outflanked in the Middle East. American responsibilities, therefore, could easily

appear to be global.

The Marshall Plan was born in the State Department in response to the fact that western

Europe was making little progress toward prosperity and stability. Britain was exhausted and

committed to the Labour government’s extensive welfare programs. In France, Charles de

Gaulle’s postwar government quickly gave way to a Fourth Republic paralyzed by quarreling

factions that included a large, disciplined Communist party. In Italy, too, Communists

threatened to gain power by parliamentary means. All suffered from underproduction, a

shortage of capital, and energy shortages exacerbated by the severe winter of 1946–47.

Marshall therefore put forward a plan for cash grants to a joint European economic council “to

assist in the return of normal economic health, without which there can be no political stability

and no assured peace.”

The British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, spoke for western Europe when he told Parliament,

“When the Marshall proposals were announced, I grabbed them with both hands.” At Kennan’s

insistence, Marshall aid was offered to all of Europe, including the Soviet bloc, but Stalin
denounced the plan as a capitalist plot. The one eastern European state not yet

communized, Czechoslovakia, attempted to join the Marshall Plan, but Communist pressure

forced it to back out. In February 1948, less than 10 years after Munich, the Czech Communist

party subverted the republic and Czech democracy again fell to totalitarian rule, a tragedy

punctuated by the suicide—or murder—of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. Stalin reinforced his

attack on the Marshall Plan by reviving the Communist International, now called the

Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), in October 1947 and by escalating ideological

warfare against the West.

The new hope kindled in western Europe by the Marshall Plan helped secure the defeat of the

Communists in the 1948 Italian election (the $1,000,000 of CIA funds for the Christian

Democrats was hardly decisive) and stabilize politics elsewhere in western Europe. Under the

Marshall Plan, the United States then transferred $13,600,000,000 to the stricken economies of

western Europe in addition to $9,500,000,000 in earlier loans and $500,000,000 in private

charity.

THE DIVISION OF EUROPE

The Marshall Plan’s manifold effects included the hardening of the division of Europe, the

movement for integration within western Europe, and the creation of the two Germanies.

“Bizonia,” the product of an economic merger between the U.S. and British occupation zones,

was announced on May 29, 1947, and a new U.S. policy followed on July 11 that ended

Germany’s punitive period and aimed at making its economy self-sufficient. When in March
1948 some of the western European states responded to the coup in Czechoslovakia by signing

the Brussels Treaty and pressing ahead with the establishment of a West German currency and

government, the Russians walked out of the Allied Control Council. On June 24, Soviet

occupation forces in the eastern zone blocked Allied road and rail access to the western zones

of Berlin. This first Berlin crisis, made possible by the anomaly of a U.S.-British-French interest

100 miles inside the Soviet zone, forced Truman to define the limits of his “get tough” policy.

Clay and Acheson advocated sending an armed convoy along the access routes to assert Allied

rights, but neither the Joint Chiefs nor the British and French were prepared to risk war.

Instead, the United States responded with an enormous airlift, totalling 277,264 sorties, to keep

western Berlin supplied with food, fuel, and medicine. Perhaps Stalin hoped to drive the Allies

from Berlin, or to prevent the setting up and possible rearmament of a West German state, or

to induce the American electorate in 1948 to return to isolationism. In the event, the blockade

only frightened the Western powers into stronger new measures. On April 4, 1949, the foreign

ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy,

Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Canada founded the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO) in Washington, D.C., providing for mutual aid in case of attack against any

member. On May 8, the West German parliamentary council adopted a constitution, and on

May 23 the Federal Republic of Germany came into being. Stalin acknowledged defeat in Berlin

and lifted the blockade on May 12, but the Soviets countered by creating mirror institutions—

the German Democratic Republic (Oct. 7, 1949) and the Council for Mutual Economic

Assistance (Comecon) in the Soviet bloc.

The parallel and hostile German states and regional alliances institutionalized and militarized

the Cold War even as the Communist ideological offensive and the Truman Doctrine had

universalized it. Before this first phase of the Cold War closed, however, two events called into

question root assumptions of the two sides. The first was the West’s assumption that

Communism was a monolithic movement controlled from the Kremlin. In June 1948 the world

became aware of a rift between Stalin and Tito that threatened to shake the Soviet empire of

“people’s democracies.” This rift could be traced to the war, in which Tito’s Communist

partisans had expelled the Nazis from Yugoslavia without large-scale aid from the Soviet Union.

As a national hero, Tito had strong domestic support and thus was not personally dependent on

Stalin. He even persevered in support for the Greek Communists while Stalin was adhering to

his 1944 agreement with Churchill to keep hands off Greece. When Stalin and Molotov vetoed

his plans for a Balkan confederation, Tito purged Yugoslav Communists known to be in the pay

of Moscow. Stalin countered with brutal threats and a purge of Communists in the satellites

accused of Titoist tendencies. But Tito held firm: Yugoslavia would “choose its own path to

Socialism,” seek economic ties with the West, and indirectly place itself under Western

protection. Tito also ceased to support the Greek Communists, and the civil war there soon

ended in a victory for the royal government (October 1949).

The second assumption of the early Cold War was shattered in August 1949 when the Soviet

Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Its development might have been hastened by

espionage, but Soviets had been among the leaders in nuclear physics before the war, and

knowledgeable observers had known that a Soviet atomic bomb was only a matter of time.
THE COLD WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND ASIA

THE CREATION OF ISRAEL

Islāmic and South Asian nationalism, first awakened in the era of the first World War,

triumphed in the wake of the second, bringing on in the years 1946–50 the first great wave

of decolonization. The British and French fulfilled their wartime promises by evacuating and

recognizing the sovereignty of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria in 1946 and Iraq in 1947.

(Oman and Yemen remained under British administration until the 1960s, Kuwait and the

Trucial States [United Arab Emirates] until 1971.) The strategic importance of the Middle East

derived from its vast oil reserves, the Suez Canal, and its position on the southern rim of the

U.S.S.R. While the Islāmic kingdoms and republics were not drawn to Communist ideology, the

Soviets hoped to expand their influence by pressuring Turkey and Iran and involving themselves

in the intramural quarrels of the region. Chief among these was the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The Zionist movement of the late 19th century had led by 1917 to the Balfour Declaration, by

which Britain promised an eventual homeland for Jews in Palestine. When that former Ottoman

province became a British mandate under the League of Nations in 1922, it contained about

700,000 people, of whom only 58,000 were Jews. By the end of the 1920s, however, the Jewish

community had tripled, and, with the encouragement of Amīn al-Ḥusaynī, grand mufti of

Jerusalem and admirer of the Nazis, Arab resentment exploded in bloody riots in 1929 and

again in 1936–39. For self-protection the Jews formed Haganah (Defense), an underground

militia that by 1939 had grown into a semiprofessional army. The Zionist cause then began to
benefit from the worldwide sympathy caused by the Nazi Holocaust and by Haganah

cobelligerency in the British war against Germany. The Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military

Organization), a Zionist terror organization under Menachem Begin, and the Abraham Stern

Group, which found even the Irgun too mild, turned against the British occupation in 1944

despite vehement opposition from Chaim Weizmann and others promoting the Jewish cause

overseas. The newly formed Arab League, in turn, pledged in March 1945 to prevent the

formation of any Jewish state in Palestine.

Meanwhile, Zionists concentrated on the United States, whose large Jewish voting bloc was

believed likely to influence policy. In the 1944 campaign Roosevelt endorsed the founding of a

“free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth,” and U.S. policy subsequently clashed with

Britain’s, which aimed at maintaining paramountcy in the region through good relations with

the Arabs. Foreign Secretary Bevin opposed and Truman endorsed a proposal in April 1946 by

an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry to allow another 100,000 Jews into Palestine, an idea

dwarfed by David Ben-Gurion’s demand for 1,200,000. Jewish terrorism exacerbated British

hostility through such incidents as the flogging and murder of British soldiers, culminating in the

bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, in which 41 Arabs, 28 British, and 22 others

died. All told, Jewish terrorists killed 127 British soldiers and wounded 331 from 1944 to 1948,

as well as thousands of Arabs. On the other hand, heartrending tales of Jewish survivors of Nazi

Europe being turned back from their “promised land” also tugged at Western consciences.
On April 2, 1947, Bevin washed his hands of Palestine and placed it on the docket of the UN,

which recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states. The United States and Britain feared

that the Arabs would turn to the Soviets for aid, but the U.S.S.R. mystified all parties in October

by agreeing with the American plan for partition. The Soviets apparently hoped to hasten

British withdrawal, insinuate themselves into Middle Eastern diplomacy, and profit from the

discord following partition. The General Assembly approved partition on November 29, granting

to Jews some 5,500 square miles, mostly in the arid Negev. When the Arab League proclaimed a

jihad (holy war) against the Jews, Truman’s advisers began to reconsider partition, for the loss

of Arab oil might cripple the Marshall Plan and the U.S. military in case of war. When, however,

the British pulled out and Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, Stalin and

Truman (whether out of sympathy or domestic politics) immediately advanced recognition.

At the moment of partition the number of Jews had risen to some 35 percent of the total

population of Palestine, and they were faced with Arab League forces totaling 40,000 men. The

Haganah fielded about 30,000 volunteers armed with Czechoslovakian weapons sent at the

behest of the U.S.S.R. On the day after partition the Arab League launched its attack, but the

desperate Jewish defense prevailed on all five fronts. The UN called for a cease-fire on May 20

and appointed Folke, Count Bernadotte, as mediator, but his new partition plan was

unacceptable to both sides. A 10-day Israeli offensive in July destroyed the Arab armies as an

offensive force, at the cost of 838 Israeli lives. Members of the Stern Group assassinated

Bernadotte on September 17. A final offensive in October carried the Israelis to the Lebanese

border and the edge of the Golan Heights in the north and to the Gulf of Aqaba and into the
Sinai in the south. Armistice talks resumed on Rhodes on Jan. 13, 1949, with the American

Ralph Bunche mediating, and a truce followed in March. No Arab state recognized Israel’s

legitimacy, however. More than a half-million Palestinian refugees were scattered around the

Arab world. Between 1948 and 1957 some 567,000 Jews were expelled from Arab states, nearly

all of whom resettled in Israel. The 1948 war thus marked only the beginning of trouble in the

region.

SOUTH ASIA

The British faced a similar problem on a much larger scale in India, whose population included

250,000,000 Hindus, 90,000,000 Muslims, and 60,000,000 distributed among various ethnic and

religious minorities. Between the wars Mohandas Gandhi’s passive-resistance campaigns had

crystallized Indian nationalism, which was nurtured in part by the relative leniency of British

rule. Parliament set in motion the process leading to home rule in 1935, and the Attlee Cabinet

rewarded India for its wartime loyalty by instructing Lord Mountbatten on Feb. 20, 1947, to

prepare India for independence by June 1948. He did so, too hastily, in only six months, and

the partition of the subcontinent into a mainly Hindu India and a mainly Muslim but divided

Pakistan (including part of Bengal in the east) at midnight on Aug. 14–15, 1947, was

accompanied by panicky flight and riots between Hindus and Muslims that claimed between

200,000 and 600,000 lives. Perhaps a bloodbath was inevitable whatever Mountbatten did or

however long he took to do it. Nothing, however, tarnished Britain’s colonial record in India so

much as its termination. The Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru then took firm control and

governed the Dominion (after 1950 the Republic) of India in parliamentary style and made India
one of the first decolonized states to adopt a posture of nonalignment among the great

powers. Disputes with Pakistan, especially over the contested province of Jammu and Kashmir,

however, ensured continued strife on the subcontinent.

Elsewhere in South Asia the colonial powers expelled the Japanese only to confront indigenous

nationalist forces. The British fought a successful counterinsurgency against Communist

guerrillas in Malaya, but the French waged a protracted and ultimately unsuccessful war with

the Communist Viet Minh in Indochina, while the Dutch failed to subdue nationalists in

Indonesia and granted independence in 1949. The United States transferred power peacefully

in the Philippines in 1946.

In Japan, the American occupation under General Douglas MacArthur effected a peaceful

revolution, restoring civil rights, universal suffrage, and parliamentary government, reforming

education, encouraging labour unions, and emancipating women. In the 1947 constitution

drafted by MacArthur’s staff Japan renounced war and limited its military to a token force.

During the Korean War a majority of the Allies signed a separate peace treaty and the United

States entered into a mutual security pact with Japan (Sept. 8, 1951). These policies laid the

foundation for a peaceful and prosperous Japan, but the United States took upon itself the

burden of defending the western Pacific for the foreseeable future.

THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR

The Asian future would be determined above all by the outcome of the civil war in China, a war

that had never totally ceased even during the Japanese invasion and occupation. In

1945, Truman reaffirmed America’s commitment to a “strong, united, and democratic China”

and dispatched Marshall to seek a truce and a coalition government between Chiang Kai-

shek’s Nationalists at Chungking and Mao Zedong’s Communists in Yen-an. Neither side,

however, had any intention of compromising with the other, and fighting resumed in October

1946. At first the United States imposed an arms embargo, but after May 1947 it extended aid

to Chiang—a policy aptly described as “neutrality against the Communists.”

Stalin, having blundered badly in China in the 1920s, kept up correct relations with the

Nationalists on the assumption that Chiang was too strong to defeat but not strong enough to

defy Soviet interests in Manchuria, Mongolia, and Sinkiang. The U.S.S.R. concluded a treaty of

friendship with the Nationalist government on Aug. 14, 1945. Soviet policy at that time was to

depict Mao as a mere agrarian reformer and to call for a coalition government. Having won

Chiang’s blessing, the Soviets systematically looted Manchuria of industrial equipment and

reassumed their old rights on the Chinese Eastern railway. At the same time, Molotov insisted

that the United States withdraw its advisers.

Chiang’s forces advanced on all fronts until they captured Yen-an itself in March 1947, but the

rapid occupation of North China and Manchuria, with American aid but against American

advice, overextended the Nationalist army and tied it to cities and railroad lines. Corrupt

officers also sold vast numbers of U.S. weapons to the enemy and siphoned off much of the
$2,000,000,000 in U.S. aid into personal fortunes. When the Communists counterattacked at

the end of 1947, Nationalist units were left isolated in the cities or simply melted away. The

Communists took Tientsin and Peking in January 1949 and opened a southward offensive in

April. By June their army had grown to 1,500,000 men and Chiang’s had shrunk to 2,100,000.

On August 5 a State Department White Paper announced the cessation of all aid to the

Nationalists and concluded that “the ominous result of the civil war in China is beyond the

control of the government of the United States.” The remaining Nationalists fled to the island of

Formosa (Taiwan), and the Communists officially proclaimed the People’s Republic of China at

Peking on Oct. 1, 1949. Only then did Stalin recognize the Maoist regime and negotiate to

return Port Arthur and the Manchurian railway to Chinese control.

The fall of China to Communism, following hard on the Berlin blockade and the first Soviet A-

bomb test, was a terrific blow to the United States. The disaster gave Republicans a stick with

which to beat the Truman administration, while the perjury of Alger Hiss (a high-ranking State

Department officer, president of the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, and erstwhile

Communist agent) lent credence to charges that Communist sympathizers were at work

in Washington. On Feb. 9, 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy claimed to know the identities of

205 State Department officials tainted by Communism. Over the course of four years of

congressional hearings McCarthy used innuendo and intimidation to propound charges that, in

virtually every case, proved groundless. Nonetheless, the tide of suspicion he incited—or

exploited—ironically made him, as Truman said, “the greatest asset that the Kremlin has.” Not
only did his behaviour besmirch the image of the United States but it also bequeathed the

charge of “McCarthyism” as an impregnable defense to be used by all manner of leftists.

The original question—Who lost China?—had been answered by the White Paper: America was

not omnipotent and China was not America’s to lose. Misperception of Asian realities and the

“Europe-first” bias of the East Coast establishment, most Democrats, and the army certainly

contributed to the debacle, however. “Asia-firsters,” including the much less influential West

Coast establishment, most Republicans, and the navy, rued the equanimity with which the

administration witnessed the collapse of the Nationalists. For his part, Stalin must have found it

equally mysterious that the United States would go to the brink of war over Berlin and spend

billions to aid western Europe, then stand aside while the world’s most populous nation went

Communist and shrug that it would “wait for the dust to settle” (Acheson’s phrase).

THE KOREAN WAR

Events in neighbouring Korea determined that the dust would not settle for another 20 years.

In 1945 Soviet and American troops occupied the peninsula, ruled by Japan since 1910, on

either side of the 38th parallel. In North Korea indigenous Marxists under Kim Il-sung took

control with Soviet assistance and began to organize a totalitarian state. In South Korea

General John R. Hodge, lacking firm instructions from Washington, began as early as the

autumn of 1945 to establish defense forces and police and to move toward a separate

administration. He also permitted the return of the nationalist leader Syngman Rhee. By the

time Washington and Moscow noticed Korea, the Cold War had already set in and the de facto
partition, as in Germany, became permanent. South and North Korean governments formally

arose in 1948, each claiming legitimacy for the whole country and threatening to unify Korea by

force. Between October 1949 and June 1950 several thousand soldiers were killed in border

incidents along the parallel. The war that followed, therefore, was not so much a new

departure as a denouement.

On Jan. 12, 1950, Acheson outlined his Asian policy in a speech before the Press Club in

Washington, D.C. He included Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines within the American line of

defense but excluded Taiwan and Korea. Five months later, on June 25, 1950, the North

Koreans invaded across the 38th parallel. Conventional wisdom had it that Kim was acting on

Stalin’s orders and that Acheson’s omission had “invited” the attack. The declassification of

documents of the period, however, has led to a reconsideration of the question of the origins of

the Korean War. The United States had not ignored Korea; rather, the State Department

considered South Korea vital to the defense of Japan. It is more likely that Acheson’s failure to

mention Korea meant that the United States did not intend to station its own forces in Korea,

unlike the countries mentioned, and that the United States was purposely withholding

unequivocal support from Rhee lest he take it as encouragement to invade the north. Thus,

Acheson was trying to prevent a war but probably trying also to ensure that if hostilities did

occur the Communists would be to blame. Perhaps that is why he later referred to North

Korea’s attack not as an act of perfidy or aggression but as one of stupidity.

Stalin always behaved toward his client states with similar caution and strove to keep them

under control. Why then should he “unleash” Kim and expose North Korea to a U.S.

counterattack that might become a precedent for pushing Communism back elsewhere? The

possibility exists that Kim (like Ho Chi Minh) acted on his own in pursuit of a united national

Communist state. On the other hand, Stalin may indeed have encouraged North Korea to attack

in order to keep Kim—and Mao—dependent on the U.S.S.R. or to create a costly diversion for

the Americans. According to Khrushchev’s memoirs, Kim initiated the idea of invading and

Stalin, almost casually and certainly foolishly, approved it.

The Truman administration responded with alacrity, viewing Korea as a test case for the policy

of containment. The United States appealed to the Security Council (which the Soviets were

boycotting for its continued seating of Nationalist China) and obtained a condemnation of

North Korea and an affirmation of collective security. Once the South Korean rout was evident,

Truman ordered MacArthur to transfer forces from Japan to Korea, where they barely

established a perimeter around the port of Pusan. Against Senator Robert A. Taft’s protest of

Truman’s actions as a usurpation of Congress’ right to declare war, most Americans accepted

Truman’s analogy with the 1930s and his determination not to appease the aggressor.

Ultimately, 16 UN member states provided troops for this “police action,” but U.S. and South

Korean troops bore the brunt of the fighting.

In September 1950, following MacArthur’s brilliant amphibious landing at Inch’ŏn, Truman

approved operations north of the 38th parallel, and soon UN forces were driving through North
Korea toward the Yalu River border with China. When the UN General Assembly adopted a U.S.

resolution (October 7) to establish a unified, democratic Korea, it appeared that the Western

alliance was going beyond containment to a “rollback” strategy: Communists who attacked

others ran the risk of being attacked themselves. In November, however, contrary to

MacArthur’s confident predictions, Chinese forces attacked across the Yalu. By the new year,

UN armies had retreated south of the 38th parallel and MacArthur demanded the right to

expand the war. If American boys were dying, he asked, how could the government in good

conscience fail to attack the enemy’s home base or use every weapon at its disposal? Prime

Minister Attlee, speaking for the allies, strongly opposed a wider war or the use of nuclear

weapons. By April 1951 the UN forces had recaptured Seoul and regained the 38th parallel.

The effects of the Korean War reverberated around the world. Europeans feared that Korea

was a diversion and that Stalin’s real aim was to attack in Europe. Accordingly, Acheson agreed

in September 1950 to contribute U.S. divisions to a NATO army under the command of General

Eisenhower. “Asia-firsters” objected strenuously and kicked off what was known as “the great

debate.” Herbert Hoover even called for the United States to write off western Europe and to

make the Western Hemisphere the “Gibraltar of Western Civilization.” The Truman

administration, backed by eastern Republicans and Eisenhower himself, persuaded Congress to

commit four additional divisions to Europe. The Korean War also hastened implementation

of NSC-68, a document drafted by Paul Nitze that called for a vigorous program of atomic and

conventional rearmament to meet America’s global commitments.

As American and allied publics grew increasingly impatient with the bloody deadlock in Korea,

Truman determined to seek a negotiated peace. MacArthur tried to undermine this policy,

issuing his own ultimatum to Peking and writing Congress that “there is no substitute for

victory,” whereupon in April 1951 Truman fired him for insubordination. The popular warrior

and proconsul went home to a hero’s welcome, and the Senate held hearings on the propriety

of the “limited war” strategy. Marshall defended the President, arguing that a wider war in Asia

would expose Europe to attack, while General Omar Bradley insisted that MacArthur’s plans

would “involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong

enemy.” MacArthur retorted that limited war was a form of appeasement.

Truce negotiations opened at Kaesŏng on July 10 after the Chinese had dropped their demands

for withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea and admission of the People’s Republic to the

UN in place of Nationalist China. The talks broke off in August, then resumed at P’anmunjŏm in

October. Bitter fighting continued for two more years as each side sought to improve its tactical

position. The talks centred on two issues: the demarcation line between North and South Korea

and the repatriation of more than 150,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war, many of

whom did not want to return home. After hinting that the United States might resort to use of

the atomic bomb, the newly elected president Dwight Eisenhower achieved an armistice signed

at P’anmunjŏm on July 27, 1953, that separated the armies with a demilitarized zone and

otherwise restored the status quo ante bellum. Chinese torture of U.S. prisoners and anti-

American propaganda, combined with U.S. refusal to recognize the Peking regime and the

conclusion of a defense treaty with Nationalist China (Taiwan), ensured continued hostility
between Washington and Peking. Indeed, documents declassified in the late 1980s showed that

both Truman and Eisenhower saw early on the potential for a Sino-Soviet split and that

maximum pressure on Peking, not conciliation, was the way to bring it on.

ASIAN WARS AND THE DETERRENCE STRATEGY

While war raged in Korea, the French were battling the nationalist and Communist Viet Minh

in Indochina. When a French army became surrounded at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Paris appealed

to the United States for air support. American leaders viewed the insurgency as part of the

worldwide Communist campaign and at first propounded the theory that if Indochina went

Communist other Southeast Asian countries would also fall “like dominoes.” Eisenhower,

however, was reluctant to send U.S. troops to Asian jungles, to arrogate war-making powers to

the executive, or to sully the anti-imperialist reputation of the United States, which he

considered an asset in the Cold War. In any case both he and the American people wanted “no

more Koreas.” Hence the United States supported partition of Indochina as the best means of

containing the Viet Minh, and after French Premier Pierre Mendès-France came to power

promising peace, partition was effected at the Geneva Conference of 1954. Laos and Cambodia

won independence, while two Vietnams emerged on either side of the 17th parallel: a tough

Communist regime under Ho Chi Minh in the north, an unstable republic in the south. National

elections intended to reunite Vietnam under a single government were scheduled for 1956 but

never took place, and, when the United States assumed France’s former role as South

Vietnam’s sponsor, another potential “Korea” was created.

The Korean War and the new administration brought significant changes in U.S. strategy.

Eisenhower believed that the Cold War would be a protracted struggle and that the greatest

danger for the United States would be the temptation to spend itself to death. If the United

States were obliged to respond to endless Communist-instigated “brushfire wars,” it would

soon lose the capacity and will to defend the free world. Hence Eisenhower and Secretary of

State John Foster Dulles determined to solve “the great equation,” balancing a healthy

economy with only what was essential by way of military force. Their answer was a defense

policy whereby the United States would deter future aggression with its airborne nuclear

threat. As Dulles put it, the United States reserved the right to reply to aggression with

“massive retaliatory power” at places of its own choosing. In implementing this policy,

Eisenhower cut overall defense spending by 30 percent over four years but beefed up the

Strategic Air Command. The diplomatic side of this new policy was a series of regional pacts

that linked the United States to countries ringing the entire Soviet bloc. Truman had already

founded the NATO alliance, the ANZUS pact with Australia and New Zealand (1951), the Pact of

Rio with Latin-American nations (1947), and the defense treaty with Japan (1951). Now Dulles

completed an alliance system linking the 1954 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO),

stretching from Australia to Pakistan, to the 1955 Baghdad Pact Organization (later the Central

Treaty Organization [CENTO]), stretching from Pakistan to Turkey, to NATO, stretching from

Turkey (after 1952) to Iceland.

Dulles viewed the postwar world in the same bipolar terms as had Truman and, for that matter,

Stalin. Asian independence, however, not only expanded the arena of the Cold War but also
spawned the third path of nonalignment. In April 1955 delegates from 29 nations attended

the Bandung (Indonesia) Afro-Asian Conference, which was dominated by Nehru of India,

Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Sukarno of Indonesia. In theory the delegates met to

celebrate neutrality and an end to “the old age of the white man”; in fact they castigated the

imperialist West and praised, or tolerated, the U.S.S.R. Although most of the Bandung leaders

were sloganeering despots in their own countries, the movement captivated the imagination of

many guilt-ridden Western intellectuals.

THE PACE OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

THE NATURE AND ROLE OF GERMANY

The shared horror of World War II and the decline of Europe from the seat of world power into

an arena of U.S.–Soviet competition revived the ancient dream of European unity. In modern

times, Roman Catholics, liberals, and Socialists had all conceived of one means or another to

transcend nationalism, and after 1945 a combination of factors made the dream plausible. First,

the Soviet threat gave western Europeans an incentive to unite for defense and economic

recovery. Second, the very scale of the superpowers suggested that Europeans must pool their

resources if they hoped to play a major role in world affairs. Third, two world wars and the

Fascist interlude had discredited nationalism and propelled moderate Christian Democrats and

Social Democrats to prominence in postwar Europe. Fourth, integration was a means by which

German economic and military power might be safely revived. Fifth, centralized planning, which

had evolved naturally with the war economies, made economic integration seem possible and
attractive. Finally, the United States used its leverage through the Marshall Plan to encourage

multinational institutions, cooperation, and free trade.

In early disputes over the occupation of Germany, France often sided with the U.S.S.R. in order

to keep Germany weak and obtain reparations. The Berlin crisis of 1948, however, convinced

the French that a way must be found to reconcile German recovery with their own security. The

architects of an integrationist solution were the French technocrat Jean Monnet and Foreign

Minister Robert Schuman. The Schuman Plan of May 1950 called for a merger of the western

European coal and steel industries to hasten recovery, forestall competition, and make future

wars between France and Germany impossible. The patriarchal chancellor of the new West

German republic, Konrad Adenauer, embraced the offer at once, for the primary foreign policy

goal of his new state was economic and political rehabilitation. The founding of the West

German state was his first success; the drafting of a sturdy democratic constitution was the

second; his adoption, with Ludwig Erhard, of a dynamic free-market economic policy was the

third. Once Marshall Plan aid arrived, West Germany was well on its way

to Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle of the 1950s, but it remained for Adenauer to

achieve security and full sovereign rights for West Germany. The Cold War permitted him to do

both at once. By moving West Germany into the democratic free-market camp he earned

protection and trust from the West. Of course, Adenauer could not ignore the emotional issue

of German reunification, and thus he refused to recognize the East German regime or Polish

control of the lands east of the Oder-Neisse rivers. The Hallstein Doctrine extended this

nonrecognition to all countries that recognized East Germany. Adenauer knew, however, that
to base policy on the prospect of reunification was unrealistic. The Soviets’ Prague Proposals of

October 1950 had envisioned a united, demilitarized German state—Kennan now endorsed

such a neutral zone in central Europe to separate the Cold War rivals—but the Soviets insisted

on a Constituent Council with equal representation for East and West Germany, even though

the West had twice the population. At best, the East German delegation could block progress

indefinitely while preventing West Germany from joining the Western bloc. At worst, the

Soviets might subvert or coerce a disarmed Germany into alignment with Moscow. In the

atmosphere of the Korean War, the Prague Proposals could not be taken up with confidence.

Instead, Adenauer endorsed the Schuman Plan and helped to found the European Coal and

Steel Community among “the Six”: France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries.

The Korean War sparked the next initiative toward integration when the United States, bogged

down in Asia, requested a sizable increase in the European contribution to NATO. In 1951 the

French and British cabinets both fell over the costly issue of rearmament before a committee

managed to work out an acceptable distribution of burdens in October. The obvious solution

was German rearmament, something the nervous French refused to countenance unless the

German army were merged into an international force, a European Defense Community (EDC).

The implications were profound, for a common western European army would require a

common defense ministry, coordinated foreign policy, a joint defense budget, even a common

parliament to approve spending and policy. In sum, the EDC would go far toward creating a

United States of Europe. The West German parliament was first to ratify the EDC, in March

1953, but Britain, still clinging to the vestiges of empire and its “special relationship” with the
United States, opted out. As Anthony Eden put it, joining a European federation “is something

which we know, in our bones, we cannot do.” The French, in turn, debated the issue until

Stalin’s death and the Korean armistice eroded the sense of emergency. French Communists, of

course, opposed the EDC, while Gaullists blanched at merging France’s proud services into a

European potpourri. Despite Dulles’ threat of an “agonizing reappraisal” of U.S. policy should

the EDC fail, the French parliament voted it down on Aug. 30, 1954. An alternate solution

quickly followed: West Germany was simply admitted to NATO and its Bundeswehr (armed

forces) placed under Allied command. The Soviets responded in 1955 by creating the Warsaw

Pact, a military alliance of the U.S.S.R. and its eastern European satellites.

POSTWAR EUROPEAN RECOVERY

The first postwar decade was one of anxiety and crisis for Europe but one also of astounding

economic recovery. Thanks to rational planning, labour–management cooperation, emphasis

on production, the Marshall Plan, and the very destructiveness of the war, which made new

plant construction necessary and thorough, the members of the Organisation for European

Economic Co-operation all exceeded their prewar production levels by 1950 and achieved an

annual average growth rate of 5 to 6 percent through 1955. The political stability wrought by

the Cold War and the Western alliance and by the American military umbrella, which permitted

western Europeans to devote more resources to building the welfare state, made for

unprecedented prosperity. Eastern Europe also recovered from the war, but more slowly and

not always to its own benefit. In the late 1940s the U.S.S.R. forced one-sided trade treaties on

its satellites so that Polish and Romanian foodstuffs and Czechoslovakian and East German
technology flowed to the U.S.S.R. rather than to world markets. Stalin’s death on March 5,

1953, sparked hopes for a thaw in the eastern bloc and in the Cold War. The ephemeral

collective leadership that succeeded him executed the hated secret-police chief, Lavrenty Beria,

and released thousands from prison camps. Riots in East Germany and Poland also induced

Moscow to scale back its exploitation of the satellites and to reduce reparations from East

Germany. A Soviet delegation even visited Belgrade in 1955 to attempt a reconciliation with

Tito. That same year the Austrian State Treaty provided for the first Soviet military withdrawal

since the war and brought into being a neutral Austrian state.

In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the new Soviet premier and shocked the 20th Party

Congress with his midnight speech denouncing Stalin’s “cult of personality” and manifold

crimes against the party. De-Stalinization, however, even though carefully undertaken, created

a crisis of legitimacy for the Soviet empire. In the summer of 1956 Władisław Gomułka rose to

leadership of the Polish Communist Party on a wave of strikes and riots. When Moscow

received his reassurances and allowed him to stay in power, other eastern Europeans were

tempted to test the limits of de-Stalinization. The Hungarians reached them in October 1956

after the reformist premier Imre Nagy was deposed and protests spread that Soviet troops

already on the scene were unable to quell. Nagy returned to power to announce the end of the

one-party state and to release the Roman Catholic primate József Cardinal Mindszenty from his

long imprisonment. Nagy also promised freedom of speech and the withdrawal of Hungary

from the Warsaw Pact. While Hungary’s fate hung in the balance, the Western powers had their

attention diverted by a second Middle Eastern war.

THE SUEZ CRISIS

The Arab states, after their defeat in 1948, passed through a period of political unrest. The most

critical change occurred in Egypt, where in 1952 a cabal of young army officers backed by the

Muslim Brotherhood forced the dissolute King Farouk into exile. In 1954 Nasser emerged to

assume control. Nasser envisioned a pan-Arab movement led by Egypt that would expel the

British from the Middle East, efface Israel, and restore Islāmic grandeur. Egypt began

sponsoring acts of violence against Israel from the Gaza Strip and cut off shipping through the

Strait of Tīrān. The British were understandably hostile to Nasser, as were the French, who

were battling Islāmic nationalists in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Israel had used the years since 1948 to good effect, developing the arid country and training a

reserve force of 200,000 men and women armed primarily with French weapons. Ben-Gurion

believed that the Arabs would never accept the existence of Israel except by force. U.S. policy

was to play down the Arab–Israeli dispute and alert all parties to the danger of Communist

penetration. To this end, Eisenhower dispatched a futile mission in January 1956 in hopes of

reconciling Cairo and Tel Aviv. In addition, the United States agreed to contribute $56,000,000,

and $200,000,000 through the World Bank, to Egypt’s project for a new dam on the Nile at

Aswān. Nasser’s flirtations with Moscow, however, alienated Dulles. Then, on July 26, 1956,

Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

The conservative Cabinet in London, the French, and the Israelis resolved to thwart Nasser.

They could cite as precedent a CIA-backed coup d’état in Iran (August 1953) that overthrew the
ascetic nationalist Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had expropriated foreign oil interests and also

looked for support to the U.S.S.R. In any case, British, French, and Israeli planners met to work

out a joint strike at the Sinai and Suez that might permit a far-reaching realignment in the

Middle East. Eisenhower got wind of Israeli military preparations but believed that the blow

would fall on Syria. He especially opposed hostilities before the U.S. election lest he lose Jewish

votes by having to scold Israel. Moshe Dayan, however, quietly mobilized all of Israel’s mobile

brigades, which struck on October 29 and took the Egyptians—and the Americans—by surprise.

Israeli war aims included the elimination of the Egyptian army as an offensive threat,

neutralization of Palestinian bases in Gaza, and capture of the Strait of Tīrān. The Anglo-French

goals were to secure the Suez Canal and possibly to topple Nasser and thus strike a blow at

Arab radicalism.

An Israeli airborne assault secured the Mitla Pass in the Sinai while armoured columns

penetrated the peninsula. The Anglo-French then issued an ultimatum to Cairo and proceeded

to bomb Egyptian bases. The Egyptian army evacuated the Sinai. Eisenhower, preoccupied with

Hungary and the election, was furious at this act of insubordination on the part of his allies and

sponsored a UN resolution for a cease-fire on November 1. Egypt frustrated the Anglo-French

plan by the simple expedient of scuttling ships in the canal, but the Anglo-French went ahead

with a landing at Port Said. The superpowers then forced an evacuation and the insertion of UN

peacekeeping forces in the Sinai and Gaza Strip. There matters stood for 10 years.
The only one who gained in the Suez muddle was the U.S.S.R. With the West in disarray and

involved in a campaign that looked very much like old-fashioned imperialism, Soviet tanks

returned to Budapest on November 4, crushed the Hungarians fighting with their homemade

weapons, and liquidated their leaders. In 1957 the Soviets declared a new policy of “centralism”

for the satellites and denounced both “dogmatism” (a code word for Stalinism) and

“revisionism” (a code word for liberty).

The events of October 1956 nevertheless helped to renew momentum for European

integration. Hungary reminded western Europeans of the nature and proximity of the Soviet

regime; Suez made them resentful of American tutelage. Inspired by Monnet and the Belgian

economist Paul-Henri Spaak, “the Six” drafted the Euratom Treaty for a joint nuclear energy

agency and the Treaty of Rome to expand the coal and steel community into a full-fledged

Common Market. The treaties were signed on March 25, 1957, and went into effect on Jan. 1,

1958. The European Economic Community provided for internal and external tariff

coordination, free movement of labour and capital, and a common agricultural pricing policy.

Integration theorists hoped that international economic institutions would sustain a

momentum leading to political unity as well.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE BALANCE OF TERROR

THE RACE FOR NUCLEAR ARMS

The postwar arms race began as early as 1943, when the Soviet Union began its atomic

program and placed agents in the West to steal U.S. atomic secrets. When the U.S.S.R. rejected
the Baruch Plan in 1946 and U.S.–Soviet relations deteriorated, a technological race became

inevitable. The years of the U.S. monopoly, however, were a time of disillusionment for

American leaders, who discovered that the atomic bomb was not the absolute weapon they

had first envisioned. First, the atomic monopoly was something of a bluff. As late as 1948 the

U.S. arsenal consisted of a mere handful of warheads and only 32 long-range bombers

converted for their delivery. Second, the military was at a loss as to how to use the bomb. Not

until war plan “Half Moon” (May 1948) did the Joint Chiefs envision an air offensive “designed

to exploit the destructive and psychological power of atomic weapons.” Truman searched for

an alternative, but balancing Soviet might in conventional forces with a buildup in kind would

have meant turning the United States into a garrison state, an option far more expensive and

damaging to civic values than nuclear weapons. A few critics, notably in the navy, asked how a

democratic society could morally justify a strategy based on annihilation of civilian populations.

The answer, which had been evolving since 1944, was that U.S. strategy aimed at deterring

enemy attacks in the first place. “The only war you really win,” said General Hoyt Vandenberg,

“is the war that never starts.”

Nuclear deterrence, however, was subject to at least three major problems. First, even a

nuclear attack could not prevent the Soviet army from overrunning western Europe. Second,

the nuclear threat was of no use in cases of civil war, insurgency, and other small-scale

conflicts, a fact Stalin evidently relied on in several instances. Third, the U.S. monopoly was

inevitably short-lived. By 1949 the Soviets had the atomic bomb, and the British joined the club
in October 1952. The United States would be obliged to race indefinitely to maintain its

technological superiority.

The first contest in that race was for the “superbomb,” a hydrogen, or fusion, bomb a thousand

times more destructive than the atomic fission variety. Many scientists opposed this escalation.

The dispute polarized the political and scientific communities. On the one hand it seemed as if

the Cold War had created a climate of fear that no longer permitted principled dissent even on

an issue involving human survival; on the other hand, it seemed as if the dissenters,

inadvertently or not, were promoting the interests of the U.S.S.R. In January 1950, Truman gave

his approval to the H-bomb project, and the first fusion bomb was tested successfully at

Enewetak atoll in November 1952. No debate occurred in the Soviet Union, where scientists

moved directly to fusion research and exploded their first bomb in August 1953.

In the meantime, Soviet agitprop agencies laboured abroad to weaken Western resolve. A

prime target was NATO, which the Kremlin evidently viewed as a political threat (since its

inferior order of battle was scarcely an offensive military threat). After 1950 the Soviets

alternately wooed the western Europeans with assurances of goodwill and frightened them

with assurances of their destruction if they continued to host American bases. Cominform

parties and front organizations (such as the World Peace Council) denounced the Pentagon and

U.S. “arms monopolies” and exploited fear and frustration to win over intellectuals and

idealists. The Stockholm Appeal of 1950, initiated by the French Communist physicist Frédéric

Joliot-Curie, gathered petitions allegedly signed by 273,470,566 persons (including the entire
adult population of the U.S.S.R.). Similar movements organized marches and protests in

Western countries against nuclear arms (no such manifestations occurred in the Soviet bloc).

Eisenhower’s defense policy brought a sharp increase in research and development of

warheads and long-range bombers and the construction of air bases on the territory of allies

circling the U.S.S.R. The H-bomb breakthrough, however, also triggered a race to

develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The United States entered the postwar era

with an advantage in long-range rocketry, thanks to the suspension of the Soviet program

during the war and the decision by the Germans’ V-2 rocket team, led by Wernher von Braun,

to surrender to the U.S. Army. In the budget-cutting of the late 1940s, however, the Truman

administration surmised that the United States, possessed of superior air power and foreign

bases, did not need long-range guided missiles. The first atomic weapons, bulky and of limited

yield, also suggested that no rocket large and accurate enough to destroy a target 6,000 miles

distant was then possible, but the vastly greater yield of fusion bombs and the expectation of

smaller warheads changed that calculation. The U.S. ICBM project received top priority in June

1954. The Soviets, by contrast, needed to find a means of threatening the United States from

Soviet soil. As early as 1947, therefore, Stalin gave priority to ICBM development.

ARMS CONTROL AND DEFENSE

How could the arms race be headed off before the world became locked into what Churchill

called “the balance of terror”? The UN Disarmament Commission became a tedious platform

for the posturings of the superpowers, the Americans insisting on on-site inspection, the
Soviets demanding “general and complete disarmament” and the elimination of foreign bases.

Eisenhower hoped that Stalin’s death might help to break this deadlock. Churchill had been

urging a summit conference ever since 1945, and once de-Stalinization and the Austrian State

Treaty gave hints of Soviet flexibility, even Dulles acquiesced in a summit, which convened

at Geneva in July 1955. The Soviets again called for a unified, neutral Germany, while the West

insisted that it could come about only through free elections. On arms control, Eisenhower

stunned the Soviets with his “open skies” proposal. The United States and the Soviet Union, he

said, should exchange blueprints of all military installations and each allow the other side to

conduct unhindered aerial reconnaissance. After some hesitation, Khrushchev denounced the

plan as a capitalist espionage device. The Geneva summit marginally reduced tensions but led

to no substantive agreements.

“Open skies” reflected the American fear of surprise attack. In 1954 a high-level “Surprise

Attack Study” chaired by the scientist James Killian assured the President of a growing American

superiority in nuclear weapons that would hold until the 1958–60 period but warned that the

U.S.S.R. was ahead in long-range rocketry and would soon achieve its own secure nuclear

deterrent. The panel recommended rapid development of ICBMs, construction of a distant

early warning (DEW) radar line in the Canadian Arctic, strengthened air defenses, and measures

to increase intelligence-gathering capabilities, both to verify arms control treaties and to avoid

overreaction to Soviet advances. The Killian report gave birth to the U-2 spy plane, which began

crisscrossing the U.S.S.R. above the range of Soviet air defense in 1956, and to a research

program to develop reconnaissance satellites to observe the U.S.S.R. from outer space.
In 1955 both the United States and the Soviet Union announced programs to launch

artificial Earth satellites during the upcoming International Geophysical Year (IGY). The

Eisenhower administration, concerned that the satellite program not interfere with military

missile programs or prejudice the legality of spy satellites to come, entrusted its IGY proposal to

the small, nonmilitary Vanguard rocket. While Vanguard development crept ahead, the Soviet

program won the first space race with Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. The Soviet achievement

shocked the Western world, challenged the strategic assumptions of every power, and thus

inaugurated a new phase in the continuing Cold War.

TOTAL COLD WAR AND THE DIFFUSION OF POWER, 1957–72

The concomitant arrival of the missile age and of an independent and restive Third World

multiplied the senses in which politics had become global. Intercontinental rockets not only

meant that the most destructive weapons known could now be propelled halfway around the

world in minutes but also, because of the imminent nuclear standoff they heralded, that a Cold

War competition would now extend into other realms—science and technology, economic

growth, social welfare, race relations, image making—in which the Soviets or Americans could

try to prove that their system was the best. At the same time, the decolonization of dozens of

underdeveloped states in Asia and Africa induced the superpowers to look beyond the original

front lines of the Cold War in Europe and East Asia.

These technological and political revolutions would seem to have raised the United States and

the Soviet Union to unequaled heights of power. The Soviets and Americans advanced rapidly in
the high technology required for spaceflight and ballistic missiles, while techniques for the

mobilization and management of intellectual and material resources reached a new level of

sophistication, especially in the United States, through the application of systems analysis,

computers, bureaucratic partnership with corporations and universities, and Keynesian “fine-

tuning” of the economy.

By the mid-1960s the vigorous response of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to the

Cold War challenge seemed to ensure American technological, economic, and military primacy

for the forseeable future. A mere five to seven years later, however, it became clear that the

1960s, far from establishing an American hegemony, had in fact wrought a diffusion of world

power and an erosion of the formerly rigid Cold War blocs. Western Europe and Japan, now

recovered from the war, also achieved dynamic economic growth in the 1960s, reducing their

relative inferiority to the United States and prompting their governments to exercise a greater

independence. The Sino-Soviet split, perhaps the most important event in postwar diplomacy,

shattered the unity of the Communist bloc, and Third World countries often showed

themselves resistant to superpower coercion or cajoling. By 1972 the U.S.S.R., despite its

achievement of relative parity in nuclear weapons, was obsessed with the prospect of a hostile

China, while the United States, having squandered its wealth, prestige, and domestic

tranquillity in the Vietnam War, was trying to scale back its global commitments. The Nixon

Doctrine, détente with Moscow, the opening to China, and uncoupling of the dollar from gold

were the symptoms of this American retreat.

THE WORLD AFTER SPUTNIK

SOVIET PROGRESS AND AMERICAN REACTION

Premier Khrushchev anticipated the new correlation of forces in his foreign policy address to

the 20th Party Congress in 1956. Soviet H-bombs and missiles, he said, had rendered the

imperialists’ nuclear threat ineffective, the U.S.S.R. an equal, the Socialist camp invincible, war

no longer inevitable, and thus “peaceful coexistence” inescapable. In Leninist doctrine this last

phrase implied a state of continued competition and Socialist advance without war. The

immediate opportunities for Socialism, according to Khrushchev, derived from the struggle of

the colonial peoples, which the U.S.S.R. would assist through foreign aid, propaganda,

subversion, and support for “wars of national liberation.”

The Soviet successes in outer space just 40 years after the Bolshevik Revolution were powerful

evidence for Khrushchev’s claims that the U.S.S.R. had achieved strategic equality and that

Communism was the best system for overcoming backwardness. Sputnik restored Soviet

prestige after the 1956 embarrassment in Hungary, shook European confidence in the U.S.

nuclear deterrent, magnified the militancy of Maoist China, and provoked an orgy of self-doubt

in the United States itself. The two Sputnik satellites of 1957 were themselves of little military

significance, and the test missile that launched them was too primitive for military deployment,

but Khrushchev claimed that long-range missiles were rolling off the assembly line “like

sausages,” a bluff that allowed President Eisenhower’s opponents—and nervous Europeans—to

perceive a “missile gap.” Khrushchev in turn tried to capitalize on the apparent gap in a series of
crises, but his adventurous policy only provoked perverse reactions in China, the United States,

and Europe that undermined his own political support at home.

Eisenhower was apprised in advance of Soviet missile progress thanks in part to overflights of

the U-2 spy plane. By the time of Sputnik the Pentagon already had several parallel programs

for ballistic missiles of various types, including the advanced, solid-fueled Polaris and

Minuteman. The great fleet of B-47 and B-52 intercontinental bombers already deployed also

assured continued American strategic superiority through the early 1960s. The frugal

Eisenhower thus tried to play down the importance of Sputnik and to discourage a race for

arms or prestige, but he was frustrated by a coalition of Democrats, journalists, academics, and

hawks of both parties who insisted that the United States not only leapfrog the Soviets in space

and missiles but also increase federal support to education, extend more military and economic

aid to the Third World, and expand social programs at home intended in part to polish the

American image abroad—in short, pursue the Cold War more vigorously. Eisenhower conceded

to this mood in 1958 by sponsoring creation of the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration and passage of the National Defense Education Act, accelerating weapons

programs, and deploying intermediate-range missiles in England, Italy, and Turkey. He also

acknowledged the expanded Soviet threat in his State of the Union address in 1958: “Trade,

economic development, military power, arts, science, education, the whole world of ideas—all

are harnessed to this same chariot of expansion. The Soviets are, in short, waging total cold

war.” A similarly total American response to this challenge, requiring virtually wartime levels of

national mobilization to outdo a totalitarian system in whatever field of endeavour it chose to

emphasize, would, in Eisenhower’s mind, however, have undermined the free market and fiscal

soundness that were the foundation of American strength in the first place. Liberal economists

argued in response that a sharply expanded role for the federal government was a matter of

survival in the “space age” and would even stimulate economic growth, military prowess, and

social progress.

THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT

A still more energetic U.S. riposte would await the end of Eisenhower’s term, but “Mr.

Khrushchev’s boomerang” (as Dulles termed Sputnik) had an immediate and disastrous impact

on Soviet relations with the other Communist giant, China. Under their 1950 treaty

of friendship, solidarity, and mutual assistance, Soviet technical aid flowed to Peking during the

Korean War and helped support China’s successful Five-Year Plan after 1953. Western

observers looked in vain for ways to split the Communist bloc. As early as 1956, however,

Chinese leaders showed displeasure over Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the Kremlin’s

tendency to treat the Chinese party as it did those of the lesser satellites, and the new Soviet

leaders themselves, whom Mao evidently considered mediocrities. Mao also denounced

“peaceful coexistence” as decadent and revisionist, a position shared by the tiny Stalinist

dictatorship of Albania. Russian leadership in the world Communist movement was thus

challenged for the first time.

Mao was a romantic revolutionary with an unquestionable bent for cruel or irrational theatrics

on a gigantic scale. In the mid-1950s he paraded the slogan “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,”
ostensibly to encourage the voicing of new ideas on national development but perhaps rather

to entice potential dissenters into revealing themselves. In 1958 this campaign was suddenly

replaced by the “Great Leap Forward,” by which all 700,000,000 Chinese were to form self-

sufficient communes devoted to local industrialization. Large-scale industries and infrastructure

collapsed, much to the disgust of Soviet guest engineers. By 1960–61 the economic chaos had

become so severe that famine claimed 6,000,000–7,000,000 lives. Nevertheless, the Chinese

leadership seized upon Sputnik as proof that the “East wind” was prevailing over the “West

wind” and insisted that the Soviets use their new superiority to press the revolution worldwide

and, to the same end, provide China with atomic bombs and rockets. If the imperialists insisted

on unleashing nuclear war, lectured Mao, and “half of mankind died, the other half would

remain, while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world become

Socialist.” The Soviets were appalled, especially since their superiority was, for the time being, a

sham. At a November 1958 summit Mao learned that the Soviets would insist on retaining

control over any warheads sent to China and would not share missile technology. When the

Soviets also failed to back the Chinese in their 1958–59 conflicts with Taiwan and India, Sino-

Soviet tensions increased. In the end Khrushchev refused to deliver a prototype nuclear

warhead, whereupon the Chinese angrily repudiated “slavish dependence” on others and

pledged to create their own nuclear arsenal. On July 16, 1960, the U.S.S.R. recalled all its

specialists from China.

The Sino-Soviet split shattered the strict bipolarity of the Cold War world (though the United

States would not take advantage of that fact for more than a decade) and turned the U.S.S.R.
and China into bitter rivals for leadership in the Communist and Third worlds. The fundamental

causes of the split must be traced to contradictions in the Soviet role as both the leader of the

Communist movement and a great power with its own national interests. Before 1949 the

U.S.S.R. had been able to subordinate the interests of foreign Communists to its own, but the

Communist triumph in China, paradoxically, was a potential disaster for the U.S.S.R., for Mao

and the Chinese would inevitably refuse to play the role of pupil. Once the Korean War was

over and Stalin dead, the Chinese asserted themselves, learned the limits of “Socialist

internationalism,” and angrily began to plot their own course. While the ideological rift served,

in the short run, to invigorate both Communist rivals as they competed for prestige and

influence among the world’s revolutionaries, it destroyed the myth that Communism

transcended nationalism and power politics. This meant that the U.S.S.R. was delicately

situated between the nuclear-armed NATO powers and the fanatical (and numerous) Chinese,

and to appease either meant to alienate the other. Accordingly, Khrushchev played a risky

double game from 1958 to 1962, alternately holding out hope for arms control to the NATO

powers and leveling demands backed by rocket-rattling. The historian Adam Ulam has seen in

this a “grand design” by which Khrushchev hoped to ingratiate himself with the West (for

instance, through a nuclear test-ban treaty) in return for the evacuation of West Berlin,

recognition of the East German government, and permanent denial of nuclear weapons to

West Germany—all of which might demonstrate Soviet commitment to the Communist cause

while providing a pretext for denial of nuclear weapons to China. Whether a grand design or an

improvisation, Soviet diplomacy had to reckon at every turn with Peking’s reactions and their

likely effect on the rest of the Communist bloc.

SOVIET DIPLOMATIC OFFENSIVE

The Polish foreign minister, Adam Rapacki, was chosen to open Moscow’s post-Sputnik

campaign with a proposal to the UN General Assembly in October 1957 for a ban on nuclear

weapons in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the two Germanies. This initiative, like others before

and after, was a no-lose stratagem for the U.S.S.R. Given the Warsaw Pact’s superiority in

conventional weapons, any reduction of the West’s nuclear deterrent in Europe stood to

weaken NATO, even as the burden of seeming to oppose arms control would fall on the West if

it refused. At the same time, the U.S.S.R. combined open and covert support for Western

antinuclear movements with loud reminders of its ability to destroy any nation that foolishly

hosted American bases. NATO leaders resisted the Rapacki Plan but had immediately to deal

with a March 1958 Soviet offer to suspend all nuclear testing provided the West did the same.

Throughout the 1950s growing data on the harmful effects of nuclear fallout had been

increasing pressure on the nuclear powers to take such a step. The United States and Britain

were caught in the midst of testing warheads for the many new missiles under development,

but a one-year test ban did go into effect in November 1958. With the Chinese making noises

about a Soviet sellout to the West, however, Khrushchev immediately provoked a new crisis

in Berlin, demanding that the Allies withdraw from West Berlin within six months. Khrushchev

also indicated that the best way to solve the Berlin question would be to neutralize and disarm

the two German states. In January 1959 the Soviets expanded their proposed nuclear-free zone

to include East Asia and the whole Pacific Ocean area—a clear hint of their desire to prevent

China from going nuclear.

The Berlin deadline passed without incident as Khrushchev accepted an invitation to become

the first Soviet premier to visit the United States. The increased recognition by the United

States and the U.S.S.R. that each had interests in coexistence which outweighed their

ideological loyalties was made manifest in August 1958, when Chinese artillery began an

intense bombardment of the Nationalist-held offshore islets of Quemoy and Matsu. Peking may

have hoped to force Moscow to support its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, while Chiang may

have hoped to drag the United States into supporting an invasion of the mainland. Neither

superpower, however, was willing to risk war. The U.S. 7th Fleet resupplied Chiang’s forces,

while the Soviets pledged to defend mainland China, but both discouraged offensive action.

By September 1959, when Khrushchev arrived in the United States, Dulles had died,

and Eisenhower was intent to use personal diplomacy in an attempt to put a cap on the arms

race. The tour itself—from New York City to Iowa to Hollywood—was a sensation, though

Khrushchev professed distaste for American consumerism and predicted “your grandchildren

will live under Communism.” His talks with Eisenhower produced an ephemeral “spirit of Camp

David” and the scheduling of a follow-up summit conference for May 1960 in Paris. Meanwhile,

Khrushchev’s last-ditch efforts to mend relations with Peking exploded in the spring of 1960.

Mao himself reportedly authored an article cryptically condemning Khrushchev’s détente policy

as vile revisionism and reiterating Chinese willingness to confront nuclear war. The Chinese

observer at a Warsaw Pact meeting in February 1960 declared in advance that any arms

agreements reached at the U.S.–Soviet summit would not be binding on Peking. On the eve of

the Paris summit an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the U.S.S.R. When Eisenhower
refused to apologize for the incident and assumed personal responsibility, Khrushchev had little

choice but to walk out.

DECOLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Events in the other new arena of the post-Sputnik era—the Third World—likewise antagonized

relations among the U.S.S.R., the United States, and China. All three assumed that the new

nations would naturally opt for the democratic institutions of their mother countries or, on the

other hand, would gravitate toward the “anti-imperialist” Soviet or Maoist camps. The United

States had urged Britain and France to dismantle their empires in the aftermath of World War

II, but, once those countries became Washington’s most potent allies in the Cold War, the

United States offered grudging support for Anglo-French resistance to nationalist and

Communist forces in their colonies. President Truman’s Point Four Program mandated

U.S. foreign aid and loans to new nations lest they “drift toward poverty, despair, fear, and the

other miseries of mankind which breed unending wars.” When the Eisenhower administration

cut back on foreign aid, a great debate about its efficacy ensued among American experts.

Critics insisted that the Marshall Plan was not a valid analogy for Third World aid because the

former had been a case of helping industrial populations rebuild their societies, while the latter

was a case of sparking industrial or even merely agricultural development in primitive

economies. Foreign aid did not necessarily serve U.S. interests, since many Third World rulers

chose neutralism or Socialism, nor did it promote economic growth, since most new nations

lacked the necessary social and physical infrastructure for a modern economy. Proponents of

aid replied that U.S. capital and technology were needed precisely to build infrastructure, to
assist “nation building,” and to fortify recipients against Communists and others who might

subvert the development process in its early stages. In the late 1950s, U.S. economic aid

averaged about $1,600,000,000 per year, compared with about $2,100,000,000 in military aid

to friendly regimes. The Soviet line, by contrast, held that new nations would not be truly

independent until they freed themselves from economic dependence on their former masters,

but the Soviets invariably expected a political return for their own assistance. The claim of the

People’s Republic of China to be the natural leader of Third World revolt also obliged

Khrushchev to make bolder endorsements of wars of national liberation. By 1960 it was already

clear, however, that local politics and culture made every Third World situation unique.

The Middle East had reached an unstable deadlock based precariously on the UN-administered

cease-fire of 1956. The eclipse of British and French influence after the Suez debacle made the

United States fearful of growing Soviet influence in the region, symbolized by the Soviet offer to

take over construction of the Aswān High Dam in Egypt. In January 1957 the U.S. Congress

authorized the President to deploy U.S. troops in the region if necessary and to dispense

$500,000,000 in aid to friendly states. This Eisenhower Doctrine appeared to polarize the

region, with Middle East Treaty Organization members in support and Egypt, Syria, and Yemen

in opposition. When, in July 1958, nationalist generals backed by a variety of factions,

prominent among which were Communists, overthrew the pro-Western Hāshimite monarchy

in Iraq, and unrest spread to Jordan and Lebanon, Eisenhower responded at once. The 14,000

U.S. troops that landed in Beirut allowed the Lebanese president to restore order on the basis

of a delicate compromise among radical, Muslim, and Christian factions. Khrushchev

denounced the intervention, demanded that the U.S.S.R. be consulted, and tried without

success to convene an international conference on the Middle East. His extension of an

invitation to India, but not China, needlessly alienated Peking and signaled a new Soviet interest

in relations with New Delhi.

The climactic year of African decolonization was 1960, and the first Cold War crisis on that

continent occurred when, in that year, Belgium hastily pulled out of the vast Belgian Congo

(now Congo [Kinshasa]). Tribal antagonisms and rival personalities made even the

independence ceremonies a catastrophe, as the Congolese nationalist leader and first prime

minister, Patrice Lumumba, supported an insurrection by Congolese army units that involved

the murder of whites and blacks alike. No sooner had Belgian troops returned to restore order

than Moise Tshombe declared the secession of the iron-rich Katanga province. UN Secretary-

General Dag Hammarskjöld intervened against the Belgians and Katangese (thereby setting an

ominous precedent of UN toleration for black violence against blacks or other races), while the

Soviets accused Tshombe of being a dupe for imperialist mining interests and threatened to

send arms and Soviet “volunteers” to the leftist Lumumba. Hammarskjöld then organized a UN

armed force to subdue Katanga and save the Congo—and Africa—from Cold War involvement.

The clumsy UN efforts did not prevent, and may have incited, the spread of civil war. Lumumba

tried to establish his own secessionist state, but he then fell into the hands of the Congolese

army headed by Joseph Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko), a former sergeant, and was

murdered by the Katangese in January 1961. Hammarskjöld himself died in a plane crash in the

Congo in September 1961. UN troops remained until 1964, but as soon as they were withdrawn
rebellion returned, and Mobutu seized control in a military coup d’état in 1965. The Katangan

revolt was not quelled until 1967.

In Southeast Asia the Geneva Accords disintegrated rapidly after 1954. The planned elections to

reunify Vietnam were never held, since South Vietnam’s leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, both feared

the results and denied the possibility of free elections in the Communist north. Ho Chi Minh’s

regime in Hanoi then trained 100,000 native southerners for guerrilla war and launched a

campaign of assassination and kidnapping of South Vietnamese officials. In December 1960

the Viet Cong (as Diem dubbed them) proclaimed the formation of a National Liberation Front

(NLF), with the avowed aim of reuniting the two Vietnams under a Hanoi regime. American

advisers tried vainly to arrest the disintegration of South Vietnam with advice on

counterinsurgency and state-building techniques.

In neighbouring Laos the Communist Pathet Lao took control of the two northernmost

provinces of the country in defiance of the neutral government under Prince Souvanna Phouma

agreed upon after Geneva. Those provinces sheltered the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route

bypassing the demilitarized zone between the two Vietnams. When a new, assertive Laotian

government sent troops to enforce its authority over the provinces in 1958–59, civil war

appeared inevitable. A military coup d’état led by Kong Le briefly returned Souvanna to power,

but when Kong Le was in turn driven out in December 1960, he joined forces with the Pathet

Lao in their strategic stronghold in the Plain of Jarres. Having secured the Laotian territory

needed for infiltration and assault on South Vietnam, North Vietnam persuaded China and the
U.S.S.R. in December 1960 to approve Ho’s plan for a “nonpeaceful transition to socialism” in

Vietnam.

LATIN-AMERICAN PROBLEMS

Finally, Cold War rivalry and Third World problems intersected devastatingly in America’s own

backyard. Before the era of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, the United States had frequently

been accused of meddling too much in the affairs of other states in the hemisphere. By the

1950s the contradictory charge was leveled that the United States was not involving itself

enough, as evidenced by the fact that the United States spent $12,600,000,000 on aid to Asia

and the Middle East in the period 1953–57 compared with $1,900,000,000 on Latin America.

Resentment over the CIA’s role in toppling an allegedly Communist-backed government in

Guatemala in 1954 and violent protests against Vice President Richard M. Nixon during his trip

to Caracas and Lima in 1958 alerted Washington to the dangers inherent in neglecting the

genuine needs of the region. The United States agreed to fund an Inter-American Development

Bank, while the State Department sought to avoid too close an association with unpopular,

authoritarian regimes. Whatever the overall merits of such a policy, it had immediate and

disastrous effects in Cuba.

In 1952 Fulgencio Batista established a corrupt dictatorship in Cuba, and four years later a

young revolutionary named Fidel Castro took to the Sierra Maestra with 150 comrades and

made pretensions of fighting a guerrilla war. In fact, Castro’s campaign was largely propaganda

(the insurgents lost only 40 men in the largest engagement), and the real struggle for Cuba was
fought out in the arenas of Cuban and American public opinion. After Nixon’s tour, liberal

opinion and the State Department deserted Batista, and the new ambassador to Havana was

ordered to preside over his fall. In March 1958 the United States suspended arms sales to Cuba,

and on Jan. 1, 1959, a triumphant Castro entered Havana without the necessity of fighting a

battle. Contrary to his image as a populist and democrat, Castro made himself the new dictator,

nationalized hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American property, and declared that he

was and always had been a Marxist. His actions gradually alienated whatever sympathy he had

in the United States. Castro invited Soviet aid and came to rely on it heavily after the United

States curtailed Cuba’s sugar import quota in July 1960. Eisenhower instructed the CIA to

explore means of removing Castro, who made Cuba into an immensely valuable Soviet satellite

90 miles from the United States.

By 1960, therefore, the post-Sputnik world posed new challenges for the Western alliance

stretching from outer space to Third World jungles. Polls showed that a majority of western

Europeans believed Khrushchev’s propaganda about Soviet superiority and that a majority of

Americans no longer believed in Eisenhower’s low-key approach to Cold War issues.

SUPERPOWER RELATIONS IN THE 1960S

POLICIES OF THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION

The inauguration of John F. Kennedy as president of the United States infused American foreign

policy with new style and vigour. He had promised to “get America moving again,” and he

appointed a Cabinet and staff who shared his belief that the United States could be doing far
more to prove its technological and moral superiority over the U.S.S.R., win the “hearts and

minds” of Third World peoples, and accelerate social progress at home. His administration also

overturned Eisenhower’s policy on economy and defense and held that Keynesian fiscal policy

and large programs for research, education, and human resources would foster the rapid

growth needed to pay for the new federal activism. Kennedy’s inaugural address was thus an

exhortation and warning: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall

pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to

assure the survival and the success of liberty.” He and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara

accordingly increased the U.S. defense budget by 30 percent in their first year in office and

approved deployment of a strategic triad of weapons—the land-based Minuteman ICBMs,

submarine-launched Polaris missiles, and B-52 bombers. The Kennedy advisers had also been

highly critical of the policy of reliance on massive retaliation and determined to make the

United States capable of flexible response by expanding conventional armed forces as well.

Kennedy paid special attention to the training of counterinsurgency “special forces.”

On May 25, 1961, Kennedy told a joint session of Congress that “the great battlefield for the

defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe—Asia, Latin

America, Africa, and the Middle East.” The enemies of freedom were seeking to capture these

rising peoples “in a battle of minds and souls as well as lives and territories.” Expanded aid

programs, the Peace Corps, active promotion of democracy through the U.S. Information

Agency, and military support against guerrilla warfare would, he declared, all help in cases

“where the local population is too caught up in its own misery to be concerned about the
advance of Communism.” Kennedy also underscored the impact of the Soviet space program on

world opinion (Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to orbit the Earth on April 12) and asked

that Congress commit the United States to a program to land a man on the Moon by 1970.

Kennedy’s call for the creation of an International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium

bespoke his desire to associate the United States with the peaceful uses of outer space.

The new attitude toward the Third World was perhaps the clearest break in American

diplomacy. Basing its policy on W.W. Rostow’s “non-Communist manifesto” describing stages of

economic development, the Kennedy administration increased foreign aid for Third World

nations whether or not they were politically aligned with the United States. The Alliance for

Progress, created in March 1961, especially targeted Latin America. By 1965 U.S. foreign aid

reached $4,100,000,000 as compared with $2,300,000,000 contributed by all other developed

countries. The validity of Rostow’s investment model for economic “takeoff” was debated for

two decades, but perhaps the greatest weakness in U.S. aid programs was the assumption that

local rulers could be persuaded to put their own people’s welfare first. Instead, aid money often

fed corruption, bolstered power-hungry leaders or Socialist bureaucracies, or helped to finance

local conflicts. What was more, the Soviets had some natural advantages in dealing with such

leaders, since they offered no moralistic advice about democracy and human rights, while their

own police-state methods served the needs of local despots. On the other hand, sustained

world economic growth and measures to stabilize commodity prices helped the developing

countries to achieve an average annual growth rate of 5 percent during the 1960s (compared

with 5.1 percent for industrial countries). But the crushing rate of Third World population
growth (2.6 percent annually) meant that even in the best of times foreign aid only just offset

the effects of Third World fertility.

Kennedy’s first crisis stemmed from his endorsement of the CIA plan to unseat Castro. The CIA

had trained Cuban exiles in Guatemala and flown them to Florida, whence they were to stage

an invasion of Cuba in expectation of a popular revolt there. Instead, the landing at the Bay of

Pigs on April 17, 1961, was a fiasco. No coordination had been achieved with dissidents inside

Cuba, while the failure to provide U.S. air cover (perhaps for fear of retaliation in Berlin)

doomed the invasion. Castro’s army killed or captured most of the 1,500-man force in two days.

The U.S.S.R. reaped a propaganda harvest and pledged to defend Cuba in the future. Kennedy

had to content himself with a promise to resist any efforts by Castro and the guerrilla leader

Che Guevara to export revolution elsewhere in Latin America.

Kennedy and Khrushchev held a summit meeting in Vienna in June 1961. With Berlin and the

Third World uppermost in his mind, Kennedy proposed that neither superpower attempt to

upset the existing balance of power in any region where the other was already involved.

Khrushchev evidently considered the young president to be weak and on the defensive and

tried to intimidate him with a new ultimatum, threatening to turn over control of Western

access to West Berlin to the East German government. (Khrushchev was being pressured by the

East German leader Walter Ulbricht to stem the tide of thousands of skilled workers who were

fleeing across the zonal boundary into West Berlin.) Kennedy responded by pledging to defend

West Berlin and calling up 250,000 reservists. On Aug. 13, 1961, Soviet and East German troops
closed down interallied checkpoints and proceeded to build the Berlin Wall, sealing off the

western city. Just as in 1948, the U.S. leadership debated whether to respond with force to this

violation of the Potsdam Accords, but the hesitancy of the NATO allies and the timidity—or

prudence—of Kennedy limited the West to a reassertion of access rights to West Berlin.

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

In the midst of this crisis the Soviets unilaterally broke the moratorium on nuclear testing,

staging a series of explosions yielding up to 50 megatons. Soviet technology had also perfected

a smaller warhead for the new Soviet missiles now ready to be deployed, like the Minuteman,

in hardened silos. Khrushchev, his nation still behind in strategic nuclear firepower, tried to

redress the balance by insinuating 42 medium-range missiles into Cuba, whence they could

reach most of the continental United States. He apparently hoped that these missiles, once in

place, could then serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations leading to a neutralized Germany,

which in turn might help Moscow persuade the Chinese to cease their own nuclear program.

Instead, the ploy brought the world to the brink of war. On Oct. 14, 1962, U-2 spy planes

photographed the missile sites under construction in Cuba. Two days later Kennedy convened a

secret crisis-management committee that leaned at first toward a surgical air strike to destroy

the sites. The President, however, opted for a less risky response: a naval quarantine to prevent

Soviet freighters from reaching Cuba and an ultimatum demanding that the bases be

dismantled and the missiles removed. On October 18, Soviet Ambassador Andrey Gromyko met

with Kennedy and denied that the U.S.S.R. had any offensive intentions with respect to Cuba.

On October 22 the President informed the nation of the crisis and called on Khrushchev to pull
back from “this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.” For two days the

world waited anxiously, and on the 24th Soviet ships in transit abruptly changed course away

from Cuba. On the 26th Khrushchev sent Kennedy a message offering to withdraw the missiles

in exchange for a U.S. pledge never to invade Cuba. The next day a harsher message arrived

with a new demand that the United States withdraw its own missiles from Turkey. Those

antiquated Jupiters, deployed in the early post-Sputnik scare, were already due for removal,

but Kennedy would not do so under Soviet threat. Hence Attorney General Robert Kennedy

suggested a ploy: simply reply to Khrushchev’s first note as if the second had never been sent.

On the 28th the Soviets agreed to dismantle the Cuban bases in return for a no-invasion pledge.

Several months later the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey.

The Cuban missile crisis seemed at the time a clear victory for Kennedy and the United States

and was widely attributed to American superiority in nuclear weapons. In fact, neither side

showed the slightest willingness even to bluff a nuclear strike, and it was probably the

overwhelming U.S. superiority in conventional naval and air power in its home waters that left

the U.S.S.R. no option but retreat. Nor was the crisis an unmitigated American victory.

Kennedy’s pledge never to overthrow Castro by force meant that the United States would have

to tolerate whatever mischief he, backed by $300,000,000 a year in Soviet aid, might contrive in

the future. To be sure, Kennedy warned that the United States would never tolerate any

expansion of Communism in the hemisphere. (This pledge was underwritten by Lyndon Johnson

in 1965 when he sent U.S. troops into the Dominican Republic to prevent a leftist takeover, but

such interventionism only reminded Latin Americans of past “Yankee imperialism” and gave
credence to Castro’s anti-American propaganda.) The existence of a Communist base in the

Caribbean, therefore, was to be a source of unending vexation for future American presidents.

What is more, the Cuban missile crisis hardened Soviet determination never again to be

humiliated by military inferiority. Khrushchev and his successors accordingly began the largest

peacetime military buildup in history, which, by the 1970s, accorded the Soviet Union parity

with the United States in nuclear forces and the ability to project naval power into every ocean

of the world.

On the other hand, the Cuban missile crisis marked the final frustration of Khrushchev’s efforts

to force a German peace treaty and prevent the deployment of nuclear weapons on German

or Chinese soil. Peking, of course, had supported the Soviets’ bid to place missiles in Cuba and

had taken the opportunity to attack India (see below China, India, and Pakistan), and the

precipitous Soviet retreat prompted Chinese charges of “capitulationism.” The Chinese nuclear

program proceeded apace, with the People’s Republic exploding its first atomic device in 1964.

Never again would the Soviet leadership hope to control the foreign policy of the other

Communist giant.

RENEWED U.S.–SOVIET COOPERATION

U.S.–Soviet relations, by contrast, markedly improved after the sobering visit to the brink

of war. Hopes for a comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty ran afoul of the U.S.S.R.’s customary

refusal to permit on-site inspection to monitor underground tests, but a partial Test-Ban Treaty

was signed by the United States, Britain, and the U.S.S.R. on Aug. 5, 1963, prohibiting nuclear
explosions in the air, under the sea, and in outer space. The superpowers also established a

direct communications link between Washington and Moscow for use in crisis situations. Other

powers anxious to join the nuclear club, notably China and France, refused to adhere to the

Test-Ban Treaty. Instead, the Chinese denounced Soviet collaboration with “the leader of world

imperialism.” Mao resurrected all of China’s territorial claims against the Soviet Union dating

from tsarist Russian imperialism and advocated partition of the Soviet empire. The Soviets, in

turn, branded Mao with their most hateful current epithet: he was “another Stalin.”

President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, and Khrushchev was removed from

power by the Politburo in October 1964, a victim of his own failures in foreign policy and

agriculture and of the Communist Party’s resistance to his attempted reforms. The bilateral

effort to pursue arms control survived under President Johnson and under Leonid Brezhnev

and Aleksey Kosygin. The Outer Space Treaty ratified in 1967 banned nuclear weapons and

other weapons of mass destruction in the Earth’s orbit and on the Moon. A U.S.–Soviet

draft Non-proliferation Treaty was also adopted by the UN in June 1968. (Once again, France,

China, India, Pakistan, and Israel refused to sign.) None of the arms-control instruments of the

1960s, however, put a cap on the arms race or restrained the signatories from doing anything in

the strategic area they had a desire to do anyway. The superpowers were able to modernize

their arsenals through underground nuclear testing; outer space was an awkward and

vulnerable place to deploy warheads in any case; and neither superpower had an interest in

seeing nuclear weapons spread to more countries. Rather, American nuclear policy aimed, at

least in the short run, at ensuring the continued stability of U.S.–Soviet deterrence, lately
dubbed “mutual assured destruction.” Adopting the views of the strategist Bernard

Brodie, McNamara concluded early on that the Soviets must eventually catch up and that a

state of parity was the best that could be achieved in the nuclear age. Soon each side would be

capable of obliterating the other in a retaliatory strike, even after a sneak attack. At that point,

any attempt by either side to achieve an illusory superiority would only destabilize the balance

and tempt one or the other into launching a first strike. Whether the Soviets ever shared this

doctrine of deterrence is dubious. Marshal Sokolovsky’s volumes on military strategy in the

1960s, while granting that nuclear war would be an unprecedented disaster for all, still

committed the U.S.S.R. to a war-winning capability.

China, meanwhile, succumbed to another series of Maoist actions that completed that

country’s drift into chaos and isolation. In February 1966, Mao gave the nod to the young and

fanatical Red Guards to make, by force, a Cultural Revolution. Violence swallowed up schools,

factories, bureaucracies, cultural institutions, and everything that smacked of foreign or

traditional Chinese influence. Countless victims suffered internal exile, public humiliation,

forced “self-criticism,” or death, while attacks on foreign embassies and denunciations of the

superpower “condominium” persuaded Americans and Soviets alike that the Chinese were, for

the moment at least, the major threat to world peace.

By the late 1960s, therefore, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union

underwent a marked thawing. At the same time, however, the Soviets and Americans alike had

to acknowledge a growing lack of control over their once coherent Cold War camps.
THE EUROPE OF THE FATHERLANDS

GREAT BRITAIN AND DECOLONIZATION

The Suez crisis of 1956, followed by Soviet space successes and rocket-rattling after 1957, dealt

serious blows to the morale of western Europe. Given the potential of the war scares over

Berlin to fracture NATO, the United States had to reassure its allies and try to satisfy their

demands for greater influence in alliance policy. American efforts largely succeeded in the case

of Britain, an ally much depleted in power and will. American policy largely failed in the case of

France, an ally stronger and more stable than at any time since 1940.

Since World War II, Britain had tried to maintain the appearance of a global power, developing

its own nuclear weapons, deploying conventional forces around the world, and keeping hold of

its African colonies. Churchill, returned to office in the early 1950s, had vowed never to

“preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” Likewise, the British held aloof from the

continental experiments with integration and saw their role rather as the vertex of three great

world systems: the English-speaking peoples, the British Commonwealth, and the old European

Great Powers. All this came to a sudden end when a combination of factors—sluggish economic

performance by the world’s oldest industrial power, growing pressure to decolonize, demands

for greater social expenditures at home, and the superpowers’ leap into the missile age—

convinced London that it could no longer afford to keep up appearances in foreign policy. A

defense White Paper of 1957 signalled a shift away from conventional armed forces toward

reliance on a cheap, national nuclear deterrent. Sputnik then convinced the British government
to cancel its own ballistic-missile program and rely on its special relationship with the United

States to procure modern weapons. Eisenhower agreed to sell the Skybolt air-launched missile

to Britain by way of healing the wounds inflicted by Suez and shoring up NATO after Sputnik.

When McNamara subsequently cut the Skybolt program in his campaign to streamline the

Pentagon, the British government was acutely embarrassed. Kennedy met with Prime

Minister Harold Macmillan at Nassau in December 1962 and offered Polaris submarines

instead. It was hoped at the time that the British deterrent would be subsumed in a multilateral

NATO force. The Conservative government also made the hard decision in 1963 to seek

admission to the Common Market, only to be vetoed by the French. Not until 1973 was Britain’s

application, together with those of Ireland and Denmark, approved and the European

Communities broadened.

The period 1957–62 was also the climax of decolonization. As early as 1946–47, when Britain

was granting independence to India and states of the Middle East, the Attlee government

sponsored the Cohen–Caine plan for a new approach to West Africa as well. It aimed at

preparing tropical Africa for self-rule by gradually transferring local authority from tribal chiefs

to members of the Western-educated elite. Accordingly, the Colonial Office drafted elaborate

constitutions, most of which had little relevance to real conditions in primitive countries that

had no natural boundaries, no ethnic unity or sense of nationalism, and no civic tradition. When

the Gold Coast (Ghana) elected the radical leader Kwame Nkrumah, who then demanded

immediate independence and got it in 1957, the British felt unable to deny similar grants to

neighbouring colonies. Britain had, in fact, when the matter was faced squarely, little desire to
hang on, given the exorbitant financial and political costs of late imperialism. In 1959 the

Cabinet quietly decided to withdraw from Africa as soon as it won reelection. Macmillan then

announced the new policy in Cape Town on Feb. 3, 1960, when he spoke of “the winds of

change” sweeping across the continent. Nigeria, Togo, and Dahomey (Benin) became sovereign

states in 1960, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Uganda, and Kenya in East Africa between 1961 and

1963, and Malaŵi and Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in the south in 1964. White residents of

Southern Rhodesia, however, declared their own independence in defiance of London and the

UN. The Republic of South Africa and the surviving Portuguese colonies of Angola and

Mozambique made those portions of southern Africa the last refuges of white rule on the

continent.

Most new African states had little more to support their pretensions to nationhood than a

paper constitution, a flag, and a London-backed currency. The leaderships blamed African

underdevelopment on past exploitation rather than on objective conditions, thus rejecting the

American and European development theories that saw political stability as possible only within

the context of economic growth. Nkrumah lectured to his Pan-African Congress in 1963 that

“the social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not

the other way around.” Indeed, Africa’s politicians invariably styled themselves as charismatic

leaders whose political and even spiritual guidance was the prerequisite for progress. Nkrumah

himself seized all power in Ghana and made himself a quasi-divine figure until the army

overthrew him in 1966. Togo’s government fell to a military coup in 1963, and mutinies broke

out in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. In the latter country, Julius Nyerere, much admired in
Europe and the United States, declared a one-party dictatorship based on his ideology

of ujamaa (familyhood) and courted aid from Communist China. Other leaders contrived similar

ideologies to justify personal rule. By 1967 black Africa had suffered 64 attempted coups d’état,

many born of tribal hatreds, and most Africans had fewer political rights than under colonial

rule.

With the exception of Congo (Brazzaville), Cold War rivalries were absent from Africa in the

1960s, while the African regimes themselves wisely declared the inviolability of their

boundaries lest the artificial lines drawn by the colonial powers provoke endless warfare. When

Igbo tribes-people seceded from Nigeria in 1967 and formed the rebel state of Biafra, only four

African nations supported their cause. Nigeria suppressed the secession in a bloody civil war.

Decolonization nonetheless had a profound effect on international relations through the

medium of the UN. The three dozen or so new African states combined with those of Asia and

the Soviet bloc to form a permanent majority made up mostly of one-party dictatorships

nevertheless claiming moral superiority over the Western “imperialists.” Thus, the founders’

dreams that the UN might become a “parliament of the world” and bulwark of democracy and

human rights were undermined by the very process of what, with one or another degree of

irony, was called “liberation.” Instead, the UN degenerated into a forum for polemics and a

playground for intrigue.

FRANCE’S INDEPENDENT COURSE

Where Britain was enervated by the advent of the missile age and the Third World, France was

invigorated. The weak Fourth Republic had suffered defeat in Indochina and was embroiled in a

civil war between French settlers and native Muslims in Algeria. When de Gaulle was called

back to power eight months after Sputnik 1, he set about to forestall a threatened coup d’état

by the French army, stabilize French politics, end the Algerian debacle (independence was

granted in 1962 in the Treaty of Évian), and restore French power and prestige in the world. His

constitution for a Fifth Republic established presidential leadership and restored France’s

political stability, itself an achievement of great value to the West. De Gaulle’s vision of France,

however, involved neither la plus grande France of the colonial empire nor the Atlanticist

France of NATO nor the European France of the Common Market (EEC). Rather, de Gaulle

proclaimed that a France without grandeur was not France at all and set out to reestablish

French military, technological, and diplomatic independence.

France’s decolonization proceeded as rapidly as Britain’s, culminating in 1960 with the partition

and independence of French West Africa. De Gaulle, however, refused to exhibit any guilt or

doubt about France’s mission civilisatrice and offered the populations a choice between going it

alone or joining a linguistic, monetary, and development community with the former

metropole. Only Guinea elected to follow a Marxist leader who sought ties with the U.S.S.R.

In defense matters, de Gaulle bristled at NATO’s reliance on the United States and publicly

doubted whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe was still reliable after Sputnik. Would

the Americans really risk a nuclear attack on New York City or Washington, D.C., to defend
Berlin or Paris? Therefore, de Gaulle accelerated the quiet development of a nuclear capacity

begun under the Fourth Republic, and France exploded its first atomic bomb in 1960. He also

quintupled French spending on research and development, built independent bomber, missile,

and submarine forces—the nuclear force de frappe—and made France the third space power

with the launch of an Earth satellite in 1965. Gaullist France’s rebellion against the tutelage of a

superpower unwilling to accord it diplomatic equality or help it develop nuclear weapons bore

genuine comparison to Maoist China. Like the U.S.S.R., the United States tried various means to

rein in its obstreperous ally, first trying to dissuade France from developing nuclear weapons,

then inviting it to join a multilateral nuclear force (MLF) under NATO command. First suggested

in December 1960, the MLF was pushed by Kennedy and Johnson, but de Gaulle responded

with contempt, while Adenauer feared to join lest he damage West German relations with

France. The idea of an MLF died in 1965, and in July 1966 de Gaulle took the final step of

withdrawing French armed forces from NATO (though France remained a political member of

the alliance). NATO headquarters were then moved from Paris to Brussels.

De Gaulle similarly distrusted the movement for European integration, preferring what he

termed “the Europe of the fatherlands” stretching “from the Atlantic to the Urals”—the latter

phrase provocatively including the European portion of the Soviet Union. He tolerated

European institutions such as the EEC, but only on terms of strict French leadership in

partnership with West Germany; hence his veto of Britain’s application in 1963. Moreover, de

Gaulle viewed European cooperative programs in atomic and space research as ways to tap

foreign contributions for the improvement of French national competitiveness, not as ways for
France to contribute to European unity. Adenauer eagerly accepted de Gaulle’s leadership in

order to complete Germany’s postwar rehabilitation and retain the EEC market for Germany’s

booming industry. De Gaulle, however, crushed any lingering hopes for European political

integration by boycotting the EEC in 1965–66 rather than allow the federalist commissioner

Walter Hallstein to enhance the decision-making power of the EEC Parliament. Finally, de

Gaulle delighted in open criticism of American foreign policy and courted closer relations with

Moscow (which in return seized upon what appeared to be an opportunity to split the alliance),

culminating in the pomp of a state visit in 1966. In all these ways Gaullist policy was a constant

vexation to Washington, but in the long run it was probably a boon to the Western alliance for

the technological dynamism, political stability, and military might it restored to France.

ASIA BENEATH THE SUPERPOWERS

The first rebellions against the European imperial system had occurred on the rimlands of Asia

at the start of the 20th century: the Russo-Japanese War, the Indian home-rule movement, and

the Chinese and Young Turk revolutions. By the 1960s the southern tier of Asian states had

given birth to local systems of power and rivalry beyond the control of the Great Powers.

Several factors set these nations and their conflicts apart. First, the Middle East, the Indian

subcontinent, and Indochina all seethed with ethnic conflicts that had little to do with the Cold

War. Second, eastern and southern Asia continued to undergo a demographic explosion that

made China and India by far the most populous states in the world and non-Soviet Asia the

home of 55 percent of the human race. Third, the politics of these societies, involved as they

were in the awakening of vast peasant masses, the breakdown of traditional village agriculture,
religious and dynastic structures, and programs for rapid modernization, did not easily fall into

categories familiar to Soviet and American planners of the 1950s. Fourth, most of the Asian rim

was remote from the European Soviet Union and North America, making direct intervention

there expensive and risky. Nevertheless, continued Soviet efforts to win influence in the Middle

East, Chinese claims to natural leadership of the poor southern half of the globe, and American

attempts to preserve a structure of containment of the Communist world necessarily involved

the Great Powers in Asian diplomacy. The fate of half of mankind could not, it seemed, be a

matter of indifference to countries that claimed universal missions.

THE SIX-DAY WAR

In the Middle East, Nasser’s star began to decline in the 1960s from its post-Suez peak.

The Syrian Baʿth Party, though socialist, resented Nasser’s assumption of Arab leadership and in

1961 took the country out of the United Arab Republic, which it had formed with Egypt in 1958.

Likewise, the presence of 50,000 Egyptian troops in Yemen failed to overcome the forces

supporting the Yemeni imam, who was backed in turn by Saudi Arabia. On the other hand,

the Cairo Conference of 1964 succeeded in rallying pan-Arab unity around resistance to Israel’s

plans to divert the waters of the Jordan. Also with both eyes on Israel, the conference restored

an Arab High Command and elevated the Palestinian refugees (scattered among several Arab

states since 1948) to a status approaching sovereignty, with their own army and headquarters

in the Gaza Strip. Syria likewise sponsored a terrorist organization, al-Fatah, whose raids against

Jewish settlements provoked Israeli military reprisals inside Jordan and Lebanon. Syria was

divided principally between the socialist Baʾth, led by the minority ʿAlawite community that
dominated the army, and pro-Nasser pan-Arabists. In 1966 a military coup established a radical

Baʿthist regime, but the army itself then split into rival factions. Nasser took the initiative to

prevent a rightist reversal in Syria and reassert his leadership of the Arab cause.

Armed with Soviet tanks and planes, Nasser claimed his option under the 1956 accord to

demand withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from the Sinai. Secretary-General U Thant

complied on May 19, 1967. Four days later Nasser closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.

The Soviets apparently urged Nasser to show moderation, while President Johnson told Israeli

Foreign Minister Abba Eban to remain calm: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go

alone.” Neither superpower, however, was able to restrain its client. When Egyptian and Iraqi

troops arrived in Jordan, giving every sign of an imminent pan-Arab attack, the Israeli Cabinet

decided on a preemptive strike. The Israeli air force destroyed Nasser’s planes on the ground,

and in six days of fighting (June 5–10) the Israeli army overran the Sinai, the West Bank of the

Jordan, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and the strategic Golan Heights in Syria. The UN

Security Council arranged a cease-fire and passed Resolution 242, calling for a withdrawal from

all occupied regions. The Israelis were willing to view their conquests (except Jerusalem) as

bargaining chips but insisted on Arab recognition of the right of Israel to exist and firm

guarantees against future attack. The so-called frontline Arab states were neither able (for

domestic reasons) nor willing to give such guarantees and instead courted Soviet and Third

World support against “U.S.–Israeli imperialism.” Hence Israel remained both greatly enlarged

and possessed of shorter, more defensible borders, although it did acquire the problem of

administering more than a million Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank.
CHINA, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN

The Indian subcontinent comprised another system of conflict focused on border disputes

among India, Pakistan, and China. Nehru’s Congress Party had stabilized the political life of the

teeming and disparate peoples of India. The United States looked to India as a laboratory of

democracy and development in the Third World and a critical foil to Communist China and in

consequence had contributed substantial amounts of aid. The U.S.S.R. also began an effective

aid program in 1955, and Nehru looked to the U.S.S.R. for support against China once the Sino-

Soviet split became evident. The Peking regime had brutally suppressed the buffer state of

Tibet in 1950 and disputed the border with India at several points between the tiny Himalayan

states of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. American military aid to Pakistan (a member of CENTO)

also gave the Indians and Soviets reason to cooperate. In 1961, when President Ayub Khan of

Pakistan earnestly sought Kennedy’s mediation in the dispute over Kashmir, U.S. pressure

proved inadequate to bring Nehru to the bargaining table.

Nehru was humbled, however, when the Chinese suddenly attacked in force across the

disputed boundaries, choosing as their moment the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Indian

forces were soundly defeated, 7,000 men having been killed or captured, and the lowlands of

Assam lay open to the invaders. The Chinese leadership apparently had expected a Soviet

triumph in Cuba, or at least a drawn-out crisis that would prevent superpower intervention in

India, but the swift resolution in Cuba in favour of the United States permitted Washington to

respond to Nehru’s request for help. The Chinese then halted the offensive and soon afterward

withdrew.
The Kennedy administration used its newly won leverage to urge Nehru to settle his quarrel

with Pakistan, but the negotiations failed to overcome Hindu–Muslim antipathy and the fact

that the conflict was a unifying element in the domestic politics of both countries. Pakistani

troops crossed the cease-fire line in Kashmir in August 1965, and India responded by invading

Pakistan proper. Both superpowers backed U Thant’s personal quest for a cease-fire, and the

Indians withdrew. The U.S.S.R. was able to regain influence with New Delhi, especially after the

accession to power of Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. In 1971 India and the U.S.S.R.

concluded a 20-year Treaty of Peace and Friendship and Cooperation, an indication of how

much the United States (not to mention Britain) had lost touch with the once model Third

World democracy. Pakistan, meanwhile, was in ferment. President Ayub Khan was forced to

step down in 1969 in favour of Yahya Khan, while elections in 1970 polarized the geographically

divided country. West Pakistan chose Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as prime minister, but densely

populated East Pakistan (Bengal) voted almost unanimously for a separatist party under

Mujibur Rahman. When talks between the two leaders broke down, Bhutto gambled on

sending in troops and jailing the secessionists. Vicious fighting broke out in Bengal, flooding

India with some 10,000,000 refugees and provoking Indian intervention. The Soviets cautioned

restraint but clearly favoured India, while U.S. President Nixon sent a carrier task force into the

Bay of Bengal and openly favoured Pakistan, influenced by the country’s role as intermediary

between Washington and Peking. In two weeks of fighting (Dec. 3–16, 1971) the Indians

defeated the Pakistanis on all fronts, and East Pakistan became the new state of Bangladesh,

comprising the delta of the Indus River. Pakistan thus lost well over half its population. Once

Nixon’s opening to China bore fruit, the subcontinent seemed to be polarized around a
U.S.S.R.–India axis and a U.S.–Pakistan–China axis, though the United States resumed aid and

food shipments during the Indian famine of 1972.

To the south and east of the Asian mainland lay the vast, populous archipelago of Indonesia,

where another romantic revolutionary, Sukarno, had played host to the Bandung Conference of

1955. Like Nasser, Nehru, and Mao, he ruled his 100,000,000 people by vague, hortatory

slogans that added up to a personal ideology with nationalist and Communist overtones.

The Kennedy administration had tried to appease Sukarno with development aid and even

obliged the Dutch to cede Irian Barat (Irian Jaya) in the face of Sukarno’s threats in 1963.

Sukarno still turned to Moscow for support and gave himself over to profligate personal

behaviour and foreign adventures, most notably an attempted attack on Malaysia in 1963. By

1965 Indonesia was $2,400,000,000 in debt and suffering widespread famine. In January of that

year Sukarno withdrew his country from the UN over a dispute with Malaysia. The Soviets were

clearly disgusted with Sukarno’s regime, while the rival Chinese persuaded (perhaps

blackmailed) him into approving a savage pro-Communist putsch in October 1965. Suharto,

however, put down the uprising and exacted a violent revenge in which as many as 300,000

Communists and their supporters were killed. Indonesia subsequently concerned itself with its

internal problems, frustrating Soviet, Chinese, and American hopes for a strong ally.

The destruction of Indonesian Communism, achieved without the slightest American effort, was

a source of great comfort for the United States. A diametrically opposite course of events had,

by 1965, begun to unfold in the last theatre of Asian conflict, Vietnam.

THE WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

COLD WAR ASSUMPTIONS AND THE QUAGMIRE

As the Vietnam War began to recede into the past, the entire episode, from a neutral

perspective, increasingly came to seem incredible. That the most powerful and wealthy nation

on earth should undertake 15 years of wasting conflict against a tiny state 10,000 miles from its

shores—and lose—almost justifies the historian Paul Johnson’s phrase “America’s suicide

attempt.” Yet the destructive and futile U.S. engagement in Southeast Asia was a product of a

series of trends that had been maturing since World War II. The early Cold War gave rise to U.S.

leadership in the containment of Communism. Decolonization then thrust the United States

into a role described by advocate and critic alike as “the world’s policeman”—protector and

benefactor of the weak new governments of the Third World. The potential of guerrilla

insurgency, demonstrated in Tito’s resistance to the Nazis and especially in the postwar

victories of Mao, the Viet Minh, and Castro, made it the preferred mode for revolutionary

action around the world. The emerging nuclear stalemate alerted Washington to the need to

prepare for fighting limited (sometimes called “brushfire”) wars sponsored by the Soviet Union

or China through proxies in the Third World. In this era of Khrushchevian and Maoist

assertiveness the United States could not allow any of its client states to fall to a Communist

“war of national liberation” lest it lose prestige and credibility to Moscow and Peking. Finally,

the “domino theory,” to the effect that the fall of one country would inexorably lead to the

communization of its neighbours, magnified the importance of even the smallest state and

guaranteed that sooner or later the United States would become entangled under the worst
possible conditions. One or even all of the assumptions under which the United States became

involved in Vietnam may have been faulty, but very few in the government and the public

questioned them until long after the country was committed.

By 1961, Diem’s fledgling government in South Vietnam was receiving more U.S. aid per capita

than any other country except Laos and South Korea. Authoritative reports detailed both

the Viet Cong’s campaign of terror against government officials in the south and widespread

discontent over Diem’s corrupt and imperious rule. In the face of both Khrushchev’s renewed

vow to support wars of national liberation and de Gaulle’s warning (“I predict you will sink step

by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire”), Kennedy chose Vietnam as a test

case for American theories of state building and counterinsurgency. He approved a proposal by

Rostow and General Maxwell Taylor to assign advisers to every level of Saigon’s government

and military, and the number of Americans in Vietnam grew from 800 to 11,000 by the end of

1962.

Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese considered the struggle against Diem and his American

sponsors merely the next phase of a war that had begun against the Japanese and had

continued against the French. Their determination to unify Vietnam and conquer all of

Indochina was the principal dynamic behind the conflict. The total number of Communist

troops in the South grew by recruitment and infiltration from some 7,000 in 1960 to more than

100,000 by 1964. Most were guerrilla militiamen who served also as local party cadres. Above

them were the Viet Cong (formally the National Liberation Front, or NLF), deployed in regional
military units, and units of the People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) entering the South

along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. U.S. Special Forces tried to counter Communist control of the

countryside with a “strategic hamlet” program, a tactic used with success by the British in

Malaya. Diem instituted a policy of relocating the rural population of South Vietnam in order to

isolate the Communists. The program caused widespread resentment, while Diem’s

persecution of local Buddhist sects provided a rallying point for protests. When Buddhist monks

resorted to dramatic self-immolation in front of Western news cameras, Kennedy secretly

instructed Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to approve a military coup. On Nov. 1, 1963, Diem

was overthrown and murdered.

South Vietnam then underwent a succession of coups d’état that undermined all pretense that

the United States was defending democracy. The struggle was thenceforth viewed in

Washington as a military effort to buy time for state building and the training of the South

Vietnamese army (Army of the Republic of Vietnam; ARVN). When two American destroyers

exchanged fire with a North Vietnamese torpedo boat eight miles off the North’s coast in

August 1964 (an event whose occurrence was later disputed), Congress passed the Gulf of

Tonkin Resolution authorizing the President to take whatever measures he deemed necessary

to protect American lives in Southeast Asia. Johnson held off escalating the war during the 1964

electoral campaign but in February 1965 ordered sustained bombing of North Vietnam and sent

the first U.S. combat units to the South. By June, U.S. troops in Vietnam numbered 74,000.
The Soviet Union reacted to American escalation by trying to reconvene the Geneva Conference

and bring pressure to bear on the United States to submit to the peaceful reunification of

Vietnam. China bluntly refused to encourage a negotiated settlement and insisted that the

U.S.S.R. help North Vietnam by pressuring the United States elsewhere. The Soviets, in turn,

resented Peking’s assertion of leadership in the Communist world and had no desire to provoke

new crises with Washington. The North Vietnamese were caught in the middle; Ho’s ties were

to Moscow, but geography obliged him to favour Peking. Hence North Vietnam joined in

boycotting the March 1965 Communist conference in Moscow. The Soviets, however, dared not

ignore the Vietnam War lest they confirm Chinese accusations of Soviet “revisionism.”

THE CONDUCT AND COST OF THE WAR

Meanwhile, the United States slid ineluctably into the quagmire predicted by de Gaulle. U.S.

forces reached a peak of 543,000 men in 1969. (Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the

Philippines also sent small contingents, and South Korea contributed 50,000 men.) The U.S.

strategy was to employ mobility, based on helicopters, and firepower to wear down the enemy

by attrition at minimal cost in U.S. lives.

The war of attrition on the ground, like the bombing in the North, was designed less to destroy

the enemy’s ability to wage war than to demonstrate to the enemy that he could not win and

to bring him to the bargaining table. But stalemate suited Hanoi, which could afford to wait,

while it was anathema to the Americans. Johnson’s popularity fell steadily. Most Americans

favoured more vigorous prosecution to end the war, but a growing number advocated
withdrawal. Antiwar dissent grew and spread and overlapped with sweeping and violent

demands for social change. The American foreign policy consensus that had sustained

containment since the 1940s was shattered by Vietnam. In retrospect, Johnson’s attempt to

prevent the war from disturbing his own domestic program was vain, and his strategic

conception was grounded in folly and hubris. He and his advisers had no clear notion of what

the application of American force was supposed to achieve. It was merely assumed to be

invincible.

Hanoi understood that the classic Maoist strategy of isolating cities by revolutionizing the

countryside was inapplicable to Vietnam because the cities could still hold out with foreign

support. Accordingly, in mid-1967 the North Vietnamese Politburo approved a plan for urban

attacks throughout South Vietnam. General Vo Nguyen Giap insisted, however, that NLF

guerrillas, not PAVN units, be risked. The expectation was that direct attacks on cities would

undercut American claims of pacification and magnify domestic American dissent. On Jan. 30,

1968 (the Tet holiday, during which many ARVN troops were home on leave), an estimated

84,000 Communist troops infiltrated South Vietnamese cities, attacked government

installations, and even penetrated the American embassy in Saigon. The Tet Offensive was

carried out at a terrible cost to Communist strength, but American press reports turned the

offensive into a psychological defeat for the United States. Instead of ordering a counterattack,

Johnson removed himself from the 1968 presidential campaign, ordered a bombing halt, and

pledged to devote the rest of his administration to the quest for peace. Negotiations began in

Paris, but the rest of the year was spent bickering over procedural issues.
For more than 25 years after 1941 the United States had maintained an unprecedented depth

of involvement in world affairs. In 1968 Vietnam finally forced Americans to face the limits of

their resources and will. Whoever succeeded Johnson would have little choice but to find a way

to escape from Vietnam and reduce American global responsibilities.

NIXON, KISSINGER, AND THE DÉTENTE EXPERIMENT

DÉTENTE AS REALISM

After eight years in the shadow of Eisenhower and eight more years out of office, Richard Nixon

brought to the presidency in 1969 rich experience as an observer of foreign affairs and shrewd

notions about how to prevent the American retreat from global commitments from turning into

a rout. In broad outlines, the Nixon strategy included a phased withdrawal of ground forces

from Vietnam, a negotiated settlement saving the Saigon regime, détente with the U.S.S.R.,

resumption of relations with mainland China, and military support for selected regional powers

that permitted them to take over as local “policemen” in lieu of direct American involvement.

In a period of just four years, 1969–72, the United States abandoned once-unshakable Cold War

attitudes toward the Communist nations, while scaling back its own exposure in response to

the Sino-Soviet split, imminent Soviet strategic parity, and the economic and psychological

constraints on U.S. action stemming from the new American imperative of “no more Vietnams.”

Nixon believed that his own record as an anti-Communist and tough negotiator would quiet

conservative opposition to détente, while liberals would find themselves outflanked on their

own peace issue. In both ends and means American foreign policy evinced a new realism in
stark contrast to the “pay any price, bear any burden” mentality of the Kennedy–Johnson years.

In his inaugural address Nixon spoke instead of an “era of negotiation.”

Détente, however, was not meant to replace the abiding postwar American strategy of

containment. Rather, it was meant to be a less confrontational method of containing

Communist power through diplomatic accords and a flexible system of rewards and

punishments by which Washington might moderate Soviet behaviour. Journalists dubbed this

tactic “linkage” insofar as the United States would link positive inducements (e.g., arms control,

technology transfers, grain sales) to expected Soviet reciprocity in other areas (e.g., restraint in

promoting revolutionary movements). Nixon had no illusions that U.S.–Soviet competition

would disappear, but he expected that this carrot-and-stick approach would establish rules of

the game and recognized spheres of influence. Pulling the Soviets into a network of

agreements, and thus giving them a stake in the status quo, would create a stable structure of

peace. Finally, expanding economic and cultural ties might even serve to open up Soviet

society.

By 1971, Leonid Brezhnev, now established as the new Soviet leader, was ready to welcome

American overtures for a variety of reasons. In 1968 relations with the eastern European

satellites had flared up again when leaders of the Czechoslovakian Communist party

under Alexander Dubček initiated reforms promoting democratization and free speech. A wave

of popular demonstrations added momentum to liberalization during this “Prague Spring” until,

on August 20, the U.S.S.R. led neighbouring Warsaw Pact armies in a military invasion of
Czechoslovakia. Dubček was ousted and the reforms undone. The ostensible justification for

this latest Soviet repression of freedom in its empire came to be known as the Brezhnev

Doctrine: “Each of our parties is responsible not only to its working class and its people, but also

to the international working class, the world Communist movement.” The U.S.S.R. asserted its

right to intervene in any Communist state to prevent the success of “counterrevolutionary”

elements. Needless to say, the Chinese were fearful that the Brezhnev Doctrine might be

applied to them. In 1969 they accused the U.S.S.R. of “social imperialism” and provoked

hundreds of armed clashes on the borders of Sinkiang and Manchuria. Soviet forces arrayed

against China, already raised from 12 weak divisions in 1961 to 25 full ones, now grew to 55

divisions backed by 120 SS-11 nuclear missiles. In August 1969 a Soviet diplomat had carefully

inquired about the likely American reaction to a Soviet nuclear strike against China. In sum, the

need to repair the Soviet image in the wake of the Prague Spring and the fear of dangerous

relations with Peking and Washington at the same time, as well as the chronic Soviet need for

agricultural imports and access to superior Western technology, were all powerful incentives

for seeking détente.

From a longer perspective, however, détente had been the strategy of the U.S.S.R. ever since

1956 under the rubric “peaceful coexistence.” Brezhnev repeated Khrushchev’s assertion that

Soviet nuclear parity took the military leverage from the hands of the bourgeois world, forcing

it to accept the legitimate interests of other states, to treat the U.S.S.R. as an equal, and to

acquiesce in the success of “progressive” and revolutionary struggle. Détente was thus for the

Soviets a natural expression of the new correlation of forces, a means of guiding the weakened
Americans through the transition to a new phase of history—and was certainly not meant to

preserve the status quo or liberalize the U.S.S.R. One Western proponent of détente described

the Soviet conception of it as a way “to make the world safe for historical change” and pointed

out the implicit double standard—i.e., that it was admissible for the U.S.S.R. to continue the

struggle against the capitalist world during détente but a contradiction for the Western powers

to struggle against Communism. From the Marxist point of view, however, this was merely

another reflection of objective reality: Now that nuclear balance was a fact, greater weight

accrued to conventional military strength and popular political action, each of which strongly

favoured the Socialist bloc.

The contrasting U.S. and Soviet conceptions of détente would eventually scotch the hopes

placed in it on both sides. From 1969 to 1972, however, those differences were not yet

apparent, while the immediate incentives for a relaxation of tensions were irresistible.

SCALING BACK U.S. COMMITMENTS

The first indications of a new American sense of limits in foreign policy were in the economic

sphere. Since World War II the global market economy had rested on the Bretton Woods

monetary system, based on a strong American dollar tied to gold. Beginning in 1958 the United

States began to run annual foreign-exchange deficits, resulting partly from the costs of

maintaining U.S. forces overseas. For this reason, and because their own exports benefitted

from an artificially strong dollar, the Europeans and Japanese tolerated the U.S. gold drain and

used their growing fund of “Eurodollars” to back loans and commerce. By the mid-1960s de
Gaulle began to criticize the United States for exploiting its leadership role to “export its

inflation” to foreign holders of dollars. The Johnson administration’s Vietnam deficits then

added the prospect of internal American inflation. By 1971 the American economic situation

warranted emergency measures. Nixon imposed wage and price controls to stem inflation, and

Secretary of the Treasury John Connally abruptly suspended the convertibility of dollars to gold.

The dollar was allowed to float against undervalued currencies like the deutsche mark and yen,

in consequence of which foreign holders of dollars took sharp losses and foreign exporters

faced stiffer competition from American goods. New agreements in December 1971 stabilized

the dollar at a rate 12 percent below Bretton Woods, but the United States had sorely tried

allied loyalty.

The American retreat from an overextended financial position and insistence that its allies

share the burden of stabilizing the U.S. balance of payments was the economic analog to

the Nixon Doctrine in military affairs. The new president enunciated this doctrine in an

impromptu news conference on Guam during his July 1969 trip to welcome home the Apollo 11

astronauts from the Moon. Nixon announced that the United States would no longer send

Americans to fight for Asian nations but would confine itself to logistical and economic support:

“Asian hands must shape the Asian future.” In accord with this effort to shift more of the

burden of containment to threatened peoples themselves, Nixon planned to assist regional pro-

Western powers like Iran in becoming bulwarks of stability by providing them with

sophisticated American weapons.

Before the Nixon Doctrine could be credible, however, the President had to extricate the

United States from Vietnam. In March 1969 he outlined a policy of Vietnamization, comprising a

phased withdrawal of American ground troops and additional material and advisory support to

make the ARVN self-sufficient. Nixon also hoped to enlist the Soviets in the cause of peace, but

Moscow had less influence over Hanoi than he imagined and could not afford to be seen as

appeasing the United States. Nixon then shifted to a subtler approach—long-term pressure on

Hanoi combined with better relations with both Communist giants. Late in 1969 secret talks

began in Paris between Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s adviser for national security, and the North

Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho. At the same time, however, Nixon stepped up

pressure on the North. When the anti-Communist general Lon Nol overthrew Prince Sihanouk

in Cambodia in March 1970, Nixon acceded to the U.S. army’s long-standing desire to destroy

Communist sanctuaries inside that country. The U.S.-ARVN operation fell short of its promise

and provoked protests at home and abroad. Despite public disfavour and congressional

attempts to limit such actions, Nixon ordered continued secret American bombing inside

Cambodia and also supported an ARVN operation into Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

THE OPENING TO CHINA AND OSTPOLITIK

The linchpin of Nixon’s strategy for a settlement in Vietnam was détente with Moscow and

Peking. He was known as a firm supporter of the Nationalist regime on Taiwan, but he had

softened his stance against mainland China before taking office. In 1969 he moved to signal

Peking through the good offices of de Gaulle and Yahya Khan of Pakistan. Direct contacts,

conducted through the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, were broken off after the 1970 U.S.-ARVN
attacks on Cambodia, but Nixon and Kissinger remained hopeful. The Cultural Revolution ended

in a serious power struggle in the Chinese leadership. Army commander Lin Biao opposed

relations with the United States but died when his plane crashed in unclear circumstances.

Zhou Enlai and Mao (presumably) contemplated the value of an American counterweight to the

Soviets, concessions on the status of Taiwan, and technology transfers. The Nixon Doctrine also

promised to remove the obnoxious U.S. military presence in Asia.

The Pakistani channel bore fruit in December 1970, when Yahya Khan returned from Peking

with an invitation for an American envoy to discuss Taiwan. The following April the Chinese

made the surprising public gesture of inviting an American table tennis team to the

championship tournament in Peking. This episode of “Ping-Pong diplomacy” was followed by a

secret trip to Peking by Kissinger. Kissinger’s talks with Zhou and Mao yielded an American

promise to remove U.S. forces from Taiwan in return for Chinese support of a negotiated

settlement in Vietnam. The Chinese also agreed to a presidential visit in February 1972. The

American people’s long-latent fascination with China immediately revived, and Nixon’s trip was

a sensation.

The Soviets watched with palpable discomfort as Nixon and Mao embraced and saluted each

other’s flags, and they quickly raised the premium on improving relations with Washington.

Efforts to this end had been frustrated by a series of crises: a buildup of Soviet jets in Egypt and

Jordan, the discovery of a Soviet submarine base under construction in Cuba in 1970, and

Nixon’s escalations of the war in Southeast Asia. Substantial moves toward East–West détente
had already been made in Europe, however. Following de Gaulle’s lead, the West German

foreign minister, Willy Brandt, a Socialist and former mayor of West Berlin, had made overtures

toward Moscow. After becoming chancellor in 1969 he pursued a thorough Ostpolitik (“eastern

policy”) that culminated in treaties with the U.S.S.R. (August 1970), renouncing the use of force

in their relations, and with Poland (December 1970), recognizing Germany’s 1945 losses east of

the Oder–Neisse Line. Brandt also recognized the East German government (December 1972)

and expanded commercial relations with other eastern European regimes. Both German states

were admitted to the UN in 1973. Support for Ostpolitik among West Germans reflected the

growing belief that German reunification would more likely be achieved through détente,

rather than confrontation, with the Soviet bloc.

The United States, Britain, and France seconded Brandt’s efforts by concluding a new Four

Power accord with the U.S.S.R. on Berlin in September 1971. The Soviets made what they

considered a major concession by agreeing to retain their responsibility under the Potsdam

Accords for access to West Berlin and achieved in return Western recognition of the status quo

in eastern Europe and access to West German technology and credits.

ARMS-LIMITATION NEGOTIATIONS

The centrepiece of a bilateral U.S.–Soviet détente, however, had to be the Strategic Arms

Limitation Talks (SALT), which began in 1969. After a decade of determined research and

deployment the Soviet Union had pulled ahead of the United States in long-range missiles and

was catching up in submarine-launched missiles and in long-range bombers. Indeed, it had

been American policy since the mid-1960s to permit the Soviets to achieve parity in order to

stabilize the regime of mutual deterrence. Stability was threatened, however, from the

technological quarter with the development of multiple independently targeted reentry

vehicles (MIRVs), by which several warheads, each aimed at a different target, could be carried

on one missile, and antiballistic missiles (ABMs), which might allow one side to strike first while

shielding itself from retaliation. In the arcane province of strategic theory, therefore, offense

(long-range missiles) became defense, and defense (ABM) offense. Johnson had favoured a thin

ABM system to protect the United States from a Chinese attack, and in 1969 Nixon won Senate

approval of ABM deployment by a single vote. He intended, however, to use the program as a

bargaining chip. The Soviets had actually deployed a rudimentary ABM system but were anxious

to halt the U.S. program before superior American technology left theirs behind. The public

SALT talks stalled, but back-channel negotiations between Kissinger and Ambassador Anatoly

Dobrynin produced agreement in principle in May 1971 to limit long-range missiles and ABM

deployment. The American opening to China made the Soviets increasingly eager for a prompt

agreement and summit meeting, while the Americans hoped that Moscow would encourage

North Vietnam to be forthcoming in the peace talks.

Since 1968 North Vietnamese negotiators had demanded satisfaction of Premier Pham Van

Dong’s “four points” of 1965, including cessation of all U.S. military activity in Indochina,

termination of foreign military alliances with Saigon, a coalition government in the South that

included the NLF, and reunification of Vietnam. The United States demanded withdrawal of all

foreign troops from the South, including the PAVN. This deadlock, plus Hanoi’s anxiety over the
possible effects of détente, prompted another North Vietnamese bid for victory on the

battlefield. In March 1972 they committed 10 of their 13 divisions to a massive offensive. Nixon

responded by ordering the resumption of bombing of the North for the first time since 1969

and the mining of the harbour at Haiphong, North Vietnam’s major port. The offensive stalled.

Nixon’s retaliation against North Vietnam prompted speculation that the U.S.S.R. would cancel

the planned summit meeting, but Soviet desire for détente prevailed. Kissinger visited Moscow

in April 1972 to work out details on SALT and draft a charter for détente. Nixon instructed him

“to emphasize the need for a single standard; we could not accept the proposition that the

Soviet Union had the right to support liberation movements throughout the world while

insisting on the Brezhnev Doctrine inside the satellite orbit.” The Soviets, however, refused to

make explicit concessions and defined détente as a means of preventing the inevitable struggle

between “progressive” and “reactionary” forces from escalating into war. The result was a

vague statement of 12 “basic principles of mutual relations” committing the two parties to

peaceful coexistence and normal relations based on “sovereignty, equality, non-interference in

internal affairs, and mutual advantage.” Nixon then proceeded to Moscow in May 1972 and

signed 10 documents providing for cooperation in economics, science and technology, outer

space, medicine, health, and the environment. Most important were the SALT accords:

an Interim Agreement limiting ballistic-missile deployment for five years and the ABM Treaty

limiting each side to two ABM sites, one protecting the national capital, the other a long-range

missile site. The treaty also enjoined the signatories not to interfere with each other’s “national
technical means of verification,” a de facto recognition of each side’s space-based

reconnaissance satellites.

The preliminary SALT agreement appeared to be a significant achievement, but there was in

some ways less to it than met the eye. The treaty mandated controlled increases, not

decreases, in the Soviet arsenal, while failing to ban development of cruise missiles, space-

based weapons, or the MIRVing of existing launchers by the United States or the U.S.S.R. Thus

the superpowers sacrificed the right to defend their attack missiles with ABMs while failing to

ensure the stability of mutual deterrence. In sum, the limitation of one sort of nuclear launcher

(long-range missiles) did not preclude a continuing arms race in other sorts of launchers or in

technological upgrades. To be sure, the mere fact of a U.S.–Soviet agreement seemed of

psychological value, but only if both sides were genuinely seeking to reduce arsenals and not

simply to maneuver diplomatically for a future advantage. Hence the practical value, or danger,

of SALT would be revealed only by superpower behaviour in years to come.

END OF THE VIETNAM WAR

The American achievement of détente with both Moscow and Peking and the failure of North

Vietnam’s spring 1972 offensive moved both protagonists in that conflict to bargain as well. In

October the secret talks in Paris between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho finally produced an

agreement on a cease-fire, the release of prisoners of war, evacuation of remaining U.S. forces

within 60 days, and political negotiations among all Vietnamese parties. South Vietnam’s

president, Nguyen Van Thieu, then balked: The plan might indeed allow the Americans to claim
“peace with honour” and go home, but it would leave Thieu to deal with the Communists while

100,000 PAVN troops remained in his country. When North Vietnam sought to prevent any last-

minute changes by releasing in public the Paris terms, Kissinger was obliged to announce on

October 26 that “peace is at hand.” After his landslide reelection a week later—a victory aided

by the prospect of peace—Nixon determined to force compliance with the terms on both

Vietnamese states. Nixon ordered 11 days of intensive bombing over Hanoi itself (December

18–28) while sending Thieu an ultimatum threatening a separate peace and cessation of U.S.

aid if Saigon did not accept the peace terms. The United States was castigated worldwide for

the “Christmas bombing,” but, when talks resumed in January, Hanoi and Saigon quickly came

to terms. A Vietnam cease-fire went into effect on Jan. 27, 1973, and the last American soldiers

departed on March 29.

Vietnam had been America’s longest and most divisive war, and public and congressional

opinion flatly opposed any resumption of the agony. The 1973 accords, therefore, were a fig

leaf hiding the fact that the United States had just lost its first war despite an estimated

expenditure of $155,000,000,000, 7,800,000 tons of bombs (more than all countries dropped in

all of World War II), and some 58,000 American lives. Estimates of Vietnamese dead (North and

South) totaled more than 2,000,000 soldiers and civilians. In its proportional impact on

Vietnamese society, the Vietnam War, 1955–75, was the fourth most severe in the world since

1816.
The end of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia also brought to a close 15 years of astounding

change in world politics that featured the arrival of the space and missile age, the climax of

decolonization, the assertions of Maoist China and Gaullist France, the shattering of the myth

(fostered by Washington and Moscow alike) of a monolithic Communist world, and the relative

decline of American power. In 1969, the very moment when astronauts were setting foot on

the Moon to fulfill Kennedy’s pledge to prove American superiority, Nixon and Kissinger were

struggling to adjust to the new realities and manage a limited American retreat. They

succeeded brilliantly in establishing a triangular relationship with Moscow and Peking and

appeared to have replaced Cold War with détente. Likewise, they appeared to have escaped

from Vietnam and implemented the Nixon Doctrine. New crises and reversals were in the

offing, however, that would prove that the American decline had not yet been arrested. Given

these reversals, détente might be judged as much an exercise in American presumption as the

Vietnam War. The U.S.S.R. could not be expected to cease its quest for real values in world

competition just because the United States was prepared to acknowledge it as a military equal.

Rather, with the United States less able to cope, that very equality opened up new

opportunities for Soviet expansion. Khrushchev’s boast about the new correlation of forces in

the world may have brought the Soviets a series of embarrassments from 1957 to 1962, but a

decade later it seemed perversely justified.

DEPENDENCE AND DISINTEGRATION IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE, 1973–87

Events after the 1960s seemed to suggest that the world was entering an era both of complex

interdependence among states and of disintegration of the normative values and institutions by
which international behaviour had, to a reliable extent, been made predictable. Perhaps this

was not an anomaly, for if modern weapons, communications satellites, and global finance and

commerce really had created a “global village,” in which the security and well-being of all

peoples were interdependent, then by the same token the opportunities had never been

greater for ethnic, religious, ideological, or economic differences to spark resentment and

conflict among the villagers.

In a world so seemingly out of control, it was perhaps a wonder that politics were not even

more violent and anarchic, for the liberal dreams of progress nurtured in the 19th century had

surely proved false. The spread of modern technology and economic growth around the world

had not necessarily increased the number of societies based on human rights and the rule of

law, nor had multilateral institutions like the United Nations or financial and economic

interdependence created a higher unity and common purpose among nations, except within

the durable and democratic North Atlantic alliance.

Instead, the world after the 1960s saw a proliferation of violence at every level except war

among developed nations, a world financial structure under tremendous strain, the worst

economic downturn since the 1930s and reduced growth rates thereafter, recurrent fears of an

energy crisis, the depletion of resources and concurrent global pollution, famine and genocidal

dictators in parts of Africa and Asia, the rise of an aggressive religious fundamentalism in the

Muslim world, and widespread political terrorism in the Middle East and Europe. The

superpowers never ceased to compete in the realms of strategic weapons and influence in the
Third World and thus failed to sustain their brief experiment with détente. As President Jimmy

Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, concluded: “The factors that make for

international instability are gaining the historical upper hand over the forces that work for more

organized cooperation. The unavoidable conclusion of any detached analysis of global trends is

that social turmoil, political unrest, economic crisis, and international friction are likely to

become more widespread during the remainder of this century.”

THE DECLINE OF DÉTENTE

General Secretary Brezhnev and President Nixon were understandably optimistic in the wake of

the endorsement by the 24th Party Congress of the Soviet peace program in 1971 and Nixon’s

landslide reelection in 1972. Both expected their new relationship to mature over the course of

Nixon’s second term. Détente, however, had fragile foundations in foreign as well as domestic

policy. The Soviets viewed it as a form of mere peaceful coexistence in which revolutionary

forces could be expected to take advantage of the new American restraint, while the U.S.

administration implicitly sold détente as a means of restraining Communist activity around the

world. American conservatives were bound to lose faith in détente with each new incident of

Soviet assertiveness, while liberals remained hostile to Nixon himself, his realpolitik, and his

predilection for the use of force. Between 1973 and 1976 Soviet advances in the Third World,

the destruction of Nixon’s presidency in the Watergate scandal, and congressional actions to

limit the foreign policy prerogatives of the White House undermined the domestic foundations

of détente. After 1977 the U.S.S.R. seemed to take advantage of the Carter administration’s

vacillations in Third World conflicts and in arms-control talks, until the Democrats themselves
reluctantly announced the demise of détente following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in

1979.

THE DISTRACTION OF WATERGATE

Analysts with a sufficiently historical point of view tended to see in the Watergate affair and

Nixon’s 1974 resignation the culmination of a 30-year trend by which war and the Cold War had

greatly expanded, and ultimately corrupted, executive power. Liberals who, in Eisenhower’s

time, had called for strong presidential leadership now bemoaned “the imperial presidency.”

With what were widely understood to be the lessons of Vietnam fresh in the nation’s mind, and

a majority in Congress and the press hostile to the sitting president, the moment arrived for a

legislative counterattack on the executive. This interpretation is borne out by the subsequent

congressional acts designed to limit executive freedom in foreign policy. The War Powers Act of

1973 restrained the president’s ability to commit U.S. forces overseas. The Stevenson

and Jackson–Vanik amendments imposed conditions (regarding Soviet policy on Jewish

emigration) on administration plans to expand trade with the U.S.S.R. In 1974–75 Congress

prevented the President from involving the United States in a crisis in Cyprus or aiding anti-

Communist forces in Angola and passed the Arms Export Control Act, removing presidential

discretion in supplying arms overseas. New financial controls limited the president’s ability to

conclude executive agreements with foreign powers, of which some 6,300 had been signed

between 1946 and 1974 as compared with only 411 treaties requiring the Senate’s advice and

consent. Finally, revelations of past CIA covert operations, including schemes to assassinate

Fidel Castro, inspired complicated congressional oversight procedures for U.S. intelligence
agencies. These assaults on executive prerogative were meant to prevent future Vietnams,

prevent unelected presidential aides from engaging in secret diplomacy, and restore to

Congress an “appropriate” role in foreign policy. Critics of the limitations held that no great

power could conduct a coherent or effective foreign policy under such a combination of

openness and restrictions, especially in a world populated increasingly by totalitarian regimes,

guerrilla movements, and terrorists.

The Nixon–Brezhnev summits of 1973–74 produced only minor follow-ons in the area of arms

control—the uncontroversial Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War and an agreement

to reduce the number of ABM sites from the two permitted in 1972 to one. Gerald Ford,

president from August 1974, and Henry Kissinger, who remained as secretary of state,

attempted to restore the momentum of détente through a new SALT agreement regulating the

dangerous race in MIRVed missiles, which SALT I had not prevented. The United States

proposed strict equality in nuclear delivery systems and total throw weight, which meant that

the United States would be allowed to MIRV more of its missiles to offset the greater size

of Soviet missiles. Since the United States had no plans for a unilateral buildup in any case,

however, the Soviets had no incentive to make such a concession. Instead, Ford and Brezhnev

signed an Interim Agreement at Vladivostok in November 1974 that limited each side to 2,400

delivery vehicles, of which 1,320 could be MIRVed. While the Soviets claimed that this was a

concession, since they declined to count the 90 British and French missiles aimed at them, the

Soviets’ giant SS-18s, able to deliver up to 10 MIRVs, ensured the U.S.S.R. an advantage in ICBM
warheads. The repeated failure to restrain the growth of Soviet offensive systems soon sparked

fears that the United States might become vulnerable to preemptive attack.

Meanwhile, the mid-1970s brought to a logical conclusion the process of détente in Europe.

Nixon and Kissinger, aware that the United States had seemed to ignore its European allies

during the 10 years of Vietnam, declared 1973 “the year of Europe” and hoped to forestall

NATO governments from bargaining with Moscow on their own. Watergate and the Arab–

Israeli war of that year (the Yom Kippur War) turned this initiative into a public-relations failure,

however. Instead, the United States was obliged to follow the European lead in the

ongoing Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and negotiations toward a “mutual

and balanced force reduction” treaty covering NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe.

The climax of the security talks was the Helsinki summit of 35 nations in the summer of 1975

and an agglomeration of proposals divided into three “baskets.” (A fourth basket dealt with the

question of a follow-up conference.) In Basket I the signatories accepted the inviolability

of Europe’s existing borders and the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other

states—thereby recognizing formally the Soviet gains in World War II and the Soviet-bloc states.

Basket II promoted exchanges in science, technology, and commerce, expanding Soviet access

to Western technology and opening the Soviet market to western European industry. Basket III,

the apparent Soviet concession, aimed at expanding cultural and humanitarian cooperation

among all states on the basis of respect for human rights. Not surprisingly, Western opinion of

the Helsinki Accords, and of détente in general, came to rest heavily on whether the U.S.S.R.

would voluntarily comply with Basket III. American leaders of both parties considered Helsinki
misguided and empty, especially after Moscow stepped up the persecution of dissidents and

jailed those of their citizens engaged in a “Helsinki watch” on Soviet compliance. In sum,

Helsinki (and U.S. demands on behalf of Soviet Jews) pointed up another contradiction in

détente, this time between American insistence on Soviet liberalization and Soviet insistence on

noninterference in the domestic politics of other states.

EVENTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND AFRICA

During final negotiations at Helsinki, events in Southeast Asia compounded the American sense

of humiliation and growing discontent with détente. The North Vietnamese had never viewed

the 1973 peace accords as anything other than an interlude permitting the final withdrawal of

American forces. In the year following they built up their strength in South Vietnam to more

than 150,000 regulars armed with Soviet tanks, artillery, and antiaircraft weapons. The ARVN

was poorly trained, suffered from low morale after the Americans were gone, and faced an

enemy able to attack at times and places of its own choosing. The American withdrawal also

removed at a blow some 300,000 jobs from the local economy, and President Thieu made

matters worse by trying to establish one-party bureaucratic rule without the charisma or

prestige to sustain it. By October 1974 the Politburo in Hanoi concluded that the Saigon regime

was ripe for collapse. Large-scale probes of ARVN defenses in January 1975 confirmed their

optimism. By the end of the month 12 provinces and 8,000,000 people had fallen to the

Communists. On April 10, unable to obtain congressional approval of $422,000,000 in further

military aid, President Ford declared that the Vietnam War was over “as far as America is

concerned.” The final North Vietnamese offensive reached Saigon on April 30, 1975, as the last
remaining Americans fled to helicopters atop the U.S. embassy. Hanoi triumphantly reunified

Vietnam politically in July 1976 and confined thousands of South Vietnamese to “reeducation

camps,” while thousands of “boat people” risked death in the South China Sea to escape

reprisals and Communism.

The end in Cambodia had already occurred. The Communist Khmer Rouge cut off the

capital, Phnom Penh, in January 1975. When the U.S. Congress denied further aid to Cambodia,

Lon Nol fled, and in mid-April the Khmer Rouge took control. Its leader, Pol Pot, was a French-

educated disciple of Maoist “total revolution” to whom everything traditional was anathema.

The Khmer Rouge reign of terror became one of the worst holocausts of the 20th century. All

urban dwellers, including hospital patients, were forced into the countryside in order to build a

new society of rural communes. Sexual intercourse was forbidden and the family abolished.

More than 100,000 Cambodians, including all “bourgeois,” or educated people, were killed

outright, and 400,000 succumbed in the death marches; in all, 1,200,000 people (a fifth of the

Cambodian nation) perished. The Khmer Rouge, however, were not allied with Hanoi, and in

1979 PAVN forces invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge and install a puppet regime. This

action completed the conquest of Indochina by North Vietnam, for Laos, too, became

Communist after the fall of Saigon. Thus the domino theory was at last put to the test and to a

large extent borne out.

Events in Africa as well seemed to bear out the Soviet expectation that “progressive forces”

would gain ground rapidly during the new era of superpower parity. Angola and Mozambique,
coastal states facing the oil-tanker routes around the Cape of Good Hope, were finally slated to

achieve independence from Portugal following a leftist military coup in Lisbon in April 1974.

Three indigenous groups, each linked to tribal factions, vied for predominance in Angola. The

MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) of Agostinho Neto was Marxist and

received aid from the U.S.S.R. and Cuba. The FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola)

in the north was backed by Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the

Congo) and initially by a token contribution from the CIA. In the south the UNITA (National

Union for the Total Independence of Angola) of Jonas Savimbi had ties to China but came to

rely increasingly on white South Africa. In the Alvor agreement of January 1975 all three agreed

to form a coalition, but civil war resumed in July. By the end of the year the MPLA had been

reinforced by 10,000 Cuban soldiers airlifted to Luanda by the U.S.S.R. In the United States the

imperative of “no more Vietnams” and congressional ire over CIA covert operations frustrated

Ford’s desire to help non-Communist Angolans. Neto accordingly proclaimed a People’s

Republic of Angola in November 1975 and signed a Treaty of Friendship with the U.S.S.R. the

following October. The rebel factions, however, remained in control of much of the country,

and Cuban troop levels eventually reached 19,000. A Marxist government also assumed power

in Mozambique.

AMERICAN UNCERTAINTY

In winning the presidential election of 1976, Jimmy Carter capitalized on the American people’s

disgust with Vietnam and Watergate by promising little more than an open and honest

administration. Though intelligent and earnest, he lacked the experience and acumen necessary
to provide strong leadership in foreign policy. This deficiency was especially unfortunate since

his major advisers had sharply divergent views on the proper American posture toward the

Soviet Union.

Carter’s inaugural address showed how much he diverged from the realpolitik of Nixon and

Kissinger. Such a sentiment as “Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of

freedom elsewhere” recalled Kennedy’s 1961 call to arms. But Carter made clear that his

emphasis on human rights applied at least as much to authoritarian governments friendly to

the United States as to Communist states, and that such idealism was in fact, as he put it on

another occasion, the most “practical and realistic approach” to foreign policy. He hoped to

divert American energies away from preoccupation with relations with the U.S.S.R. toward

global problems such as energy, population control, hunger, curbing of arms sales, and nuclear

proliferation. Carter’s first initiative in the perilous field of arms control was an embarrassing

failure. Rejecting his own secretary of state’s advice to take a gradual approach, he startled

the Soviets with a deep-cut proposal for immediate elimination of as much as 25 percent of the

U.S. and Soviet strategic missiles and a freeze on new long-range missile deployment. Brezhnev

rejected it out of hand, and Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko called this attempt to scrap the

Vladivostok formula a “cheap and shady maneuver.”

Carter was to gain one stunning success during his term, a peace treaty between Egypt and

Israel (see also Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy), but he was unable to stem the growth

of Soviet influence in Africa. Somalia, on the strategic Horn of Africa astride the Red Sea and
Indian Ocean shipping lanes, had been friendly to Moscow since 1969. In September 1974 a

pro-Marxist military junta overthrew the government of neighbouring Ethiopia, had Emperor

Haile Selassie confined in his palace (where he was later suffocated in his bed), and invited

Soviet and Cuban advisers into the country. The Somalis then took advantage of the turmoil—

perversely, from Moscow’s point of view—to reassert old claims to the Ogaden region of

Ethiopia and to invade, while Eritrean rebels also took up arms against Addis Ababa. The Soviets

and Cubans stepped up support for Ethiopia, while Castro vainly urged all parties to form a

“Marxist federation.” Carter at first cut off aid to Ethiopia on the ground of human-rights

abuses and promised weapons for the Somalis. By August he realized that the arms would only

be used in the Ogaden campaign and reversed himself, making the United States appear

ignorant and indecisive. Somalia broke with the U.S.S.R. anyway, but 17,000 Cuban troops and

$1,000,000,000 in Soviet aid allowed Ethiopia to clear the Ogaden of invaders and in 1978 to

suppress the Eritrean revolt. Ethiopia signed its own treaty of friendship and cooperation with

the U.S.S.R. in November. The failure of the Carter administration either to consult with the

Soviets or to resist Soviet–Cuban military intervention set a bad precedent and weakened both

détente and U.S. prestige in the Third World.

The events in the Horn of Africa, which Brzezinski interpreted as part of a Soviet strategy to

outflank the oil-rich Persian Gulf so vital to Western economies, encouraged the United States

to seek help in balancing Soviet power in the world. The obvious means of doing so was to

complete the rapprochement with China begun under Nixon. Some advisers opposed “playing

the China card” for fear that the Soviets would retaliate by calling off the continuing SALT
negotiations, but Brzezinski persuaded the President that closer ties between the United States

and China would oblige the U.S.S.R. to court the United States, as had occurred in 1972.

Brzezinski went to Peking in May 1978 to initiate discussions leading toward full diplomatic

recognition. His cause was aided by important changes in the Chinese leadership. Zhou Enlai

and Mao Zedong had died in 1976. Hua Guofeng won the initial power struggle and ordered the

arrest and trial of the radical Gang of Four led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Both superpowers

hoped that the suppression of radicals in favour of pragmatists in the Chinese government

might portend better relations with Peking. The rehabilitation of the formerly condemned

“capitalist roader” Deng Xiaoping led to a resumption of Soviet–Chinese border clashes,

however, and the clear shift of Vietnam into the Soviet camp strengthened Washington’s hand

in Peking. Hua and Carter announced in December 1978 that full diplomatic relations would be

established on January 1, 1979. The United States downgraded its representation in Taiwan and

renounced its 1954 mutual defense treaty with the Nationalist Chinese.

The spectre of a possible Sino-American alliance may have alarmed the Soviets (Brezhnev

warned Carter not to sell arms to China) but was never a real possibility. The Chinese remained

Communist and distrustful of the United States. They made clear that China was no card to be

played at will by one or the other of the superpowers. Nor could China’s underdeveloped

economy sustain a large conventional war or the projection of force overseas (which the United

States would not want in any case), while in nuclear systems China was as weak vis-à-vis the

Soviet Union as the Soviet Union had been vis-à-vis the United States in the 1950s. Ties to the

United States might provide China with high technology, but the United States was no more
willing to place nuclear or missile systems in Chinese hands than Khrushchev had been. To be

sure, the United States had an interest in preventing a Sino-Soviet rapprochement (an

estimated 11 percent of the Soviet military effort was devoted to the Chinese front), but any

pause given the U.S.S.R. by Sino-American cooperation was probably more useful to China than

to the United States. Indeed, Peking was quite capable of playing its U.S. card to carry out

adventures of its own.

After their 1975 victory the North Vietnamese showed a natural strategic preference for the

distant U.S.S.R. and fell out with their historic enemy, neighbouring China. In quick succession

Vietnam expelled Chinese merchants, opened Cam Ranh Bay to the Soviet navy, and signed a

treaty of friendship with Moscow. Vietnamese troops had also invaded Cambodia to oust the

pro-Peking Khmer Rouge. Soon after Deng Xiaoping’s celebrated visit to the United States,

Peking announced its intention to punish the Vietnamese, and, in February 1979, its forces

invaded Vietnam in strength. The Carter administration felt obliged to favour China (especially

given residual American hostility to North Vietnam) and supported Peking’s offer to evacuate

Vietnam only when Vietnam evacuated Cambodia. The Soviets reacted with threats against

China, but Chinese forces performed abysmally even against Vietnam’s frontier militia, and

after three weeks of hard fighting, in which Vietnam claimed to have inflicted 45,000 casualties,

the Chinese withdrew. The results for U.S. policy were all negative: Chinese military prestige

was shattered, Cambodia remained in the Soviet-Vietnamese camp, and the tactic of playing

the China card was rendered ridiculous.

To the chagrin of Peking, the Sino-Vietnamese War failed to forestall a planned U.S.–Soviet

summit meeting and the signing of a second arms agreement, SALT II. After Carter’s first deep-

cut proposal, negotiations had resumed on the basis of the Vladivostok agreement and had

finally produced a draft treaty. The summit was held in Vienna in June 1979, and Carter

returned to seek congressional approval for SALT II as well as most-favoured-nation trade

status for both the U.S.S.R. and China. The treaty inspired widespread suspicion in the U.S.

Senate on its own merits. The modest limits on nuclear forces and allowances for upgrading

existing missiles did not seem sufficient to prevent the Soviets’ superior long-range missile

forces from threatening the survival of U.S. land-based missiles. The American will to upgrade

its own deterrent, meanwhile, seemed to be sapped by the SALT process itself. Confusion

reigned over how the MX missile might be deployed so as to survive a Soviet first strike, and

Carter cancelled programs to deploy the B-1 strategic bomber and an antitank neutron bomb

designed for Europe. There also was widespread doubt over whether Soviet compliance with

SALT II could be adequately monitored. The treaty foundered as well on growing American

impatience with Communist expansion in the Third World.

Any chance of Senate ratification of SALT II disappeared on December 25, 1979, when

the U.S.S.R. launched an invasion of Afghanistan to prop up a friendly regime. Even after a

decade of détente the American public still thought viscerally in terms of containment, and this

latest and most brazen Soviet advance pushed the President over the fence. “This action of the

Soviets,” said Carter, “has made a more dramatic change in my own opinion of what the

Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they’ve done.” Calling the Afghan invasion “a clear
threat to peace,” Carter ordered an embargo on sales of grain and high-technology equipment

to the U.S.S.R., canceled U.S. participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, reinstated

registration for the draft, withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, and proclaimed the

Carter Doctrine, pledging the United States to the defense of the Persian Gulf. It was clear to all

that détente was dead.

POSTMORTEM

Was détente a failure because the Soviets refused to play by the rules, because the United

States was unwilling to accord the U.S.S.R. genuine equality, or because détente was never

really tried at all? Or did the differing U.S. and Soviet conceptions of détente ensure that,

sooner or later, American patience would wear thin? The last explanation is, in foreshortened

perspective, at least, the most convincing. From the Soviet point of view the United States had

been a hegemonic power from 1945 to 1972, secure in its nuclear dominance and free to

undertake military and political intervention around the world. The correlation of forces had

gradually shifted, however, to the point where the U.S.S.R. could rightly claim global equality

and respect for “peaceful coexistence.” Under détente, therefore, the United States was

obliged to recognize Soviet interests in all regions of the world and to understand that the

U.S.S.R. was now as free as the United States to defend those interests with diplomacy and

arms. Those interests included, above all, fraternal aid for “progressive” movements in the

Third World. Détente certainly could never mean the freezing of the status quo or the trends of

history as understood in Marxist theory. Instead, in the Soviet view, the United States

continued to resent Soviet equality in armaments, to shut the U.S.S.R. out of regional diplomacy
(as in the Middle East), to interfere in Soviet domestic policy, to support counterrevolutionary

movements, and, in violation of the spirit of détente, to attempt to organize the encirclement

of the U.S.S.R. in league with NATO and China.

From the American perspective, Soviet policy from 1945 to 1972 was characterized by a

Marxist-Leninist drive to export revolution and achieve world dominion by dividing and bullying

the West and exploiting the struggles of Third World nations. At the same time the growing

maturity of the U.S.S.R. itself, the split in world Communism, and the realization that the

Western world was not about to collapse (from either “the contradictions of capitalism” or

Soviet subversion) had made Cold War obsolete. Under détente, therefore, the U.S.S.R. was

obliged to accept the responsibilities as well as the benefits of membership in the comity of

civilized states, to reduce its exorbitant military spending and subversive activity, and to cease

trying to turn the domestic problems of other countries to unilateral benefit. Instead, in the

American view, the U.S.S.R. continued to exploit Western restraint, to build up its nuclear and

conventional forces far beyond the needs of deterrence, and to exploit Communist proxy forces

to take over developing nations.

Each view had a basis in reality, and, given the differing assumptions of the two governments,

each was persuasive. The burden of compromise or dissolution of the relationship fell inevitably

on the democratic, status quo power, however, and in time American opinion would cease to

tolerate Soviet advances made under the guise of détente. The notion of détente was flawed

from the start in two crucial points. First, with the exception of preventing nuclear war, the
United States and the U.S.S.R. still shared no major interests in the world; and second, the

specific agreements on respect for spheres of influence included Europe and isolated regions

elsewhere but not the bulk of the Third World. Americans inevitably viewed any Soviet

assertiveness in such undefined regions as evidence of the same old Soviet drive for world

domination, while the Soviets inevitably viewed any American protestations as evidence of the

same old American strategy of containment. Within a decade, the hopes raised by Nixon and

Brezhnev stood exposed as illusory.

THE “ARC OF CRISIS”

Among the manifestations of the diffusion of political power in the world after 1957 was the

rise of regional powers and conflicts with only distant or secondary connections to the rivalries

of the Cold War blocs, of multilateral political and economic pressure groups, and of

revolutionary, terrorist, or religious movements operating across national boundaries

(“nonstate actors”). The politics of the Middle East after 1972 comprised all three and so

frustrated attempts by the industrial states to control events in the region that by 1978

Brzezinski was describing the old southern tier of states reaching beneath the U.S.S.R. from

Egypt to Pakistan as the “arc of crisis.”

PALESTINIAN TERRORISM AND DIPLOMACY

The sweeping Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 had forced every Arab state to rethink

its own foreign policy and the extent of its commitment to the cause of Arab unity. Egypt,

having lost the Sinai, faced Israelis entrenched in the Bar-Lev line directly across the Suez
Canal. Jordan, having lost the West Bank, faced Israeli troops directly across the Jordan

River. Syria, having lost the Golan Heights, faced Israeli forces within easy striking distance of

Damascus itself. The notion of united Arab armies sweeping the Jews into the sea had clearly

proved to be romantic, while political unity among the Arabs suffered from the abiding division

between nationalist and socialist states like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq and traditional Arab

monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), organized in 1964 to represent some

2,000,000 refugees from the Palestine mandate who were scattered around the Arab world and

from 1968 led by Yāsir ʿArafāt, was also divided between old families of notables, whose

authority dated back to Ottoman times, and young middle-class or fedayeen factions anxious to

exert pressure on Israel and the West through terrorism. The latter included the Popular Front

for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), formed three months after the 1967 war. Over the next

year the PFLP hijacked 14 foreign airliners, culminating in its spectacular destruction of four

planes at once in Jordan. In 1970–71 the moderate King Hussein of Jordan lost patience with

the autonomous PLO formations in his territory and expelled them, provoking a sharp military

exchange with Syria. The PLO moved its central offices to Lebanon, whence terrorists could

cross the frontier to commit atrocities against civilians inside Israel. The PFLP and other

Palestinian groups also linked up with extreme leftist and rightist (because anti-Semitic)

conspiracies in Italy, Austria, and Germany to form a terrorist network that left no European or

Mediterranean state free from the fear of random violence. In September 1972 terrorists from

an organization calling itself Black September took nine Israeli athletes hostage at the
Munich Olympic Games; all the hostages and five terrorists died in the ensuing gun battle with

police.

The terrorist network benefited mightily from the financial support, training, or refuge provided

by established pro-Soviet states like Cuba, East Germany, Bulgaria, Algeria, Syria, Yemen (Aden),

and especially Libya. In 1969 the Libyan monarchy was overthrown in a military coup led by

Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, a fanatical adherent of Nasser’s pan-Arabism. Following Nasser’s

death in 1970 and the development of rich oil deposits in Libya, Qaddafi styled himself as the

new leader and financier of the radical Arab cause. In imitation of Mao, he issued a little Green

Book describing his “new gospel…. One of its words can destroy the world.” The ideology was a

mixture of Third World-ism, Socialism, and Muslim fundamentalism, and it called forth a “heroic

politics.” In the eyes of the West, the rhetoric masked a crazed cruelty, and even in Arab eyes it

seemed at best antiquated in the wake of the 1967 war.

Another new feature of Middle Eastern politics was the assertiveness of the Organization of

Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), composed of oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf

and Arabian Peninsula as well as Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela. The members of this producers’

cartel accounted for a large percentage of the world’s oil reserves and wielded tremendous

potential power over the Europeans and Japanese, who relied on imports for more than 80

percent of their energy needs. In the past, oil prices had been kept artificially low by the

Western oil companies through bilateral agreements with producer states. By 1970, however,

most host governments had taken over ownership of the production facilities, and they saw in a
drastic rise of oil prices a means of accumulating capital for development and purchases of

arms, as well as a way to pressure the Western states into respecting their grievances against

Israel.

The most populous frontline (i.e., bordering Israel) Arab state, but one without oil revenues,

was Egypt. Since 1955 Egypt had undergone a demographic explosion. Population was growing

at a rate of 1,000,000 per year, and 35,000,000 people were crowded into the Nile valley and

delta. The numbers and youth of the Egyptians (over half were under 25 in 1980) and the

country’s economic weakness meant that frustrated and unemployed youth posed the constant

threat of political instability. Certainly Egypt could no longer afford an endless crusade against

Israel. These considerations dominated the thinking of Nasser’s successor as president, Anwar

el-Sādāt. He could not, however, abandon Nasser’s legacy, especially with the Sinai under Israeli

occupation, without losing his legitimacy at home. Accordingly, Sādāt laid a risky and

courageous plan to extricate his country from its foreign and domestic stalemates. Husbanding

the arms provided by the U.S.S.R. after 1967, he abruptly expelled 20,000 Soviet advisers in July

1972 and opened a secret channel to Washington, hinting that Egypt and the United States

together could eliminate Soviet involvement in the Middle East. Only the Americans, he

reasoned, might influence the Israelis to return the occupied regions. Then, on October 6, 1973,

during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, he launched the fourth Arab–Israeli war.

The Egyptian army moved across the Suez Canal in force and engaged the Bar-Lev line. For the

first time it made substantial progress and inflicted a level of casualties especially damaging for
the outnumbered Israelis. Syrian forces also stormed the Golan Heights. The United States and

the Soviet Union reacted with subtle attempts to fine-tune the outcome by alternately

withholding or providing arms to the belligerents and by urging or discouraging a UN cease-

fire. Nixon denied Israel an airlift of arms until October 13, preventing Israel from launching a

prompt counterattack and thereby signaling Sādāt of American sympathy. Once assured of U.S.

aid, however, the Israelis struck on both fronts, regained the Golan Heights, and crossed the

Suez Canal. Kissinger, alarmed that the Israeli victory might be so complete as to hinder a

lasting settlement, quickly agreed to call, with the Soviet Union, for a UN cease-fire. The cease-

fire broke down at once, and Israeli forces encircled a 20,000-man Egyptian army corps.

Brezhnev curtly warned Nixon of possible Soviet military intervention, which the United States

moved to deter, perhaps recklessly, with a worldwide alert of its military forces. Finally,

Kissinger threatened a cutoff of arms deliveries unless Israel halted its offensive, and peace was

restored.

The 1973 war saved Egyptian honour and solidified Sādāt’s prestige to the point where he could

afford to be conciliatory. The United States emerged as the “honest broker” between Egypt and

Israel. As Kissinger put it, “The Arabs can get guns from the Russians, but they can get their

territory back only from us.” Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” between Tel Aviv and Cairo

secured an Israeli withdrawal beyond the Suez in January 1974, the reopening of the canal, the

insertion of a UN force between the antagonists, and, in September 1975, an Israeli retreat

from the crucial Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai. The United States flooded both countries
with economic and military aid, and Sādāt repudiated Nasser’s Socialism in favour of policies

stimulating domestic private enterprise.

The limited rapprochement that emerged from the 1973 war was purchased at great economic

cost, for the Arab OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, seized the opportunity to enact a five-

month embargo of oil exports to all nations aiding Israel. More telling still was the price

revolution that preceded and followed. OPEC had already engineered a doubling of the posted

price of oil to $3.07 per barrel by the eve of the war. In January 1974 it nearly quadrupled the

price again, to $11.56 per barrel. The importance of this sudden rise cannot be exaggerated.

The resulting shortages and exorbitant costs accelerated the growing inflation in the Western

world, exposed the energy-dependency of the industrial nations, created a vast balance-of-

payments deficit in many industrial states, wiped out the hard-won economic progress of many

developing nations, and placed massive sums of petrodollars in the hands of a few

underpopulated Middle Eastern states. The political upshot was that the United States and

Europe would have to pay close attention to the desires of those Arab states in foreign policy as

long as OPEC unity survived.

In November 1977, Sādāt shocked the Arab world by announcing his willingness to go to

Jerusalem personally to seek peace. When his talks with the new Israeli prime

minister, Menachem Begin, broke down, President Carter invited them both to Camp David in

September 1978. During 11 days of intensive discussion, Carter succeeded in bringing the rivals

together. The Camp David Accords provided for complete Israeli evacuation of the Sinai,
gradual progress toward self-rule for West Bank Palestinians over a five-year period, and a

peace treaty signed by Begin and Sādāt at the White House in March 1979. This historic

settlement dismayed other Arab states and split the PLO asunder, the so-called rejectionists

refusing to recognize the settlement. Qaddafi purchased huge amounts of Soviet arms and

expanded Libya’s training and supply of terrorists. In December 1979, 300 Muslim

fundamentalists seized the holiest of all Islāmic shrines in Mecca. Sādāt himself was

assassinated by Arab extremists in 1981.

THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

Carter’s success in Middle Eastern diplomacy was likewise undercut by the collapse of the

strongest and staunchest American ally in the Muslim world, the Shah of Iran. Since the

monarchy had been restored by a CIA-aided coup in 1953, Reza Shah Pahlavi had used Iran’s oil

revenues to finance rapid modernization of his country and the purchase of American arms.

Nixon had chosen Iran to be a U.S. surrogate in the vital Persian Gulf, and as late as 1977 Carter

praised the Shah for making Iran “an island of stability.” Clearly, American intelligence services

failed to detect the widespread Iranian resentment of modernization (meaning, in this context,

materialism, emancipation of women, and secularization), middle-class opposition to the

autocracy, and the rising tide of Shīʾite fundamentalism that were undermining the Shah’s

legitimacy. Fundamentalist movements and conflicts between Sunnite and Shīʾite Muslims have

arisen periodically in the course of Islāmic history, but the outbreaks of the late 20th century

were especially notable in light of the Western assumption that less developed countries would

naturally secularize their politics and culture as they modernized their society and economy.
Instead, rapidly developing Iran succumbed to a religious revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah

Khomeini. By November 1978 the beleaguered Shah saw his options reduced to

democratization, military repression, or abdication. Despite the importance of Iran for U.S.

interests, including the presence there of critical electronic listening posts used to monitor

missile tests inside the U.S.S.R., Carter was unable to choose between personal loyalty toward

an old ally and the moral argument on behalf of reform or abdication. In January 1979 the Shah

left Iran; the next month, when he requested asylum in the United States, Carter refused lest he

give offense to the new Iranian regime. The gesture did not help the United States, however.

An interim government in Tehrān quickly gave way to a theocracy under Khomeini, who

denounced the United States as a “great Satan” and approved the seizure in November 1979 of

the American embassy in Tehrān and the holding of 52 hostages there. The hostage drama

dragged on for nearly 15 months, and most Americans were infuriated by the unfathomable

Khomeini and frustrated by Carter’s apparent ineffectiveness.

Carter reacted to the crisis by adopting Brzezinski’s formula that the Middle East and South Asia

constituted an arc of crisis susceptible to Soviet adventurism. In his State of the Union address

of January 1980 he enunciated the Carter Doctrine, declaring that any attempt by an outside

force to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be viewed as an attack on the vital interests of

the United States, and he pledged to form a Rapid Deployment Force to defend the region.

Whether the U.S. military was truly capable of sustained combat in that remote region was

doubtful. When diplomacy failed to free the hostages in Tehrān, Carter resorted in April 1980 to

a military rescue mission, hoping to repeat the success of a brilliant Israeli commando raid that
had freed 103 airline passengers at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, but the operation was a

humiliating failure. Only in January 1981, after the overwhelming defeat of his reelection bid,

did Carter achieve the release of the hostages.

THE SOVIETS IN AFGHANISTAN

Brzezinski’s fears that the U.S.S.R. would take advantage of the arc of crisis seemed justified

when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in 1979. It is likely, however, that the Soviets were

responding to a crisis of their own rather than trying to exploit another’s. Remote and rugged

Afghanistan had been an object of imperialist intrigue throughout the 19th and 20th centuries

because of its vulnerable location between the Russian and British Indian empires. After 1955,

with India and Pakistan independent, the Afghan government of Mohammad Daud Khan forged

economic and military ties to the U.S.S.R. The monarchy was overthrown by Daud Khan in 1973

and was succeeded by a one-party state. The small Afghan Communist party, meanwhile, broke

into factions, while a fundamentalist Muslim group began an armed insurrection in 1975. Daud

Khan worked to lessen Afghanistan’s dependence on Soviet and U.S. aid, and he reportedly had

a heated disagreement with Brezhnev himself during a visit to Moscow in April 1977. Leftists in

the Afghan officer corps, perhaps fearing a blow against themselves, murdered Daud Khan in

April 1978 and pledged to pursue friendly relations with the U.S.S.R. Thus Afghanistan, under

the rule of Nur Mohammad Taraki, was virtually in the Soviet camp. When Taraki objected to a

purge of the Afghan Cabinet, however, the leader of a rival faction, Hafizullah Amin, had him

arrested and killed. These intramural Communist quarrels both embarrassed the Soviets and

threatened to destabilize the Afghan regime in the face of growing Muslim resistance. In the fall
of 1979 the Soviets built up their military strength across the border and hinted to American

diplomats that they might feel obliged to intervene. On December 25, 1979, the Soviet army

began its occupation, and two days later a coup d’état led to the murder of Amin and the

installation of Babrak Karmal, a creature of the KGB who had been brought into the country by

Soviet paratroops.

The Soviets would probably have preferred to work through a pliant native regime rather than

invade Afghanistan, but Amin’s behaviour and Moscow’s unwillingness to risk a domestic

overthrow of a Communist regime forced their hand. The invasion, therefore, appeared to be

an application of the Brezhnev Doctrine and was all the more pressing given that the Central

Asian provinces of the Soviet Union were also vulnerable to the rise of Islāmic fundamentalism.

The United States was tardy in responding to the 1978 coup despite Carter’s concern over the

arc of crisis and the murder of the U.S. ambassador in Kabul in February 1979. At the same

time, the Soviet invasion aroused American suspicions of a grand strategy aimed at seizing a

warm-water port on the Indian Ocean and the oil of the Persian Gulf. Over the course of the

next decade, however, the puppet Afghan regime lost all authority with the people, Afghan

soldiers defected in large numbers, and the Muslim and largely tribal resistance, armed with

U.S. and Chinese weapons, held out in the mountains against more than 100,000 Soviet troops

and terror bombing of their villages. More than 2,000,000 Afghans became refugees in Pakistan

and Iran. Western observers soon began to speak of Afghanistan as the Soviets’ Vietnam.
The Shīʿite revolution in Iran, meanwhile, provoked and tempted neighbouring Iraq into starting

yet another war in the arc of crisis. The secular Iraqi regime was nervous about the impact

Iranian events might have on its own large Shīʿite population. The Kurdish minority, which had

resorted to terrorism in pursuit of its goal of a Kurdish state to be carved out of Turkey, Iraq,

and Iran, also presented an intractable problem. Finally, the Iraqi government of Saddam

Hussein hoped to use the opportunity of Iran’s apparent near-anarchy to seize the long-

disputed Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab waterway at the mouth of the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Bolstered

by arms purchased with oil revenues, Hussein unilaterally abrogated a 1975 accord on the

waterway and launched a full-scale invasion of Iran in September 1980. After initial victories the

Iraqis were surprisingly thrown back and a war of attrition commenced. The Iraqis employed

poison gas and were building a nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium

until the Israeli air force destroyed the facility in a surprise raid in June 1981. The Iranians relied

on human-wave assaults by revolutionary youths assured of a place in paradise for dying in

battle.

Both sides employed imported planes and missiles to attack each other’s oil facilities, tanker

ships, and, occasionally, cities. Attacks then spread to neutral shipping as well, and oil

production in the entire gulf region was placed in jeopardy. Neither superpower had direct

interest in the war, except for a common opposition to any overthrow of the local balance of

power, but the Soviets tended to benefit from a prolongation of the conflict. In 1987 the United

States sharply increased its presence in the gulf by permitting Kuwaiti oil tankers to fly the U.S.

flag and by deploying a naval task force to protect them in passage through the gulf. Compared
to the situation of the 1950s, when John Foster Dulles’ CENTO arrangement seemed to ensure a

ring of stable, pro-Western governments in the South Asian region, that of the 1980s was

almost totally unpredictable.

RHETORICAL COLD WAR REVIVED

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

As the 1980s opened, few predicted that it would be a decade of unprecedented progress in

superpower relations. All pretense of détente had disappeared in 1979, and the election of

1980 brought to the White House a conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan, who was more

determined to compete vigorously with the U.S.S.R. than any president had been since the

1960s. He bemoaned an “arms control process” that, he said, always favoured the Soviets and

sapped the will of the Western allies and a détente that duped gullible Americans into

acquiescing in unilateral Soviet gains. Reagan sounded like Dulles when he denounced the

Soviet Union as “an evil empire,” and he echoed John F. Kennedy in calling for America to

“stand tall” in the world again. Like Kennedy, he cut taxes in hopes of stimulating the stagnant

U.S. economy, expanded the military budget (a process begun in Carter’s last year), and

stressed the development of sophisticated military technology beyond the means of the

U.S.S.R. Reagan insisted that history was on the side of freedom, not Communism, and together

with his close friend British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher he sought to dispel the “malaise”

that had afflicted the United States during the late 1970s. To be sure, Reagan had to work

within the constraints caused by growing federal deficits, Soviet parity in nuclear arms, and
congressional limits on executive action. Hence his actual policies resembled more the cautious

containment of the Eisenhower era than the aggressive interventionism of the Kennedy–

Johnson years. The one novel means adopted by the administration for combatting Soviet

power and influence was to extend aid to irregular forces engaged in resisting pro-Soviet

governments in the Third World. Such “freedom fighters,” as Reagan termed them, in

Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua seemed to offer hope that the United States could contain

or even overthrow totalitarian regimes without getting itself involved in new Vietnams.

This Reagan Doctrine was thus a natural corollary of the Nixon Doctrine.

As American diplomacy recovered its self-confidence and initiative, Soviet foreign policy drifted,

if only because of the advanced age of Brezhnev and the frequent changes in leadership after

his death in November 1982. Early in the decade a recurrence of serious unrest in eastern

Europe, this time in Poland, also kept the attention of the Kremlin close to home. During the

period of détente the Polish government had expanded an ambitious development plan

financed largely by western European credits. Economic performance foundered, however,

foreign debt mounted to $28,000,000,000, and the state imposed successive price hikes on

staples. By 1979–80 a popular protest movement had grown up around the officially

unsanctioned Solidarity trade union and its charismatic leader, Lech Wałęsa. The strong Roman

Catholic roots of Polish popular nationalism were evident in the movement, especially in light of

the accession in 1978 of Karol Cardinal Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in

456 years, who in 1981 survived an assassination plot probably hatched in Bulgaria, a Soviet

satellite. As unrest mounted in Poland, NATO countries warned against a Soviet military
intervention, holding in reserve the threat of declaring Warsaw in default on its debts. In

December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law, sparing Poland a Soviet

invasion at the price of military rule and the suppression of Solidarity. The United States

responded by suspending Poland’s most-favoured-nation trade status and blocking further

loans from the International Monetary Fund. Reagan held the Soviet Union responsible for

martial law; his attempts to extend the sanctions to an embargo on high-technology exports to

the U.S.S.R., however, angered western Europeans, who feared losing access to eastern

European markets and who were in the process of completing a huge pipeline from Siberia that

would make western Europe dependent on the U.S.S.R. for 25 percent of its natural gas. In both

the debt and pipeline issues, it seemed that the web of interdependence woven during détente

served to constrain Western countries more than it did the U.S.S.R.

Brezhnev’s successor as general secretary of the Communist Party, the former KGB chief Yury

Andropov, declared that there was no alternative to détente as the Soviets understood it. He

denounced Reagan’s “militaristic course” as a new bid for U.S. hegemony. It was Reagan’s

image of the U.S.S.R., however, that seemed confirmed when a Soviet jet fighter plane shot

down a civilian South Korean airliner in Soviet air space in September 1983, killing 269 people.

Some in the West supported the Soviet claim that the plane was on a spy mission, but they

produced no persuasive evidence to that effect. Andropov’s demise after a year and a half

elevated Konstantin Chernenko, another member of the older generation of the Politburo who

would himself survive only until March 1985. Given these frequent changes in leadership and
the drain on Soviet resources caused by the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the Kremlin was even

less able than the White House to mount new initiatives in foreign policy until late in the 1980s.

RENEWAL OF ARMS CONTROL

The most serious consequence of the collapse of détente and the failure of the SALT II Treaty

(judged by Reagan as “seriously flawed”) appeared to be an acceleration of the arms race

between the superpowers. Liberal critics feared that Reagan would unleash a new arms race;

his supporters asserted that the Soviets had never stopped racing even during the era of SALT.

Reagan waffled on arms policy, however, because of stiff domestic and European opposition to

the abandonment of arms control. Programs to upgrade the three elements of strategic

deterrence were approved only after being cut back, yet they drew complaints from the Soviet

Union that the highly accurate MX missile, the new Poseidon nuclear submarines, and air-

launched cruise missiles for the B-52 force were first-strike weapons. A serious NATO worry

stemmed from Soviet deployment of the new SS-20 theatre ballistic missile in Europe. In 1979

the Carter administration had acceded to the request by NATO governments that the United

States introduce 572 Pershing II and cruise missiles into Europe to balance the 900 SS-20s. The

European antinuclear movement, however, now officially patronized by the British Labour

Party, the Greens in West Germany, and Dutch and Belgian social democrats, forced Reagan to

link Pershing deployment with intermediate nuclear forces (INF) talks with the U.S.S.R. Reagan

tried to seize the moral high ground with his “zero-option” proposal for complete elimination of

all such missiles from Europe and a call for new Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) to
negotiate real reductions in the superpower arsenals. The Soviets, however, refused to scrap

any of their long-range missiles or to trade existing SS-20s for Pershings yet to be deployed.

In March 1983, Reagan announced a major new research program to develop antiballistic

missile defenses based in outer space. This Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, dubbed “Star Wars”

by opponents) was inspired by the emergence of new laser and particle-beam technology that

seemed to have the potential to devise an accurate, instantaneous, and nonnuclear means of

shooting down long-range missiles in their boost phase, before their multiple reentry vehicles

had a chance to separate. The President thus challenged his country to exploit its technological

edge to counter the threat of Soviet offensive missiles and perhaps liberate the world from fear

of a nuclear holocaust. Scientific and political critics ridiculed SDI as naive (because it would not

work or could be easily countered), expensive beyond reckoning, counterproductive (because it

implied repudiation of the 1972 ABM Treaty), and dangerous (because the Soviets might stage

a preemptive attack to prevent its deployment). The alarmed Soviets, however, weakened the

case of American critics by launching their own propaganda campaign against SDI, implying that

they took seriously its prospects for success. Evidence also mounted that the U.S.S.R. had been

engaged in similar research since the mid-1970s. A $26,000,000,000, five-year American

program was approved, although Congress limited future funding and arms-control advocates

pressured the President to use SDI as a bargaining chip in the START talks. The Soviets broke off

the INF and START talks at the end of 1983 but resumed talks two years later, apparently with

hopes of stalling SDI research.

REGIONAL CRISES

U.S.–Soviet competition in the Third World also continued through the 1980s as the Soviets

sought to benefit from indigenous sources of unrest. The campaign of the Communist-led

African National Congress (ANC) against apartheid in South Africa, for instance, might serve

Soviet strategic aims, but the black rebellion against white rule was surely indigenous. White-

supremacist governments in southern Africa might argue, correctly, that the standard of living

and everyday security of blacks were better in their countries than in most black-ruled African

states, but the fact remained that African blacks, like all human beings, preferred to be ruled by

their own tyrant rather than one of some other nationality or race. What was more, the respect

shown by African governments for international boundaries began to break down after 1970.

Spain’s departure from the Spanish (Western) Sahara was the signal for a guerrilla struggle

among Moroccan and Mauritanian claimants and the Polisario movement backed by Algeria.

The Somali invasion of the Ogaden, Libyan intrusions into Chad and Sudan, and Uganda’s 1978

invasion of Tanzania exemplified a new volatility. Uganda had fallen under a brutal regime

headed by Idi Amin, whom most African leaders tolerated (even electing him president of the

Organization of African Unity) until Julius Nyerere spoke out, following Uganda’s invasion of his

country, about the African tendency to reserve condemnation for white regimes only.

The black revolt against white rule in southern Africa was a timely consequence of the

decolonization of Angola and Mozambique and of the Lancaster House accord under which

white Southern Rhodesians accepted majority rule, resulting in 1980 in the full independence

of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, who in 1984 declared his intention to create a one-party
Marxist state. South Africa tried to deflect global disgust with its apartheid system by setting up

autonomous tribal “homelands” for blacks, but no other government recognized them. United

States diplomacy sought quietly to promote a comprehensive settlement of South Africa’s

problems by pressuring Pretoria to release South West Africa (Namibia) and gradually dismantle

apartheid in return for a Cuban evacuation of Angola and Mozambique. This policy of

“constructive engagement,” by which the U.S. State Department hoped to retain leverage over

Pretoria, came under criticism every time a new black riot or act of white repression occurred.

Critics demanded economic divestment from, and stringent sanctions against, South Africa, but

supporters of the policy argued that sanctions would inflict disproportionate economic harm on

South African blacks, drive the whites to desperation, and encourage violence that would

strengthen the hand of Communist factions. Congressional pressure finally forced the

administration to compromise on a package of sanctions in 1986, and U.S. firms began to pull

out of South Africa.

The Middle East remained crisis-prone despite the Egyptian–Israeli peace. In 1978 an Arab

summit in Baghdad pledged $400,000,000 to the PLO over the next 10 years. A comprehensive

Middle East peace was stymied by the unwillingness of rejectionist Arab states to negotiate

without the PLO and by the U.S.-Israeli refusal to negotiate with the PLO. In June 1982 the

Begin government determined to put an end to terrorist raids by forcibly clearing out PLO

strongholds inside Lebanon. In fact the Israeli army advanced all the way to Beirut in a bitter

campaign that entrenched Syrian occupation of the strategic al-Biqāʿ valley and intensified what

already amounted to a Lebanese civil war among Palestinians, Muslims of various sects and
allegiances, and Christian militiamen. The United States sent Marines to Beirut to facilitate the

evacuation of the PLO, while it tried without success to piece together a coalition Lebanese

government and induce the Israelis and Syrians to withdraw. In October 1983 terrorists blew up

the U.S. Marine barracks, killing more than 200 Americans. The Middle East peace process

begun by Kissinger and continued by Carter seemed to have unraveled by the late 1980s.

Western governments tried to coordinate policies on terrorism, including a firm refusal to

bargain with kidnappers, but concern for the lives of hostages and fear of future retaliation

insidiously weakened their resolve. In October 1985, however, the Israeli air force dispatched

planes to bomb the PLO headquarters in Tunis. When Libyan-supported terrorists planted

bombs in airports in Rome and Vienna in December 1985 and in a discotheque in Berlin in April

1986, Reagan ordered U.S. jets to attack terrorist training camps and air-defense sites in Libya.

The raid was applauded by the American public, and terrorist incidents did seem to decline in

number over the following year. Qaddafi suffered another reverse in the spring of 1987 when

French-supported Chadian troops drove the Libyan invaders from their country.

In the Persian Gulf the Reagan administration held publicly aloof from the war between Iraq

and Iran. Intelligence that Shīʿite terrorists were behind the kidnapping of Americans in Beirut,

however, prompted the administration secretly to supply arms to Iran in return for help, never

forthcoming, in securing the release of hostages. There was also a notion that such a deal might

forge links to moderate Iranians in hopes of better relations in the event of the aged Khomeini’s

death. While the motives were humanitarian and strategic, this action directly contradicted the

policy of shunning negotiations with terrorists that the United States had been urging on its
allies. When the operation was exposed, the Reagan administration lost credibility with

Congress and foreign governments alike.

LATIN-AMERICAN UPHEAVALS

MARXISM AND THE CUBAN ROLE

After a tour of Latin America in 1950, the American diplomat George Kennan wrote a memo

despairing that the region would ever achieve a modest degree of economic dynamism, social

mobility, or liberal politics. The culture itself was, in his view, inhospitable to middle-class

values. As late as 1945 almost all the Latin-American republics were governed by landowning

oligarchies allied with the church and army, while illiterate, apolitical masses produced the

mineral and agricultural goods to be exported in exchange for manufactures from Europe and

North America. To Castro and other radical intellectuals, a stagnant Latin America without

strong middle classes was precisely suited for a Marxist, not a democratic, revolution. Before

1958 the United States—the “colossus to the north”—had used its influence to quell

revolutionary disturbances, whether out of fear of Communism, to preserve economic

interests, or to shelter strategic assets such as the Panama Canal. After Castro’s triumph of

1959, however, the United States undertook to improve its own image through the Alliance for

Progress and to distance itself from especially obnoxious authoritarian regimes. Nonetheless,

Latin-American development programs largely failed to keep pace with population growth and

inflation, and frequently they were brought to naught by overly ambitious schemes or official

corruption. By the 1980s the wealthiest and largest states like Brazil and Mexico faced a
crushing burden of foreign debt. Neo-Marxist economists of the 1960s and ’70s argued that

even the more enlightened policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations kept Latin

America in a condition of stifling dependence on American capital and markets and on world

commodity prices. Some endorsed the demands of the Third World bloc in the UN for a “new

world economic order,” involving a massive shift of resources from the rich countries to the

poor or the “empowerment” of the developing countries to control the terms of trade along

the lines of OPEC. Others advocated social revolution to transform Latin states from within. At

the same time the example of Cuba’s slide into the status of a Communist satellite fully

dependent on the U.S.S.R. revived the fear and suspicion with which Americans habitually

regarded Third World revolutions.

Even after the Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 missile crisis, Cuba retained a certain

autonomy in foreign policy, while the Soviets exhibited caution about employing their Cuban

clients. Castro preferred to place himself among the ranks of Third World revolutionaries like

Nasser, Nyerere, or Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah rather than follow slavishly the Moscow party

line. He also elevated himself to leadership of the nonaligned nations. When relations between

Havana and Moscow cooled temporarily in 1967–68, Brezhnev applied pressure, holding back

on oil shipments and delaying a new trade agreement. Castro tried to resist the pressure by

exhorting and mobilizing his countrymen to produce a record 10,000,000-ton sugar harvest in

1970. When the effort failed, Castro moved Cuba fully into the Soviet camp. The U.S.S.R. agreed

to purchase 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 tons of sugar per year at four times the world price, provide

cheap oil, and otherwise subsidize the island’s economy at a rate of some $3,000,000,000 per
year; thenceforward, 60 percent of Cuba’s trade was with countries in the Soviet bloc. Brezhnev

himself visited Cuba in 1974 and declared the country “a strong constituent part of the world

system of Socialism.” Castro, in turn, voiced the Soviet line on world issues, played host to

Latin-American Communist party conventions, used the forum of the nonaligned nations

movement to promote his distinctly aligned program, and made tens of thousands of Cuban

troops available to support pro-Soviet regimes in Africa.

Soviet domination of Cuba, however, may have harmed their chances elsewhere in Latin

America, since it alerted other leftists to the dangers of seeking Soviet support. Moreover, the

Soviets simply could not afford such massive aid to other clients. This limitation appeared to be

crucial even when Communists had a chance of prevailing in one of the largest, most developed

South American states, Chile. The Communist party there was a charter member of the 1921

Comintern and had strong ties to the Chilean labour movement. The party was outlawed until

1956, whereupon it formed an electoral popular front with the Socialists, and it narrowly

missed electing Socialist Salvador Allende Gossens to the presidency in 1964. The Christian

Democratic opponent, Eduardo Frei Montalva, had warned that an Allende victory would make

Chile “another Cuba.” From 1964 to 1970, when Cuba was plying an autonomous course, the

Chilean Castroites staged violent strikes, bombings, and bank robberies in defiance of the

regular Communist party directed from Moscow. The latter’s strategy was subtler. Hinting that

it might support the Christian Democratic candidate rather than rival leftists, the Communist

party provoked the extreme right to run its own candidate in protest, thus splitting the

conservative vote. The Nixon administration tried clumsily to influence the nominating process
or foment a military coup, but Allende won an electoral victory in 1970. Once in office, he

seized U.S. property and forged close ties to Cuba at the very time Castro was being reined in

by Brezhnev. The U.S.S.R., however, held back from extending large-scale aid, even after a fall

in copper prices, radical union activity, and Allende’s policies had plunged Chile into economic

chaos. In September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and the army overthrew Allende

and established an authoritarian state. The Soviets and Allende sympathizers in North and

South America depicted the denouement in Chile as the work of Fascists in league with U.S.

imperialists.

The poor image of the United States in Latin America was of special concern to Jimmy Carter

because of his dedication to the promotion of human rights. During his first year in office Carter

sought to counter the traditional notion of “Yankee imperialism” by meeting the demands of

the Panamanian leader, General Omar Torrijos Herrera, for a transfer of sovereignty over

the Panama Canal. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty (which called for a staged transfer, to be

completed in 1999) by a bare majority, but most Americans opposed transfer of the canal.

Conservatives also held Carter’s human rights concerns to be naive, because the linking of U.S.

government loans, for instance, to a regime’s performance on human rights damaged American

relations with otherwise friendly states while exercising no influence on human rights practices

in Communist states. Supporters of Carter retorted that the pattern of U.S. support for cruel

oligarchies on the excuse of anti-Communism was what drove oppressed Latins toward

Communism in the first place.

The first hemispheric explosion in the 1980s, however, occurred in the southern cone of South

America when the Argentine military ruler, Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri—apparently

to distract attention from the abuses of his dictatorship and an ailing economy at home—broke

off talks concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and invaded the

remote archipelago in April 1982. The British government of Margaret Thatcher was taken by

surprise but began at once to mobilize supplies, ships, and men to reconquer the islands some

8,000 miles from home. The United States was torn between loyalty to its NATO ally (and

political friend of President Reagan) and the fear of antagonizing South Americans by siding

with the “imperialists.” When U.S. diplomacy failed to resolve the dispute, however, the United

States supplied Britain with intelligence data from American reconnaissance satellites. The

Royal Navy and ground forces began operations in May, and the last Argentine defenders

surrendered on June 14. In the wake of the defeat, the military junta in Buenos Aires gave way

to democratization.

NICARAGUA AND EL SALVADOR

Problems in Central America, however, commanded the attention of the United States

throughout the 1980s. In Nicaragua the broadly based Sandinista revolutionary movement

challenged the oppressive regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, whose family had ruled the

country since the 1930s. In accordance with its human rights policies, the Carter administration

cut off aid to Somoza, permitting the Sandinistas to take power in 1979. They appeared to

Americans as democratic patriots and received large sums of U.S. aid. A radical faction soon

took control of the revolution, however, and moderates either departed or were forced out of
the government in Managua. The Sandinistas then socialized the economy, suppressed

freedom of the press and religion, and established close ties to Cuba and other Soviet-bloc

countries. By the time Reagan took office, neighbouring El Salvador had also succumbed to

violence among leftist insurgents, authoritarian landowners supporting right-wing death

squads, and a struggling reformist government. Reagan vigorously affirmed a last-minute

decision by Carter to grant military aid to the Salvadoran government. Although Nicaragua and

Cuba were identified as the sources of the insurgency, Americans became increasingly confused

by evidence of atrocities on all sides and were again torn between their desire to promote

human rights and their determination to halt the spread of Communism. Opponents of U.S.

involvement warned of another Vietnam in Central America, while supporters warned of

another Cuba.

Nicaragua, meanwhile, built up one of the largest armies in the world in proportion to

population, expanded its port facilities, and received heavy shipments of arms from the U.S.S.R.

The CIA used this military buildup to justify the secret mining of Nicaraguan harbours in

February 1984, which was, when revealed, universally condemned. The CIA also secretly

organized and supplied a force of up to 15,000 anti-Sandinista “freedom fighters,” known

as Contras, across the border in Honduras and Costa Rica, while U.S. armed forces conducted

joint maneuvers with those states along the Nicaraguan border. The ostensible purpose of such

exercises was to interdict the suspected flow of arms from Nicaragua to the Salvadoran rebels.

In fact, American policy aimed at provoking a popular revolt in hopes of overthrowing the

Sandinistas altogether.
Cuban and Soviet influence with leftist governments on the Caribbean islands of Jamaica,

Trinidad, and Grenada also appeared to be on the increase, a trend that the Reagan

administration tried to counter with its 1982 Caribbean Basin Initiative, an Alliance for Progress

confined to the islands. Grenada, a tiny island that had won independence from Britain in 1974,

initially came under the control of Sir Eric Gairy, whose policies and conduct verged on the

bizarre. In March 1979, Gairy was overthrown by the leftist New Jewel Movement led by the

charismatic Maurice Bishop. Over the next several years the Bishop regime socialized the

country, signed mutual-assistance agreements with Soviet-bloc states, and hastened

construction of a large airstrip that the United States feared would ultimately be used by Soviet

aircraft. The evident incompetence of the New Jewel leadership, however, prompted a split in

1982 between Bishop’s supporters and hard-line Leninists. In October 1983 the revolution

came apart when Bishop was arrested and, when protest demonstrations broke out, shot. The

Organization of East Caribbean States thereupon invited American intervention, and U.S. forces,

together with small contingents from neighbouring islands, landed on Grenada to restore order

and protect a group of American medical students. Free elections returned a moderate

government to Grenada in 1984, but the self-destruction and overthrow of the New Jewel

Movement, while a setback for Castroism in the region, also lent credence to Nicaragua’s often

and loudly voiced fear of an American invasion.

The U.S. public emphatically supported the Grenadan intervention but was split almost evenly

on the question of support for the Nicaraguan Contras. While the Reagan Doctrine of

supporting indigenous rebels, such as Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola or the mujahideen in

Afghanistan, appeared to be a low-risk means of countering Soviet influence, Americans

remained nervous about the possibility of deeper U.S. involvement. Congress reflected this

public ambivalence by first approving funds for the Contras, then restricting the ability of

federal agencies to raise or spend funds for the Contras, then reversing itself again. In 1986

investigations of the secret U.S. arms sales to Iran revealed that National Security Council

officials had kept supplies flowing to the Contras while the congressional restrictions were in

effect by soliciting funds from private contributors and friendly Arab states and by diverting the

profits from the Iranian arms sales.

In 1987 Congress launched lengthy investigations into the Iran-Contra Affair that virtually

paralyzed U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Central America for more than a

year. Reagan himself denied any knowledge of the secret arms sales and diversions of funds,

although he granted that “mistakes had been made.” Evidence emerged that William Casey, the

director of the CIA, had known of the plan, but he died in May 1987. National Security

Adviser John Poindexter and his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, were eventually indicted

for obstructing justice, although North’s eloquent appeal to patriotism and anti-Communism in

the televised hearings garnered much public support for the administration’s ends, if not

means.

In retrospect, the Iran-Contra Affair was another skirmish in the struggle between the executive

and legislative branches over the conduct of foreign policy. Reagan and his advisers evidently

believed, in light of the changed mood of the country after 1980 and his own electoral
landslides, that they could revive the sort of vigorous intelligence and covert activities that the

executive branch had engaged in before Vietnam and Watergate. The Democrats, who

controlled both houses of Congress again after 1986, argued that covert operations subverted

the separation of powers and the Constitution. The Iran-Contra Affair was especially obnoxious,

in their view, because it contradicted the express policy not to deal with terrorists or

governments that harboured them. The administration’s defenders retorted that the United

States would be impotent to combat terrorism and espionage without strong and secret

counterintelligence capabilities and that, since the Congress had effectively hamstrung the CIA

and too often leaked news of its activities, personnel of the National Security Council had taken

matters into their own hands. The proper roles of the branches of the U.S. government in the

formulation and execution of foreign policy thus remained a major source of bitterness and

confusion after almost half a century of American leadership in global politics.

THE WORLD POLITICAL ECONOMY

In 1980 the Soviet Union appeared to be stealing a march on a demoralized Western alliance

through its arms buildup, occupation of Afghanistan, and influence with African and Central

American revolutionaries, while the United States had been expelled from Iran and was

suffering from inflation and recession at home. Eight years later the Reagan administration had

rebuilt American defenses, presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in 60

years, and regained the initiative in superpower relations. Because the “Reagan Revolution” in

foreign and domestic policy was purchased through limits on new taxes even as military and

domestic spending increased, the result was annual federal deficits measured in the hundreds
of billions of dollars and financed only by the influx of foreign capital. Once the world’s creditor,

the United States became the world’s biggest debtor. Moreover, American economic

competitiveness declined to the point that U.S. trade deficits surpassed $100,000,000,000 per

year, owing mostly to American imports of oil and of Japanese and German manufactured

goods.

The sudden collapse of prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1987 compelled the

White House and Congress alike to address the issue of American “decline.” In 1988 Paul

Kennedy, a Yale professor of British origin, published the best-seller The Rise and Fall of the

Great Powers. He developed the thesis that a great state tends to overextend itself in foreign

and defense policy during its heyday and thereby acquires vital interests abroad that soon

become a drain on its domestic economy. Over time, new economic competitors unburdened

by imperial responsibilities rise to challenge and eventually replace the old hegemonic power. It

certainly seemed that the United States was such a power in decline: Its share of gross world

production had fallen from almost 50 percent in the late 1940s to less than 25 percent, while

Japan and West Germany had completed their postwar economic miracles and were still

growing at a faster rate than the United States, even during the Reagan prosperity. New light

industries, such as microelectronics, and even old heavy industries like steel and automobiles

had spread to countries with skilled but relatively low-paid labour, such as South Korea, Taiwan,

Hong Kong, and Singapore. Financial power had fled to new global banking centres in Europe

and East Asia. In the 1960s, 9 of the 10 biggest banks in the world were American; by 1987

none were American, and most were Japanese. These trends were in part natural, as other
industrial regions recovered from their devastation in World War II and new ones arose.

Whether natural or not, however, they seemed to indicate that the United States could no

longer afford to uphold either the liberal trade environment it had founded after World War II

or the worldwide responsibilities that devolved upon the “leader of the free world.”

European growth, led as always by the dynamic West German economy, also signalled a change

in the global distribution of power. Yet, even as the European Community expanded in terms of

both production and size (Greece became its 10th member in 1981), it failed to demonstrate

unity and political leverage commensurate with its economic might. For years EC officials, the

so-called Eurocrats, had quarreled with member governments and among themselves over

whether and how Europe should seek deeper as well as broader integration. Finally, in

1985, Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, steered through the European

Parliament in Strasbourg the Single European Act, which set 1992 as the target date for a

complete economic merger of the EC countries, for a single European currency, and for

common EC foreign and domestic policies: in short, a United States of Europe.

The immediate result was a seemingly endless round of haggling among European cabinets

about this or that point of the 1992 plan. Was the abolition of the venerable pound sterling, the

French franc, and the deutsche mark in favour of the ecu (European currency unit) really

necessary? Could all member states coordinate their labour and welfare policies, or be willing

to countenance the free movement of peoples across national borders? Would national

governments in fact prove willing to relinquish part of their sovereignty in matters of justice,
defense, and foreign policy? The moderate governments of the Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl

in West Germany and Socialist President François Mitterrand in France, as well as those of Italy

and the smaller countries, remained committed to “1992.” Only Thatcher of the United

Kingdom voiced doubts about merging Britain into a continental superstate. The alternative,

however, would seem to leave Britain out in the cold, and so, despite Thatcher’s opposition,

plans for European unity went ahead. (In 1990, members of Thatcher’s own party forced her

resignation over the issue.)

Why did Europe resume the long-stalled drive for a more perfect union only in the mid-1980s?

Some of the reasons are surely internal, having to do with the activities of the Eurocrats and the

proclivities of the member governments. External factors also must have been important,

including the debate over whether to base American missiles in Europe; the whole question of

arms control, which affected Europe most directly but over which it had limited influence;

widespread disaffection in Europe with Carter and (for different reasons) Reagan and hence a

desire for a stronger European voice in world politics; and, last but not least, the Europeans’

concern over the influx of Japanese manufactures. The world appeared by the late 1980s to be

moving away from the ideals of national sovereignty and universal free trade and toward a

contradictory reality in which international dependence increased at the same time that

regional and increasingly competitive economic blocs coalesced.

To many analysts it seemed that the Cold War was simply becoming obsolete, that military

power was giving way to economic power in world politics, and that the bipolar system was fast
becoming a multipolar one including Japan, a united Europe, and China. Indeed, China, though

starting from a low base, demonstrated the most rapid economic growth of all in the 1980s

under the market-oriented reforms of the chairman Deng Xiaoping and Premier Li Peng. Paul

Kennedy and many other analysts concluded that the United States could simply no longer

afford the Cold War and would have to end it just to maintain itself against the commercial and

technological competition of its own allies. For the U.S.S.R., the Cold War had to end if it was to

maintain itself as a Great Power at all.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR

In retrospect, the course of the Cold War appears to have been cyclical, with both the United

States and the U.S.S.R. alternating between periods of assertion and relaxation. In the first

years after 1945 the United States hastily demobilized its wartime military forces while

pursuing universal, liberal internationalist solutions to problems of security and recovery. Stalin,

however, rejected American blueprints for peace, exploited the temporarily favourable

correlation of forces to impose Communist regimes on east-central Europe, and maintained the

military-industrial emphasis in Soviet central planning despite the ruination done his own

country by the German invasion. Soviet policy prompted the first American outpouring of

energy, between 1947 and 1953, when the strategy of containment and policies to implement

it emerged: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Korean War, and the buildup in

conventional and nuclear arms. Then the Americans tired; Eisenhower accepted a stalemate in

Korea, cut defense spending, and opened a dialogue with Moscow in hopes of putting a lid on

the arms race. Khrushchev then launched a new Soviet offensive in 1957, hoping to transform
Soviet triumphs in space and missile technology into gains in Berlin and the Third World. The

United States again responded, from 1961 to 1968 under Kennedy and Johnson, with another

energetic campaign that ranged from the Apollo Moon program and nuclear buildup to the

Peace Corps and counterinsurgency operations culminating in the Vietnam War. The war

bogged down, however, and brought on economic distress and social disorder at home. After

1969 Presidents Nixon and Ford scaled back American commitments, withdrew from Vietnam,

pursued arms control treaties, and fostered détente with the U.S.S.R., while President Carter, in

the wake of Watergate, went even further in renouncing Cold War attitudes and expenditures.

It was thus that the correlation of forces again shifted in favour of the Soviet bloc,

tempting Brezhnev in the 1970s to extend Soviet influence and power to its greatest extent and

allowing the U.S.S.R. to equal or surpass the preoccupied United States in nuclear weapons.

After 1980, under Reagan, the United States completed the cycle with a final, self-confident

assertion of will—and this time, the Soviets appeared to break. In May 1981, at Notre Dame

University, the recently inaugurated Reagan predicted that the years ahead would be great

ones for the cause of freedom and that Communism was “a sad, bizarre chapter in human

history whose last pages are even now being written.” At the time few took his words for more

than a morale-boosting exhortation, but in fact the Soviet economy and polity were under

terrific stress in the last Brezhnev years, though the Soviets did their best to hide the fact. They

were running hidden budget deficits of 7 or 8 percent of GNP, suffering from extreme inflation

that took the form (because of price controls) of chronic shortages of consumer goods, and

falling farther behind the West in computers and other technologies vital to civilian and military

performance. The Reagan administration recognized and sought to exploit this Soviet economic
vulnerability. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his aide Richard Perle tightened

controls on the export of strategic technologies to the Soviet bloc. CIA Director William Casey

persuaded Saudi Arabia to drive down the price of oil, thereby denying the U.S.S.R. billions of

dollars it expected to glean from its own petroleum exports. The United States also pressured

its European allies to cancel or delay the massive pipeline project for the importation of natural

gas from Siberia, thereby denying the Soviets another large source of hard currency.

Such economic warfare, waged at a time when the Soviet budget was already strained by the

Afghan war and a renewed strategic arms race, pushed the Soviet economy to the brink of

collapse. Demoralization took the form of a growing black market, widespread alcoholism, the

highest abortion rate in the world, and a declining life span. In an open society such symptoms

might have provoked protests and reforms, leadership changes, possibly even revolution. The

totalitarian state, however, thoroughly suppressed civil society, while even the Communist

party, stifled by its jealous and fearful nomenklatura (official hierarchy), was incapable of

adjusting. In sum, the Stalinist methods of terror, propaganda, and mass exploitation of labour

and resources had served well enough to force an industrial revolution in Russia, but they were

inadequate to the needs of the postindustrial world.

GORBACHEV AND THE SOVIET “NEW THINKING”

 Mikhail

Gorbachev, 1991.Boris Yurchenko/AP ImagesYoung, educated, and urban members of the

Communist elite came gradually to recognize the need for radical change if the Soviet Union

was to survive, much less hold its own with the capitalist world. They waited in frustration as

Brezhnev was followed by Andropov, then by Chernenko. The reformers finally rose to the

pinnacle of party leadership, however, when Mikhail Gorbachev was named general secretary

in 1985. A lawyer by training and a loyal Communist, Gorbachev did not begin his tenure by

urging a relaxation of the Cold War. He stressed economics instead: a crackdown on vodka

consumption, laziness, and “hooliganism” said to be responsible for “stagnation”; and, when

that failed, a far-reaching perestroika, or restructuring, of the economy. It was in connection

with this economic campaign that surprising developments in foreign policy began to occur. Not

only were the costs of empire—the military, KGB and other security agencies, subsidies to
foreign client states—out of all proportion to the Soviet GNP, but the U.S.S.R., no less than in

earlier times, desperately needed Western technology and credits in order to make up for its

own backwardness. Both to trim the costs of empire and to gain Western help, Gorbachev had

to resolve outstanding disputes abroad and tolerate more human rights at home.

As early as 1985 the “new thinking” of the younger Communist apparatchiks began to surface.

Gorbachev declared that no nation’s security could be achieved at the expense of another’s—

an apparent repudiation of the goal of nuclear and conventional superiority for which the

Soviets had worked for so long. Soviet historians began to criticize Brezhnev’s policies toward

Afghanistan, China, and the West and to blame him, rather than “capitalist imperialism,” for the

U.S.S.R.’s encirclement. In 1986 Gorbachev said that economic power had supplanted military

power as the most important aspect of security in the present age—an amazing admission for a

state whose superpower status rested exclusively on its military might. He called on the Soviets

to settle for “reasonable sufficiency” in strategic arms and urged NATO to join him in deep cuts

in nuclear and conventional weapons. He reiterated Khrushchev’s remark that nuclear war

could have no winners and de Gaulle’s vision of a “common European house” from the Atlantic

Ocean to the Ural Mountains. Finally, Gorbachev hinted at a repudiation of the Brezhnev

Doctrine—i.e., the assertion of the Soviets’ right to intervene to protect Socialist governments

wherever they might be threatened.

 Ronald

Reagan (left) and Mikhail Gorbachev shaking hands during a summit in Reykjavík, …Ron

Edmonds/AP ImagesWestern observers were divided at first as to how to respond to this “new

thinking.” Some analysts considered Gorbachev a revolutionary and his advent a historic chance

to end the Cold War. Others, including the Reagan administration, were more cautious. Soviet

leaders had launched “peace offensives” many times before, always with the motive of

seducing the West into opening up trade and technology. Gorbachev was a phenomenon,

charming Western reporters, crowds, and leaders (Thatcher was especially impressed) with his

breezy style, sophistication, and peace advocacy. He published two best-sellers in the West to

enhance his reputation, which for a time caused Europeans to rate Reagan and the United

States the greatest threats to peace in the world. What convinced most Western observers that
genuine change had occurred, however, was not what Gorbachev said but what he allowed

others to say under his policy of glasnost, or openness.

As Western experts had predicted, perestroika, an attempt to streamline a fatally flawed

Communist system, was doomed to failure. What the Soviets needed, they said, was a profit

motive, private property, hard currency, real prices, and access to world markets. But

Gorbachev, still thinking in Communist categories, blamed bureaucratic resistance for the

failure of his reforms and thus declared glasnost to encourage internal criticism. What he got

was the birth of a genuine Soviet public opinion, a reemergence of autonomous organizations

in society, and more than 300 independent journals (by the end of 1989) publicizing and

denouncing Communist military and economic failures, murder and oppression, foreign policy

“crimes” such as the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the invasion of Afghanistan, and

even Communist rule itself.

 U.S. Pres.

Ronald Reagan (right) and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF

…Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library (Image Number: C44071-15A)/National Archives and Records

AdministrationBy 1987 most Western observers still called for deeds to match the words

pouring forth in the Soviet Union, but they were persuaded that an end to the Cold War was a

real possibility. The Reagan administration made its first show of trust in Gorbachev by

engaging in negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons from Europe. In 1987 Gorbachev

surprised the United States by accepting the earlier American “zero-option” proposal for

intermediate-range missiles. After careful negotiation a treaty was concluded in Geneva and

signed at a Washington summit in December. This controversial Intermediate-Range Nuclear

Forces (INF) Treaty eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons and allowed, for the first

time, extensive on-site inspection inside the Soviet bloc. Critics still feared that stripping Europe

of nuclear missiles might only enhance the value of the Soviets’ conventional superiority and
called for parallel agreements through the mutual and balanced force reduction talks on NATO

and Warsaw Pact armies. In Moscow in mid-1988, Reagan and Gorbachev discussed an even

bolder proposal: reduction of both strategic nuclear arsenals by 50 percent. A mellower

Reagan, interpreting the Soviets’ new flexibility as a vindication of his earlier tough stance and

having thereupon repudiated his “evil empire” rhetoric, now seemed eager to bargain as much

as possible with Gorbachev.

Finally, Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, reached out in all

directions—China, Japan, India, Iran, even South Korea and Israel—in hopes of reducing military

tensions, gaining access to trade and technology, or just creating new possibilities for Soviet

statecraft. Gorbachev’s most celebrated moment came in December 1988 at the United

Nations, when he announced a unilateral reduction in Soviet army forces of half a million men

and the withdrawal from eastern Europe of 10,000 tanks. Henceforth, he said, the U.S.S.R.

would adopt a “defensive posture,” and he invited the NATO countries to do the same.

Throughout his first four years in power Gorbachev inspired and presided over an extraordinary

outpouring of new ideas and new options. Western skeptics wondered whether he meant to

dismantle Communism and the Soviet empire and, if he did, whether he could possibly avoid

being overthrown by party hard-liners, the KGB, or the army. He had maneuvered brilliantly in

internal politics, always claiming the middle ground and positioning himself as the last best

hope for peaceful reform. His prestige and popularity in the West were also assets of no small

value. In June 1988 he persuaded the Communist party conference to restructure the entire

Soviet government along the lines of a partially representative legislature with a powerful
president—himself. Was the Gorbachev phenomenon merely an updated version of earlier,

limited Russian and Soviet reforms designed to bolster the old order? Or would Gorbachev use

his expanding power to liquidate the empire and Communism?

In truth, Gorbachev faced a severe dilemma born of three simultaneous crises: diplomatic

encirclement abroad, economic and technological stagnation at home, and growing pressure

for liberal reform in Poland and Hungary and for autonomy in the non-Russian republics of the

U.S.S.R. Thoroughgoing détente, perhaps even an end to the Cold War, could solve the first

crisis and go far toward ameliorating the second. His policy of glasnost, deemed vital to

economic progress, had the fatal side effect, however, of encouraging repressed ethnic groups,

at home and in eastern Europe, to organize and express their opposition to Russian or

Communist rule. Of course, the Soviet government might simply crush the nationalities, as it

had in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, but that in turn would undo the progress

made in East–West relations and put Gorbachev back where he had started. If, on the other

hand, the Soviet government relinquished its satellites abroad, how could it stop the process of

liberation from spreading to the subject nationalities inside the U.S.S.R.? If it repudiated its

Marxist-Leninist global mission in the name of economic reform, how could the regime

legitimize itself at all, even in Russia?

1989: ANNUS MIRABILIS

LIBERALIZATION AND STRUGGLE IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES

 U.S.

President George Bush with Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union.Dave Valdez/White House

photoGeorge Bush was elected to succeed Ronald Reagan as president of the United States in

November 1988. The new administration’s foreign policy team, led by Secretary of State James

Baker, was divided at first between the “squeezers,” who saw no logic in attempts to bail out a

troubled Soviet Union, and the “dealers,” who wanted to make far-reaching agreements with

Gorbachev before he was toppled from power. For five months Bush played his cards close to

his vest, citing the need to await the results of a comprehensive study of Soviet–American

relations.

Signs of unmistakable and irreversible liberalization in the Soviet bloc began to appear in the

form of popular manifestations in eastern Europe, which the Kremlin seemed willing to tolerate

and even, to some extent, encourage. Czechoslovaks demonstrated against their Communist
regime on the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet invasion. In Poland, the Solidarity union

demanded democratic reforms. The Sejm (parliament) legalized and vowed to return the

property of the Roman Catholic church, and the government of General Jaruzelski approved

partially free elections to be held on June 4, 1989, the first such in over 40 years. Solidarity

initially won 160 of the 161 available seats and then took the remaining seat in a runoff

election. On May 2, Hungary dismantled barriers on its border with Austria—the first real

breach in the Iron Curtain.

Gorbachev was less tolerant of protests and separatist tendencies in the U.S.S.R. itself; for

instance, he ordered soldiers to disperse 15,000 Georgians demanding independence. He

moved ahead, however, with reforms that loosened the Communist party’s grip on power in

the Soviet Union, even as his own authority was increased through various laws granting him

emergency powers. In March, protesters in Moscow supported the parliamentary candidacy of

the dissident Communist Boris Yeltsin, who charged Gorbachev with not moving fast enough

toward democracy and a market economy. On the 26th of that month, in the first relatively free

elections ever held in the Soviet Union, for 1,500 of the 2,250 seats in the new Congress of

People’s Deputies, various non-Communists and ethnic representatives emerged triumphant

over Communist party candidates. Three days later Gorbachev told the Hungarian premier that

he opposed foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Warsaw Pact states—a loud hint that

he did not intend to enforce the Brezhnev Doctrine.

In late spring Bush spoke out on his hopes for East–West relations in a series of speeches and

quietly approved the subsidized sale of 1,500,000 tons of wheat to the Soviets. In a Moscow

meeting with Secretary Baker, Gorbachev not only endorsed the resumption of START, with the

goal of deep cuts in strategic arsenals, but also stated that he would unilaterally withdraw 500

warheads from eastern Europe and accept NATO’s request for asymmetrical reductions in

conventional armaments. In response, Bush announced that the time had come “to move

beyond containment” and to “seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of

nations.” Western European leaders were even more eager: Chancellor Kohl and Gorbachev

agreed in June to support self-determination and arms reductions and to build a “common

European home.”

For Gorbachev the policies of glasnost, free elections, and warm relations with Western leaders

were a calculated risk born of the Soviet Union’s severe economic crisis and need for Western

help. For other Communist regimes, however, Moscow’s “new thinking” was an unalloyed

disaster. The governments of eastern Europe owed their existence to the myth of the “world

proletarian revolution” and their survival to police-state controls backed by the threat of Soviet

military power. Now, however, the Soviet leader himself had renounced the right of

intervention, and he urged eastern European Communist parties to imitate perestroika and

glasnost. Eastern European bosses like Erich Honecker of East Germany and Miloš Jakeš of

Czechoslovakia quietly made common cause with hard-liners in Moscow.

Chinese leaders were in a different position. Ever since the late 1950s the Chinese Communist

party had regularly and officially denounced the Soviets as revisionists—Marxist heretics—and

Gorbachev’s deeds and words only proved their rectitude. Even so, since the death of Mao

Zedong the Chinese leadership had itself adopted limited reforms under the banner of the Four

Modernizations and had permitted a modicum of highly successful free enterprise while

retaining a monopoly of political power. When Hu Yaobang, a former leader, died on April 15,

1989, however, tens of thousands of students and other protesters began to gather in Chinese

cities to demand democratic reforms. Within a week 100,000 people filled Tiananmen Square in

Peking and refused to disperse despite strong warnings. The 70th anniversary of the May

Fourth Movement, the first student movement in modern Chinese history, propelled the

protests, as did Gorbachev’s own arrival for the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years. By May 20

the situation was completely out of control: more than 1,000,000 demonstrators occupied large

sections of Peking, and on the 29th students erected a statue called the “Goddess of

Democracy” in Tiananmen Square.

Behind the scenes a furious power struggle ensued between party chiefs advocating

accommodation and those calling for the use of force; it remained uncertain whether the

People’s Liberation Army could be trusted to act against the demonstration. Finally, on June 3,

military units from distant provinces were called in to move against the crowds; they did so

efficiently, killing hundreds of protesters. Thousands more were arrested in the days that

followed.
The suppression of the democratic movement in China conditioned the thinking of eastern

European officials and protesters alike for months. Taking heart from Gorbachev’s reformism,

citizens hoped that the time had finally come when they might expand their narrow political

options. They moved cautiously, however, not wholly trusting that the Soviet Union would

stand aside and fearing that at any moment their local state security police would opt for a

“Tiananmen solution.” Nonetheless, in July, at the annual Warsaw Pact meeting, Gorbachev

called on each member state to pursue “independent solutions *to+ national problems” and

said that there were “no universal models of Socialism.” At the same time Bush toured Poland

and Hungary, praising their steps toward democracy and offering aid, but saying and doing

nothing that would embarrass the Soviets or take strategic advantage of their difficulties. So it

was that for the first time both superpower leaders indicated with increasing clarity that they

intended to stand aside and allow events in eastern Europe to take their course independent of

Cold War considerations. Gorbachev had indeed repealed the Brezhnev Doctrine, and Bush had

done nothing to impel him to reimpose it.

The results were almost immediate. In August a trickle, then a flood of would-be émigrés from

East Germany tried the escape route open through Hungary to Austria and West Germany. In

the same month the chairman of the Soviet Central Committee admitted the existence of the

secret protocols in the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact under which Stalin had

annexed Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. On the 50th anniversary of the pact, August 23, an

estimated 1,000,000 Balts formed a human chain linking their capitals to denounce the

annexation as illegal and to demand self-determination. In September the Hungarian

government suspended its effort to stave off the flight of East Germans, and by the end of the

month more than 30,000 had escaped to the West. Demonstrations for democracy began in

East Germany itself in late September, spreading from Leipzig to Dresden and other cities. On

October 6–7 Gorbachev, visiting in honour of the German Democratic Republic’s 40th

anniversary, urged East Germany to adopt Soviet-style reforms and said that its policy would be

made in Berlin, not Moscow.

Against this background of massive and spreading popular defiance of Communist regimes,

Western governments maintained a prudent silence about the internal affairs of Soviet-bloc

states, while sending clear signals to Moscow of the potential benefits of continued

liberalization. When Gorbachev’s nemesis Yeltsin visited the United States in September, the

administration kept a discreet distance. Later that month Shevardnadze held extensive and

private talks with Baker; he dropped once and for all the Soviet demand that the American SDI

program be included in the START negotiations. In the first week of October the European

Community, West Germany, and then (at the insistence of Congress) the United States offered

emergency aid totalling $2,000,000,000 to the democratizing Polish government. The chairman

of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board went to Moscow to advise the Soviets on how they, too,

might make the transition to a market economy, and Secretary Baker proclaimed, “We want

perestroika to succeed.” A month later Gorbachev gave the first indication of the limits to

reform, warning that Western efforts to “export capitalism” or “interfere with east European

politics would be a great mistake.” By that time, however, the collapse of Communism in the

satellite states, at least, was irreversible.

Hungary became the second (after Poland) to seize its independence when the National

Assembly, on October 18, amended its constitution to abolish the Socialist party’s “leading

role” in society, legalize non-Communist political parties, and change the name of the country

from the “People’s Republic” to simply the “Republic of Hungary.” East Germany, one of the

most repressive of all Soviet-bloc states, was next. By late October crowds numbering more

than 300,000 rose up in Leipzig and Dresden to demand the ouster of the Communist regime.

On November 1 the East German cabinet bowed before the unrelenting, nonviolent pressure of

its people by reopening its border with Czechoslovakia. On November 3 the ministers in charge

of security and the police resigned. The next day a reported 1,000,000 demonstrators jammed

the streets of East Berlin to demand democracy, prompting the resignations of the rest of the

cabinet.
 People from East

and West Berlin gathering at the Berlin Wall on November 10, 1989, one day after …AP

ImagesAfter 50,000 more people had fled the country in the ensuing week, the East German

government threw in the towel. On November 9 it announced that exit visas would be granted

immediately to all citizens wishing to “visit the West” and that all border points were now

open. At first, citizens did not dare believe—hundreds of East Germans had lost their lives

trying to escape after the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961—but when some did, the news

flowed like electricity that the Berlin Wall had fallen. A week later the dreaded Stasis, or state

security police, were disbanded. By December 1 the East German Volkskammer (parliament)

renounced the Communist Socialist Unity Party’s “leading role” in society and began to expose
the corruption and brutality that had characterized the Honecker regime. A new coalition

government took control and planned free national elections for May 1990.

Czechoslovaks were the fourth people to carry out a nonviolent revolution, though at first

frustrated by the hard-line regime’s continued will to repress. A demonstration on November

17 in Wenceslas Square in Prague was broken up by force. The Czechoslovaks, emboldened by

events in East Germany and the absence of a Soviet reaction, turned out in ever larger

numbers, however, demanding free elections and then cheering the rehabilitated hero of the

1968 Prague Spring, Alexander Dubček. The entire cabinet resigned, and the Communist Central

Committee promised a special congress to discuss the party’s future. The dissident liberal

playwright Václav Havel denounced the shake-up as a trick, crowds of 800,000 turned out to

demand democratic elections, and Czechoslovak workers declared a two-hour general strike as

proof of their solidarity. The government caved in, abandoning the Communist party’s “leading

role” on November 29, opening the border with Austria on the 30th, and announcing a new

coalition cabinet on December 8. President Gustav Husák resigned on the 10th and free

elections were scheduled for the 28th. By the end of the year Havel was president of

Czechoslovakia and Dubček was parliamentary chairman.

The fifth and sixth satellite peoples to break out of the 45-year Communist lockstep were

the Bulgarians and Romanians. The former had an easy time of it after the Communist party

secretary and president, Todor Zhivkov, resigned on November 10. Within a month crowds in

Sofia called for democratization, and the Central Committee leader voluntarily surrendered the

party’s “leading role.” Romania, however, suffered a bloodbath. There the Communist
dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu had built a ferocious personal tyranny defended by ubiquitous and

brutal security forces. He intended to ride out the anti-Communist wave in eastern Europe and

preserve his rule. Thus, when crowds of Romanian citizens demonstrated for democracy in

imitation of events elsewhere, the government denounced them as “Fascist reactionaries” and

ordered its security forces to shoot to kill. Courageous crowds continued to rally and regular

army units joined the rebellion, and, when the Soviets indicated their opposition to Ceauşescu,

civil war broke out. On December 22 popular forces captured Ceauşescu while he attempted to

flee, tried him on several charges, including genocide, and executed him on the 25th. An

interim National Salvation Front Council took over and announced elections for May 1990. By

the end of the year the Czechoslovaks and Hungarians had already concluded agreements with

Moscow providing for the rapid withdrawal of Soviet military forces from their countries.

AFTERMATH OF THE BREAKUP

In the span of just three months the unthinkable had happened: all of eastern Europe had

broken free of Communist domination and won the right to resume the independent national

existences that Nazi aggression had extinguished beginning in 1938. The force of popular

revulsion against the Stalinist regimes imposed after World War II was the cause of the

explosion, and advanced communications technology permitted the news to spread quickly,

triggering revolts in one capital after another. What enabled the popular forces to express

themselves, and succeed, however, was singular and simple: the abrogation of the Brezhnev

Doctrine by Mikhail Gorbachev. Once it became known that the Red Army would not intervene

to crush dissent, as it had in all previous crises, the whole Stalinist empire was revealed as a
sham and flimsy structure. For decades, Western apologists for the Soviet bloc had argued that

eastern European Socialism was somehow indigenous, even that the East Germans had

developed a “separate nationality,” and that the Soviets had a legitimate security interest in

eastern Europe. Gorbachev himself proved them wrong when he let eastern Europe go free in

1989.

What were his motives for doing so? Certainly the Soviet army and the KGB must have watched

in horror as their empire, purchased at terrific cost in World War II, simply disintegrated.

Perhaps Gorbachev calculated, in line with the “new thinking,” that the U.S.S.R. did not need

eastern Europe to ensure its own security and that maintaining the empire was no longer worth

the financial and political cost. At a time when the Soviet Union was in severe economic crisis

and needed Western help more than ever, jettisoning eastern Europe would unburden his

budget and do more than anything to attract Western goodwill. Nevertheless, it is hard to

believe that Gorbachev ever intended things to work out as they did. It is far more likely that he

intended merely to throw his support to progressive Communists eager to implement

perestroika in their own countries and thereby strengthen his own position vis-à-vis the hard-

liners in the Soviet party. His ploy, however, had three attendant risks: first, that popular revolt

might go so far as to dismantle Communism and the Warsaw Pact altogether; second, that the

eastern European revolution might spread to nationalities within the U.S.S.R. itself; and third,

that the NATO powers might try to exploit eastern European unrest to its own strategic

advantage. The first fear quickly came true, and as 1989 came to an end, Gorbachev’s foreign
and domestic policies were increasingly directed toward forestalling the second and third

dangers.

Concerning possible Western exploitation of the retreat of Communism, Shevardnadze

expressed as early as October the Soviet Union’s desire to pursue the dissolution of the Warsaw

Pact and NATO military alliances. (Of course, the Warsaw Pact was in the course of dissolving

from within.) Then, in November, Gorbachev warned against Western attempts to export

capitalism. Western European leaders were anxious to reassure him, as was President Bush at

the December 2–3 Malta summit. Only a few days before, however, Chancellor Kohl had alerted

the Soviets and the world that he intended to press forward at once on the most difficult

problem of all arising from the liberation of eastern Europe: the reunification of Germany. That

prospect, and the conditions under which it might occur, would dominate Great Power

diplomacy in 1990.

Gorbachev had every reason to fear that his second nightmare would come true: the spillover

of popular revolt into the Soviet Union itself. The first of the subject nationalities of the U.S.S.R.

to demand self-determination were the Lithuanians, whose Communist Party Congress voted

by a huge majority to declare its independence from the party’s leadership in Moscow and to

move toward an independent, democratic state. Gorbachev denounced the move at once and

warned of bloodshed if the Lithuanians persisted. In January 1990 his personal visit to the

Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to calm the waters provoked a rally of 250,000 people demanding

the abrogation of the Soviets’ “illegal” 1940 annexation. When in that same month Soviet
troops entered the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, and killed more than 50 Azerbaijani nationalists,

fears arose that the Baltic states might suffer the same fate. Gorbachev let it be known that,

the liberation of eastern Europe notwithstanding, he would not preside over the dissolution of

the U.S.S.R.

THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY

FROM SKEPTICISM TO REALITY

Helmut Kohl,

1996.NATO photosEven before they had succeeded in chasing the Communists out of their

government, East Germans had already begun to “unify” the country with their feet: 133,000
people picked up and moved westward in the month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Such an

influx of people placed tremendous strains on West Germany and all but forced Chancellor Kohl

to begin immediate measures toward reunification in order to stem the tide. On November 28,

1989, he shocked the world with his announcement of a 10-point plan under which the East

and West German governments would gradually expand their cooperation on specific issues

until full economic, then political unity was achieved. He proposed no timetable and sought to

appease the Soviets and western European powers alike by emphasizing that the process must

occur within the contexts of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE; now

the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), the European Community, and East–

West disarmament regimes.

The Kohl plan was more than an emergency response, however; it was also the culmination of a

West German policy dating back to the founding of the two Germanies in 1949. Reunification

was provided for in the West German Basic Law (constitution) and had remained the primary

goal, no matter how distant, of its foreign policy. Even Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in 1969 had

differed only in regard to means, looking to increased contacts and aid to educate East

Germans about the freedom and prosperity prevailing in the West, and so gradually and

peacefully to undermine the legitimacy of the East German regime.

Almost no one was entirely comfortable with the prospect of a reunited Germany. West

Germany alone had become the economic colossus of Europe; augmented by the East, it might

come to dominate the European Community. Moreover, how was a united Germany to be

prevented from aspiring to military power or hegemony in the power vacuum of eastern
Europe? The Soviets seemed unlikely to countenance a united Germany fully allied with

the United States and the EC, while a neutral Germany might become a loose cannon vacillating

between Moscow and the West. So it was that on the day after the Malta summit,

President Bush declared his support for a gradually reunited Germany to remain in NATO and

the EC, within a “Europe whole and free.” French President Mitterrand warned the Germans

against pushing it too hard, while British Prime Minister Thatcher was openly

skeptical. Gorbachev was expected to demand large concessions in return for his approval.

Bush presumably had reassured him at Malta that events would not be allowed to get out of

control. To underscore their intention to assert their rights in Germany dating back to the 1945

Potsdam conference, the Soviets requested a meeting of the old Allied Control Council in Berlin.

To underscore their intention to respect Soviet feelings, the other World War II Allied powers

(the United States, Great Britain, and France) agreed to meet on December 11.

The reunification of Germany, for so long thought impossible and, by many, perhaps most

people in the U.S.S.R., France, Britain, and the United States, even undesirable, now suddenly

appeared inevitable. Whatever their misgivings, the Allies could hardly deny Germany the right

to the self-determination they claimed for themselves and all other peoples. When members

of NATO and the Warsaw Pact convened at Ottawa, on February 11, 1990, Bush skillfully won

universal agreement to a prudent format for talks on the unification of Germany. The French,

British, and Soviets had considered involving the four powers from the start in group

negotiations with the Germans, thereby calling into question German sovereignty. Bush’s plan,

however, would permit the German states themselves to work out their future and then submit
their wishes to the four powers for final approval. These “two plus four” talks were expected to

be a slow, deliberative process.

In fact, the overwhelming will of the German people and the press of events brought

negotiations quickly to a head. First, the East German elections on March 18 revealed a strong

majority in favour of immediate unification. Second, the East German economy underwent

sudden collapse after the disappearance of Communist discipline and the flight of hundreds of

thousands of people. Third, the East German infrastructure was now revealed as decrepit and

backward, the environment grossly polluted, and the currency worthless. Talks began at once

on an emergency unification of the two Germanies’ economies, and in April, after much hand-

wringing, Kohl and the Deutsche Bundesbank accepted a plan to replace the East German

currency with deutsche marks on a one-to-one basis. The “two plus four” talks moved to the

foreign ministerial level in May, and within two weeks East and West Germany published their

terms for their imminent merger. Moreover, it would not be achieved by the laborious crafting

of a new constitution but by the quicker provisions of Article 23 of the West German Basic Law,

whereby new provinces could adhere to the existing constitution by a simple majority vote. The

Bundestag approved these terms on June 21, and West and East Germany were unified

economically on July 1.

Assurances were required to the effect that a united Germany, far from making NATO more

threatening, would in fact be constrained by its membership in the U.S.-led alliance; that

German military power would be limited by treaty and that Soviet troops might remain in East
Germany for a time as a guarantee; that Soviet–German relations would improve after

unification and yield vital economic assistance for the Soviet Union; and that the new Germany

would recognize and respect existing international boundaries. Bush moved to satisfy the first

and second of these desiderata at the NATO summit in July; its declaration defined NATO and

the Warsaw Pact as no longer enemies, renounced NATO’s long-standing policy on first use of

nuclear weapons, agreed to limits (proposed by Shevardnadze) on the size of the German army,

and invited the Warsaw Pact countries to establish “regular diplomatic liaison with NATO.”

The third desideratum—improved Soviet–German relations—was, of course, up to Chancellor

Kohl to satisfy. He offered to cut the German army to 370,000 men, renounce chemical,

biological, and nuclear weapons, and aid in financing Soviet troops during an eventual

withdrawal over a 3–4-year transition period. He also extended $5,000,000,000 in credits, with

an expectation of more to follow. In return he secured Gorbachev’s acceptance of a united,

sovereign, democratic German state to remain a full member of the Western alliance and the

EC. Kohl also took pains to reassure the French that the new united Germany would pose no

threat. In the ongoing EC deliberations about the greater unification to take effect in 1992, Kohl

sided constantly and strongly with the French position. He made it as clear as possible that the

Germans were “good Europeans” and that their unity would occur harmlessly within the

context of greater European and Atlantic communities.

Meanwhile, the bilateral talks between East and West Germans proceeded at an emergency

pace. The two governments signed the terms for their political union on August 31. The four
Allied powers then ratified them in their own Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. Those

signatures, affixed in Moscow on September 12, formally brought World War II to an end. The

next day Germany and the U.S.S.R. signed a treaty of 20 years’ duration pledging to each other

friendly relations and recognition of borders and renouncing the use of force. The four Allied

powers renounced their rights in Germany on October 1, the final settlement took effect on

October 3, 1990, and Germans tearfully celebrated their reunification.

One final issue remained—that of Germany’s permanent boundaries. Western powers and

especially the Polish government had pressured Kohl from the beginning to recognize for all

time the inviolability of the Oder–Neisse border and thus the permanent loss to Germany of

Silesia, eastern Pomerania, Danzig (Gdaosk), and East Prussia. At first Kohl hung back, earning

for himself much abuse from Western statesmen and scaremongers. His tactic seems to have

been to make a show of standing up for Germany’s lost territories in the east in order to send a

message to the Polish government about the need to respect the rights of ethnic Germans in

Poland, as well as to minimize the appeal of the right-wing Republikaner party to the German

electorate. As soon as German unity was assured, Kohl accepted Germany’s boundaries as

permanent, and he signed a treaty to that effect with Poland on November 14.

Five days later the second CSCE summit convened in Paris to proclaim the end of the Cold War.

In the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, the NATO and Soviet sides each pledged to limit

themselves to 20,000 battle tanks and 20,000 artillery tubes, 6,800 combat aircraft, 30,000

other armoured combat vehicles, and 2,000 attack helicopters. The CSCE member states signed
the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, in which the Soviets, Americans, and Europeans both

east and west announced to the world that Europe was henceforth united, that all blocs—

military and economic—had ceased to exist, and that all member states stood for democracy,

freedom, and human rights.

WHY THE SOVIET RETREAT?

On October 15, 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev travelled to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for

Peace in honour of his having done much to bring the Cold War to a close. While few people in

Europe and North America denied that Gorbachev’s restraint in 1989 was largely responsible

for the liberation of eastern Europe or criticized the directions of his reforms in the Soviet

Union, the Nobel Prize seemed to imply standards of historical and moral judgment that struck

many critics as, at best, strange. Was the Soviet president to be credited with the world’s most

prestigious prize for not sending in tank columns to crush innocent and unarmed people in

foreign countries? What about the eastern European peoples themselves, who bravely seized

their freedom in spite of the risks? Or the Western leaders whose denunciations of the Soviet

empire encouraged the Polish Solidarity movement and other eastern European resisters?

Indeed, as soon as people in the West caught their breath after the cascade of events in 1989–

90, they began to argue over why the Cold War had ended, why it ended when it did, and to

whom the credit should go. Academic and liberal opinion favoured theories crediting

Gorbachev and the generation of “new thinkers” in the Soviet Union for the transformations.

Conservatives preferred to give the credit to the statesmen of containment who had stood up
to Soviet pressure for 40 years. (When President Bush visited Poland upon the invitation of Lech

Wałęsa in 1989, thousands of Poles lined the streets to cheer and wave banners reading “Thank

you!”)

Historians have argued over the end of the Cold War as intensely as they argued over its

beginning, but some general observations can be made. First, the Cold War ended because the

special sources of conflict and distrust between the Soviet Union and the West disappeared in

1989. That is not to say that geopolitical rivalry disappeared, or that conflicts of interest would

not recur in many parts of the world. Great Power politics would go on. At the same time, the

liberation of eastern Europe, unification of Germany, reduction of armaments, and suspension

of Leninist ideological war against the outer world were symptomatic of the changed nature of

superpower relations. Second, those relations changed their nature over the years 1985–90

because the Soviet leadership lost the ability or the will, or both, to prosecute the Cold War and

seemingly came to realize that even the gains they had made in the Cold War were not in the

best interests of the Soviet Union. Rather, the U.S.S.R. and its satellites and client states

constituted a network of obligations that seriously strained the resources of the central

economy and that had called into being a hostile alliance consisting of all the other major

industrial powers of the world: the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and

China. What was more, the Communist (or Stalinist) command structure had proved woefully

inadequate to the demands of a technological age. In sum, the Soviet Union had embarked

under Stalin on a Sisyphean struggle against the entire outer world, only to discover over time

that its huge conventional army was of doubtful utility, its nuclear arsenal unusable, its
diplomatic attempts to divide the enemy alliance unsuccessful, its Third World clients expensive

and of dubious value, and its pervasive apparatus for espionage, disinformation, terror, and

demoralization of temporary effect only. Always the Western peoples recovered their will and

dynamism; always the Soviet Union fell further behind, until finally, after 40 years, the empire

fell, exhausted, to the ground.

That was when the younger generation came to the fore, promoting the “new thinking” that

had sprung up from disgust with the rigid and brutal structures dating from Stalin and the rigid

and counterproductive policies dating from Brezhnev. Perhaps Gorbachev himself remained a

committed Marxist-Leninist—he said so at every opportunity—but the practical effect of his

repudiation of old structures and policies was to dismantle much that had provoked the fear

and hostility of the West in the first place. Nor would releasing eastern Europe suffice to

reverse the inevitable decline of the Communist empire. The age of microelectronics,

computers, space technology, and global communications was also an age in which human

creativity, not brute labour, was the most valuable asset in a nation’s economic and military

strength. Far from unleashing creativity and spontaneous production, as Marxist theory

predicted, Soviet Communism had stifled it—through terror, bureaucratization, the lack of a

profit motive and market mechanism, and hierarchical, centralized decision making. Eventually,

if the Soviet Union were to remain even a great power, much less a superpower, it would have

to jettison not only its subject empire but also Communism itself.
George Kennan predicted in his famous “Long Telegram” of 1946 and “X” article of 1947 that

the Soviets would ultimately fail to digest the empire they had swallowed and would have to

disgorge it. In the meantime, the West had to contain Soviet influence, neither retreating into

isolationism nor overreacting militarily, and above all remaining confident about its basic

human values. He was right. The most fundamental, long-range reason for the end of the Cold

War was that Communism was based on profound contradictions and a misreading of human

nature. So long as other nations refused to surrender to their fear, the Soviet system could

never prevail. Perhaps the exhortations and policies of Reagan and Thatcher did determine the

timing of the Soviet collapse, but the collapse was bound to come sooner or later.

Students of Soviet history with a more sociological bent offered yet another explanation for the

Gorbachev phenomenon, based on irrepressible trends within Soviet society itself. For

whatever horrors he committed against his own people, Stalin had made the U.S.S.R. into a

modern, industrial, and primarily urban country. Khrushchev introduced television and

spaceflight, and Brezhnev, through détente, multiplied the foreign contacts and experience of

Soviet citizens. By the late 1970s a great percentage of Soviet people had ceased to be illiterate

peasants easily suppressed, propagandized, and drafted into massive military, agricultural, or

construction projects. Instead, a second- or third-generation urban population had grown up

that inevitably came to demand more access to the information, political influence, and

material rewards available to people of their station in the West. Once glasnost gave them a

voice, these new “middle classes” loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with a regime that had

become not only inhumane but irrational, even on its own materialistic terms. According to this
view, therefore, Sovietism was doomed even by its relative success: the more modern the

U.S.S.R. became, the less legitimate its party dictatorship became in the eyes of its educated

classes.

A final, long-range interpretation laid stress on the nationality crisis in eastern Europe and the

Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. was the world’s last great multinational empire. The Communist

party maintained its tight control over the Balts, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Georgians, Uzbeks,

Armenians, and a dozen other major peoples by a combination of economic controls,

censorship and propaganda, police methods, suppression of national cultures and churches,

Russification, dispersal of populations, and in the last resort, force—all justified by the myth

that Marxism transcended “bourgeois” nationalism and ensured equality and prosperity to all.

Glasnost, however, released the real and abiding national sentiments of all the peoples under

the Soviet yoke, allowing them to organize and agitate, while the economic breakdown gave

the lie to Soviet promises. Finally, the discrediting of Communism itself removed the last

justification for the very existence of the empire. Gorbachev did not foresee how far his policy

of limited free expression would get out of hand, and by the time he did it was too late. He then

gave up trying to hold eastern Europe and concentrated instead on trying to hold the U.S.S.R.

together. It remained to be seen whether he, or his successor, could achieve even that.

DISENGAGEMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD

The three main arenas of Cold War competition had always been divided Europe, strategic

nuclear arms competition, and regional conflicts in the Third World. By the end of 1990 the
superpowers had seemingly pacified the first arena, made substantial progress in the second,

and at least stated their intention of disengaging in the third. Ever since the 1950s, when

the U.S.S.R. first bid for allies and client states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the

superpowers had wrestled for influence through programs of military and economic assistance,

propaganda, and proxy wars in which they backed opposing states or factions. When

Gorbachev came to power, the Soviets still possessed patron–client relationships with North

Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan and exercised considerable

influence with Iraq, Syria, Yemen (Aden), and the frontline states confronting white-ruled South

Africa. Moreover, the United States faced opposition to friendly regimes in the Philippines, El

Salvador, and, of course, Israel. The Soviet Union’s financial crisis increasingly limited its ability

to underwrite client states, however, while its troubles in eastern Europe and at home afforded

the United States the opportunity to resolve regional conflicts to its liking. Thus, events in

disparate theatres of the world in the last half of the 1980s added up to a certain

disengagement and reduction of Cold War-related tensions in the Third World.

THE PHILIPPINES AND CENTRAL AMERICA

In 1986 the corrupt autocrat of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, a long-standing ally of

the United States, lost his grip on power. Crowds backed by leading elements in the Roman

Catholic church, the press, labour unions, and a portion of the army rose up to demand his

resignation. The Reagan administration, like previous U.S. administrations, had tolerated

Marcos in light of his determined opposition to the Communist guerrilla movement in the

Philippines and his support for two major U.S. military bases on the island of Luzon. It now had
to decide, however, whether Marcos’ continued rule might in fact strengthen the appeal of

anti-American leftists. In hopes of avoiding “another Iran” (referring to President Carter’s

abandonment of the Shah, only to see him replaced by the Ayatollah), Reagan sent a personal

envoy to Manila to engineer Marcos’ departure in favour of free elections and the accession to

power of Corazon Aquino, the widow of a popular opposition leader who had been murdered.

The United States had evidently managed to remove an embarrassing dictator without doing

serious harm to its strategic position in East Asia.

Closer to home, the United States continued to face not only the aggressively hostile Sandinista

regime in Nicaragua and the leftist rebellion in El Salvador (backed, the White House said, by

Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union) but also a growing rift with the Panamanian dictator

General Manuel Noriega. For decades Noriega had collaborated with U.S. intelligence agencies,

serving as an informant on events in Cuba and a supporter of the Contras in Central America. It

came to light, however, that in addition to grabbing all power in Panama he had amassed a

personal fortune by smuggling illegal drugs into the United States, and in 1988 a U.S. grand jury

indicted Noriega on drug-trafficking charges. The Reagan administration offered to drop the

charges if Noriega would agree to step down and leave Panama, but he refused.

In May 1989, Panama staged elections monitored by an international team that included

former U.S. President Carter. Although the opposition civilian candidate, Guillermo Endara,

appeared to win by a 3-to-1 margin, Noriega annulled the vote, declared his own puppet

candidate the victor, and had Endara and other opponents beaten in the streets.
President Bush dispatched 2,000 additional soldiers to U.S. bases in the Panama Canal Zone,

and the Organization of American States (OAS) called for a “peaceful transfer of power” to an

elected government in Panama. In December 1989, Noriega bade the Panamanian National

Assembly to name him “maximum leader” and declare a virtual “state of war” with the United

States. Within days a U.S. soldier was ambushed and killed in Panama, an incident followed by

the shooting of a Panamanian soldier by U.S. military guards.

President Bush now considered that he had a pretext to act. A Panamanian judge taking refuge

in the Canal Zone swore in Endara as president, and 24,000 U.S. troops (including 11,000

airlifted from the United States) seized control of Panama City. Noriega eluded the invaders for

four days, then took refuge with the papal nuncio. On January 3, 1990, he surrendered himself

to U.S. custody and was transported to Miami to stand trial. The OAS voted 20 to 1 to condemn

what seemed to many Latin Americans an unwarranted “Yanqui” intervention.

The U.S. conflict with the Nicaraguan revolutionary regime of Daniel Ortega also reached a

climax in 1989. On February 14 five Central American presidents, inspired by the earlier

initiatives of the Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace laureate Óscar Arias Sánchez, agreed to

plans for a cease-fire in the entire region, the closing of Contra bases in Honduras, and

monitored elections in Nicaragua to be held no later than February 1990. In April Nicaragua’s

National Assembly approved the plan and passed laws relaxing the Sandinistas’ prohibitions of

free speech and opposition political parties. Because the Sandinistas’ prospects for continued,

large-scale aid from Cuba and the U.S.S.R. were slim in light of the Soviet “new thinking,”
Ortega concluded that he must, after all, risk the fully free elections he had avoided ever since

his takeover 10 years before. The five Central American presidents announced in August their

schedule for the demobilization of the Contras, and in October the U.S. Congress acceded to

Bush’s request for nonmilitary aid to the Nicaraguan opposition.

The elections were held on February 25, 1990, and, to the surprise of almost everyone on both

sides of the struggle, the Nicaraguan people favoured National Opposition Union leader Violeta

Barrios de Chamorro by 55 to 40 percent. Ortega acknowledged his defeat and pledged to

“respect and obey the popular mandate.” The United States immediately suspended the aid to

the Contras, lifted the economic sanctions against Nicaragua, and proposed to advance

economic assistance to the new regime.

AFGHANISTAN

The resolution of regional conflicts at the end of the 1980s extended to Asia as well.

In Afghanistan the Soviet Union had committed some 115,000 troops in support of the KGB-

installed regime of President Najibullah but had failed to eliminate the resistance of the

mujahideen. The war became a costly drain on the Soviet budget and a blow to Soviet military

prestige. In the atmosphere of glasnost even an antiwar movement of sorts arose in the Soviet

Union. A turning point came in mid-1986, when the United States began to supply the Afghan

rebels with surface-to-air Stinger missiles, which forced Soviet aircraft and helicopters to

suspend their low-level raids on rebel villages and strongholds. In January 1987 Najibullah

announced a cease-fire, but the rebels refused his terms and the war continued.
In February 1988 Gorbachev conceded the need to extract Soviet forces from the stalemated

conflict. In April, Afghan, Pakistani, and Soviet representatives in Geneva agreed to a

disengagement plan based on Soviet withdrawal by February 1989 and noninvolvement in each

other’s internal affairs. The Soviets completed the evacuation on schedule but continued to

supply the Kabul regime with large quantities of arms and supplies. The regime abandoned its

strategy of seeking out the mujahideen and instead pulled back into strong defensive bastions

in the fertile valleys, maintaining control of roads and cities. The rebels lacked the tanks and

artillery to launch major offensive operations, and internal feuds among the rebel leaders also

inhibited their operations. Thus, the predictions of Western journalists that Kabul would soon

fall were proved wrong; the Soviets’ client state in Afghanistan survived into the 1990s.

THE MIDDLE EAST

Ruhollah Khomeini (centre)

greeting supporters after returning to Tehrān, February 1979.APThe war between Iraq
and Iran, which began in 1980, also reached a conclusion. The war had been conducted with

the utmost ferocity on both sides. The Iraqi leader, Hussein, employed every weapon in his

arsenal, including Soviet Scud missiles and poison gas purchased from West Germany, and the

Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini ordered its Revolutionary Guards to make human-wave

assaults against fortified Iraqi positions. Total casualties in the conflict numbered in the

hundreds of thousands. The Soviets and Americans remained aloof from the conflict but tilted

toward Iraq. The primary Western (and Japanese) interests were to preserve a balance of

power in the Persian Gulf and to maintain the free flow of oil from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and

the emirates. In May 1987, after two Iraqi missiles struck a U.S. naval vessel in the gulf, the

United States announced an agreement with Kuwait to reflag 11 Kuwaiti tankers and assign the

U.S. Navy to escort them through the dangerous waters. Western European states and the

U.S.S.R. deployed minesweepers.

The Iran–Iraq War entered its final phases in February 1988, when Hussein ordered the

bombing of an oil refinery near Tehrān. The Iranians retaliated by launching missiles into

Baghdad, and this “war of the cities” continued for months. In March, with the front stalemated

along the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab waterway, dissident Kurdish populations in the north of Iraq took

advantage of the war to agitate for autonomy. Hussein struck back at the Kurds in genocidal

fashion, bombing their villages with chemical weapons and poison gas. In May 1988 Iraq

launched a massive surprise attack that drove the Iranians out of the small wedge of Iraqi

territory they had occupied 16 months earlier, and after eight years of warfare the two sides

were back where they started. Although Khomeini called the decision “more deadly than taking

poison,” he instructed his government to accept UN Resolution 598 calling for an immediate
cease-fire and withdrawal to prewar boundaries. Iraq refused, and Hussein ordered a final air

and ground offensive with extensive use of poison gas. The Iraqis advanced 40 miles into Iran.

UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar persevered in talks with the foreign ministers of

the belligerents and announced finally that the two sides had agreed to a cease-fire beginning

August 20, 1988.

To outsiders, Khomeini’s militant Shīʿite regime in Tehrān appeared to be the most extreme,

irrational, and dangerous government in the region. In fact, it was the secular revolutionary

tyranny of Hussein that had begun the war and harboured the aggressive aims of seizing the

mouth of the Tigris-Euphrates river system and establishing Iraq as the hegemonic power in the

Persian Gulf. Iraq had assumed the strategic offensive, escalated the war, and initiated the use

of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction imported from Western and Soviet-bloc states

alike.

In all these regions of the world long-standing conflicts either dissipated or lost their Cold War

significance in the years 1986–90. One conflict, however, always remained volatile—and

perhaps even more so for the retreat of the superpowers and their stabilizing influence: the

conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Throughout his years as U.S. secretary of

state, George Shultz had tried to promote the peace process in the Middle East by brokering

direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Such talks would

require the PLO to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist, but the PLO (which
the Israeli ambassador Abba Eban said “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”)

refused to make the requisite concessions.

In December 1987, Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip killed an Arab youth engaged in a protest.

Widespread unrest broke out in the Israeli-occupied territories, leading to 21 deaths in two

weeks. This was the start of the intifada (“shaking”), a wave of Palestinian protests and Israeli

reprisals that lent new urgency to Middle East diplomacy. Israeli military rule of the West Bank

then hardened, and the Fatah faction of the PLO stepped up its terrorism from bases in

Lebanon.

A first apparent breakthrough for U.S. policy occurred in November 1988, when the Palestine

National Council, meeting in Algiers, voted overwhelmingly to accept UN Resolutions 242 and

338, calling for Israel to evacuate the occupied territories and for all countries in the region “to

live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.” Did this imply PLO recognition of

Israel’s right to exist? At first the PLO chairman, Yāsir ʿArafāt, refused to say, whereupon the

United States denied him a visa to make a trip to the UN. He did in fact speak to a reconvened

UN in Geneva but again failed to be explicit about PLO policy. The next day, in a news

conference, ʿArafāt finally recognized Israel’s right to exist, and he renounced terrorism as well.

Shultz immediately announced that the United States would conduct “open dialogue” with the

PLO. The Israelis, then in the midst of a cabinet crisis, were unable to respond decisively.

In March the new Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Arens, visited Washington, by which time the

new Bush administration was also ready to make its first foray into the Arab–Israeli thicket with
a plan for liberalized Israeli rule on the West Bank in return for PLO action to moderate

the intifada and suspend raids on Israel from Lebanon. The Israelis had a plan of their own

based on elections in the occupied territories, but without PLO participation or international

observation. The Arab League endorsed the idea for a peace conference and held that

Palestinian elections on the West Bank could occur only after an Israeli withdrawal. The Israeli

prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, retorted that elections could occur only after the intifada had

ended, insisted on continuing Israeli settlement on the West Bank, and denied the possibility of

ever creating a Palestinian state. The deadlock in the Middle East was thus as intractable as

ever.

In fact, the situation had hardened in the late 1980s for a variety of reasons. First, the Arabs

themselves were seriously divided. Egypt, the most populous Arab state, had no desire to

disturb its peace with Israel dating from the Camp David Accords. Saudi Arabia and the other

wealthy oil states were preoccupied with the Persian Gulf crisis and nervous about the

presence in their countries of thousands of Palestinian guest workers. Syria’s president, Ḥafiz

al-Assad, a bitter rival of Saddam Hussein, was busy absorbing a large chunk of Lebanon. King

Hussein of Jordan was caught between Syria and Iraq, a prisoner of his large Palestinian refugee

population, and yet in no condition to challenge Israel militarily. Meanwhile, the liberalization

of emigration policy in the U.S.S.R. and the pervasive anti-Semitism there led to the influx of

tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, whom the Israelis began to settle on the West Bank. Finally,

the fading of the Cold War did little to enhance the ability of the superpowers to impose or

broker a settlement in the region. Gorbachev hoped to improve relations with Israel while
maintaining the Soviets’ traditional ties to the radical Arab states and at the same time doing

nothing to damage his détente with the United States. The Americans wanted to maintain their

alliance with Israel but could not afford to alienate—or compromise—the moderate Arab

governments so important to the stability of the oil-rich gulf.

THE FIRST POST-COLD WAR CRISIS: WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

For nearly two years after the UN-brokered cease-fire in the Persian Gulf, the governments

of Iraq and Iran failed to initiate conversations toward a permanent peace treaty. Suddenly, in

July 1990, the foreign ministers of the two states met in Geneva full of optimism about the

prospects for peace. Why Saddam Hussein now seemed willing to liquidate his decade-long

conflict with Iran and even give back the remaining land occupied at such cost by his armies

began to become clear two weeks later, when he stunned the Arab world with a vitriolic speech

in which he accused his small neighbour Kuwait of siphoning off crude oil from the Ar-Rumaylah

oil fields straddling their border. He also accused the Persian Gulf states of conspiring to hold

down oil prices, thereby damaging the interests of war-torn Iraq and catering to the wishes of

the Western powers. The Iraqi foreign minister insisted that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the gulf

emirates make partial compensation for these alleged “crimes” by cancelling $30,000,000,000

of Iraq’s foreign debt; meanwhile, 100,000 of Iraq’s best troops concentrated on the Kuwaiti

border. In sum, a frustrated Hussein had turned his sights from giant Iran to the wealthy but

vulnerable Arab kingdoms to the south.

Iraq’s brash and provocative demands alarmed the Arab states. President Hosnī Mubārak of

Egypt initiated negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait in Saudi Arabia, hoping to pacify the

situation without the intervention of the United States and other outside powers. Hussein, too,

expected no interference from outside the region, but he made only the poorest show of

accepting mediation. He broke off negotiations after just two hours and the next day, August 2,

ordered his army to occupy Kuwait.

Hussein had risen to the position of leader of the Baʾth socialist party and military dictator of

Iraq in a postcolonial environment of intrigue, paranoia, and genuine political threats. Iraq,

situated in the Fertile Crescent of the ancient Babylonian emperors, was a populous and

wealthy country torn by ethnic and religious divisions. Iraq’s boundaries, like those of all other

states in the region, had been drawn up by British and French colonialists and either were

arbitrary or conformed to their own interests rather than to the ethnic and economic needs of

the region. In fact, the trackless deserts of the Middle East had never known stable national

states, and Kuwait in particular struck Iraqis as an artificial state carved out of Iraq’s “natural”

coastline—perhaps for the very purpose of preventing the Persian Gulf’s oil fields from falling

under a single strong Arab state. In addition to coveting Kuwait’s wealth, Hussein hated its

monarchical regime even as he accepted its billions in aid to support his own military

establishment and war with Iran. Hussein rationalized his hatred for the gulf monarchies, the

Iranian Shīʾites, and the Israelis in Arab nationalist terms. A disciple of Egypt’s Nasser, he saw

himself as the revolutionary and military genius who would someday unify the Arabs and

enable them to defy the West.

Hussein made the first in a series of fatal miscalculations, however, when he judged that his

fellow Arabs would tolerate his seizure and despoliation of Kuwait rather than call upon

outsiders for help. Instead, the government of Kuwait, now in exile, and the fearful King Fahd

of Saudi Arabia looked at once to Washington and the United Nations for support.

President Bush condemned Hussein’s act, as did the British and Soviet governments, and the

UN Security Council immediately demanded that Iraq withdraw. Bush echoed the Carter

Doctrine by declaring that the integrity of Saudi Arabia, now exposed to Iraqi invasion, was a

vital American interest, and two-thirds of the 21 member states of the Arab League likewise

condemned Iraq’s aggression. Within days the United States, the European Community, the

Soviet Union, and Japan all imposed an embargo on Iraq, and the Security Council voted strict

economic sanctions on Iraq (with Cuba and Yemen abstaining).

The same day King Fahd requested American military protection for his country. President Bush

at once declared Operation Desert Shield and deployed the first of 200,000 American troops to

the northern deserts of Saudi Arabia, augmented by British, French, and Saudi units and backed

by naval and air forces. It was the largest American overseas operation since the Vietnam War,

but its stated purpose was not to liberate Kuwait but to deter Iraq from attacking Saudi Arabia

and seizing control of one-third of the world’s oil reserves. In President Bush’s words, the Allies

had drawn a line in the sand.

Hussein was not impressed. On August 8 he formally annexed Kuwait, referring to it as Iraq’s

“19th province,” an act the UN Security Council immediately condemned. Egypt offered to
contribute troops to the Allied coalition, followed by 12 of the Arab League’s member states.

Hussein responded by condemning those states as traitorous and proclaiming a jihad, or holy

war, against the coalition—despite the fact that he and his government had never upheld the

Muslim cause in the past. He tried to break the Arab alliance with the Western powers by

offering to evacuate Kuwait in return for Israeli withdrawal from its occupied territories—

despite the fact that he had never upheld the Palestinian cause either. When his efforts failed

to weaken the coalition’s resolve, Hussein detained as hostages all foreigners caught in Kuwait

and Iraq and moved to conclude permanent peace with Iran, thereby freeing his half-million-

man army for battle.

Oil wells

set afire by Iraqi troops fleeing Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, April 22, 1991.Sgt. Dick

Moreno/U.S. Department of DefenseThus began the first post-Cold War world crisis. It can be
described as such not only because it occurred after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in Europe

and the dramatic moves toward East–West détente but also because of the characteristics of

the crisis itself. The stakes in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait did not place Soviet and Western

interests in direct conflict. Rather than falling into competition over how to handle the crisis,

the United States and Soviet Union appeared in full agreement as the votes at the UN indicated.

To be sure, a cutoff of oil exports from the Middle East would harm the Western states and

perhaps even help the U.S.S.R. as the world’s largest oil producer, but Gorbachev was counting

on large-scale economic aid from the West. If he opposed President Bush’s efforts to deal with

the crisis, both the economic damage done to the West and the political hostility his opposition

would arouse might end Gorbachev’s hopes for economic assistance. Bush, in turn, openly

described the Persian Gulf crisis as a test case for the “new world order” he hoped to

inaugurate in the wake of the Cold War: a test of the United Nations as a genuine force for

peace and justice, and thus of Soviet–Western cooperation.

UN COALITION AND ULTIMATUM

 George Bush.Dave Valdez/White House

photoBush demonstrated extraordinary energy and deftness in building and maintaining the

UN coalition against Iraq. His preferred medium of diplomacy was the telephone, and he kept in

constant touch with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, Egypt,

Saudi Arabia, and all other states represented either in the UN Security Council or in Operation

Desert Shield. In some cases he doubtless had to make concessions on other diplomatic issues

to win full support or, in the case of the Chinese, abstention, but he succeeded in presenting

Hussein with a united front. Only the vulnerable neighbouring kingdom of Jordan, along with

Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, and the PLO, openly sided with Iraq. Finally, this was clearly a

post-Cold War crisis inasmuch as a large portion of the American contingent in Saudi Arabia was
transferred there from bases in Germany, a clear indication that the United States no longer

considered the Red Army a clear and present danger in Europe.

As the crisis deepened, American observers applauded Bush for his skill in building the coalition,

but critics also began to question his strategy. Would economic sanctions suffice to pry the

Iraqis out of Kuwait? If so, would the coalition hold together long enough for that to occur, or

would military threats be necessary to convince Hussein that he must retreat? Would Bush’s

insistence on working through the UN backfire? It seemed unlikely that all the world could be

brought to endorse so bold and controversial an action. Not since the Korean War had the UN

authorized offensive military action, and then only because the Soviets were boycotting the

Security Council. However, by working gradually and calmly and in constant consultation with

the Allies, Bush succeeded in convincing the Security Council to give him the authorizations he

requested. On August 25 it voted to permit Allied ships in the Persian Gulf to use force to

enforce the embargo against Iraq. On September 9, Bush and Gorbachev met in Helsinki and

issued a joint declaration calling for Iraq to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait.

Despite these demonstrations of unanimity, Hussein was not convinced that Bush could back

up his promise that “the annexation of Kuwait will not stand.” In early September he began

releasing foreign nationals being detained in Kuwait, thereby eliminating the fears in many

countries of a prolonged hostage crisis. Whatever his motive, this first act of leniency on

Hussein’s part raised hopes that a diplomatic solution might still be found. The months from

October 1990 to January 1991, therefore, brought numerous and hectic efforts by the French

and Soviet governments to initiate negotiations and to head off an outbreak of hostilities.
In October, after an emissary had flown to Baghdad to urge Hussein to withdraw, the Soviets

announced that Iraq would be willing to negotiate if it could be assured that it could keep the

Ar-Rumaylah oil fields and two strategic islands offshore. The United States, however, stood by

the UN resolution calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal lest Hussein seem to be

rewarded in any way for his aggression. Instead, Bush succeeded in getting the Security Council

to stiffen its requirements with a resolution holding Iraq liable for reparations for all damage

caused in Kuwait by its invasion and occupation. Then, on November 8, Bush announced that

he was doubling the size of the Desert Shield forces from 200,000 to more than 400,000

soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, so that Allied forces would, if necessary, have “an

adequate offensive military option.” Hussein countered by reinforcing his own army of

occupation to the level of 680,000 men.

What was U.S. policy at this time? Most observers believed that Bush would not or could not go

to war on behalf of Kuwait and would sooner or later employ the multiple UN resolutions as

bargaining chips—sacrificing some in return for an Iraqi withdrawal. Even the new military

buildup did not imply an imminent war, since it could be justified by the argument that Hussein

would not negotiate seriously unless faced with a threat of force. No sign of compromise

emanated from the White House, however. Instead, Bush and his advisers repeated their

insistence that Iraq comply with the UN resolutions unconditionally. Moreover, Middle East

analysts and intelligence agencies began to question whether a mere Iraqi withdrawal from

Kuwait would suffice to pacify the region. After all, Hussein had proved twice that he

considered aggressive war an acceptable tool of policy. He had built up a huge army and spent
10 years’ worth of oil revenues on the most sophisticated weapons he could obtain, including

chemical and biological agents and nuclear weapons facilities that were within a year or two of

producing warheads. In other words, to oblige the Iraqis simply to withdraw from Kuwait would

not prevent them from attacking there, or elsewhere, at some future time of their choosing.

Genuine security in the gulf region would seem to require the destruction of the offensive

capability of the Iraqi army and preferably the removal of Hussein himself. Such goals, however,

could be achieved only through war, not by any sort of diplomatic compromise. On November

29, contrary to all expectations, Bush and the United States received authorization from the

Security Council to use all means necessary in the gulf if Iraq failed to comply with all UN

resolutions by January 15, 1991.

To bow to this ultimatum would be humiliating for Hussein, an admission of the bankruptcy of

his policy and of his impotence to resist the coalition. To some observers it seemed that Bush

was unwilling to leave Iraq the sort of opening that might avert a war. Bush argued that it was

not his responsibility to provide Hussein with a way out and that he would not permit Hussein

to appear, in the eyes of the Arab masses, as a hero who had stood up to the American

imperialists. Saddam Hussein refused to respond constructively to French and Soviet overtures,

remained defiant, and escalated his rhetoric. Meanwhile, his occupation force looted Kuwait

city and dug an elaborate defensive line along the Kuwaiti–Saudi border.

President Bush’s refusal to compromise seemed to contradict his stated readiness to talk. While

he had shown great determination and skill in building the coalition, Bush had failed to
communicate clearly the purpose of this vast military exercise. At one point, while the

President was emphasizing that the conflict was about resisting aggression and defending the

sovereign rights of nations and while protesters were chanting “no blood for oil,” Secretary

Baker said that the conflict was in fact about jobs. He meant that a cutoff in oil exports might so

damage the world economy as to spark a great depression, but it came out sounding as if the

administration did not know what it was proposing to fight for.

In the final months of 1990 a strange alliance sprang up in opposition to Bush’s policy,

consisting of liberals and peace activists on the one hand and neo-isolationist conservatives on

the other. After a sober January debate, the Senate finally voted 52–47, and the House 250–

183, to authorize the President to use force. Given this mood in the Congress, Iraq probably

could have tied Bush’s hands just by making a conciliatory gesture of some kind. Instead,

Hussein played into Bush’s hands.

Hussein had called what he thought was an American bluff by allowing the January 15 UN

deadline to come and go. Instead, just a day later, Bush announced that Operation Desert

Shield had become Operation Desert Storm and that the liberation of Kuwait had begun. He

was not starting a war—the war, he reminded the world, had been started by Iraq the previous

August—but he was launching the counterattack to drive back the aggressor. Hundreds of U.S.

bombers, augmented by French, British, Saudi, and Kuwaiti planes and U.S. Navy cruise missiles,

dropped precision-guided bombs on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. It was the start of the

most intense campaign of strategic bombing in history, aimed in the first weeks at Iraqi
command and control centres, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons plants, conventional

weapons facilities, electrical utilities, bridges and dams, and all manner of military and

government installations. From the first it was evident that Iraq was unable to mount

meaningful resistance. Its radar and air defense network was destroyed, and most of its

warplanes fled to airfields in neutral Iran to escape destruction.

Hussein’s reaction to the outbreak of war was to strike back with words, threats, terror

weapons, and ploys to break the unity and resolve of the UN coalition. He decreed a holy war

against the United States, called on all Muslims to unite against the Satanic enemy, and warned

that in this “mother of all battles” the Americans would drown in “pools of their own blood.”

He made good on his prewar pledge to attack neutral Israel, firing 39 Soviet-made Scud surface-

to-surface missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Most fell harmlessly, none contained the poison

gas warheads Hussein had threatened to use, and after the first days many were destroyed in

flight by American Patriot antimissile missiles. Furthermore, Hussein’s purpose in launching the

Scuds at neutral Israel was not achieved. He had hoped to provoke an Israeli counterstrike and

thereby detach the Syrians and Egyptians from the enemy coalition. The Israelis were

understandably furious at the unprovoked attacks against defenseless civilian targets but

understood Bush’s appeals to them not to respond. The Arab-Western coalition hung together.

Hussein tried every technique at his disposal to discredit the Allied operation. He opened

Kuwaiti oil pipelines into the sea and created a huge oil slick in hopes of clogging Saudi

freshwater plants and shocking American opinion with the extent of the environmental
consequences of the war. He mistreated Allied airmen taken prisoner and televised trumped-up

propaganda reports alleging that the Allies were purposely bombing civilian targets. All this only

proved to Western populations, however, that he was indeed a madman, and it steeled their

will to see him defeated. The only way left for Hussein to win the war was to entrap the

Americans in a close-fought ground war and to inflict so many casualties that American public

opinion would turn against the President.

SOVIET UNREST AT HOME AND DIPLOMACY ABROAD

While the world’s attention remained tuned to the war in the Persian Gulf, important changes

occurred in the U.S.S.R. Gorbachev faced increasing, and increasingly bold, internal opposition

from all sides. His economic reforms had failed utterly, and the Soviet GNP continued to fall

through the years 1989–90. Shortages grew worse, and even the old Soviet command structure

broke down as the constituent republics, one by one, set up their own economic systems and

voted to subordinate the laws of the Soviet Union to local laws. Boris Yeltsin, the Russian

leader, resigned from the Communist party and became the acknowledged leader of

democratic forces throughout the U.S.S.R. Separatism spread among the republics, with the

Baltic states taking the lead in hopes of winning complete independence. At the same time,

hard-liners in the KGB, the army, and the Communist party gradually regrouped after the

buffetings of previous years and criticized Gorbachev for being too soft on dissent. The middle

ground of moderate reformism was disappearing from beneath Gorbachev’s feet. Late in 1990

he began to issue sterner warnings to Yeltsin to cease and desist, and he insisted that the

Baltics and other republics submit to his newly drafted union treaty regulating the relationship
between them and the Soviet central government. He also won still greater emergency powers

for himself as president from the Congress of People’s Deputies.

Westerners were awakened to the likelihood of a crackdown in the U.S.S.R. in December 1990,

when Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s reformist friend and a main architect of détente with the

West, suddenly resigned as foreign minister and warned of imminent dictatorship in the

U.S.S.R. Indeed, no sooner had the Western powers opened the war against Iraq in January

1991 than Soviet security forces entered Vilnius and forcibly evicted Lithuanian patriots from

public buildings, at the cost of several lives. Just as in Hungary in 1956, when the Western

powers were distracted by the Suez crisis, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the United

States was bogged down in Vietnam, the Kremlin took advantage of the Persian Gulf War to

order a crackdown on challenges to its empire.

Gorbachev suddenly distanced himself from the UN coalition and began playing a separate

game. He would extend his good offices, he said, to persuade Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait

and thereby render a ground war unnecessary. His motives might have included any of a

number of concerns: to end a war that had become a showcase for high-tech American

weapons and thus was magnifying American prestige at the expense of the Soviets; to appease

the U.S.S.R.’s own Muslim populations in Central Asia (though they were Turkic peoples and not

necessarily in sympathy with Iraq); to reclaim the Soviets’ traditional role as friend of the radical

Arab states and advocate for the Palestinians; to save for the U.S.S.R. a seat at the peace

conference even though it had contributed no forces and no money to the Allied effort.
Gorbachev’s gambit began on February 15, when Iraq announced its “readiness to deal with”

the demand that it evacuate Kuwait. Bush denounced the announcement as a cruel hoax

inasmuch as Hussein had known for months the UN conditions and could at any time have

chosen to observe them. Gorbachev hailed the announcement, however, and invited the Iraqi

foreign minister to Moscow. The Soviet plan called for a withdrawal from Kuwait, in return for

which the U.S.S.R. would see that Hussein was spared the terms of the other UN resolutions,

including punishment for war crimes and reparations to Kuwait. Gorbachev also promised to

work for a Middle East peace conference after the war, thereby linking the Kuwaiti situation to

the Palestinian. The Soviets (and Iraqis) were betting that Western publics would lose their

stomach for a possibly bloody ground war once Iraq had promised to fulfill their main goal—the

liberation of Kuwait. If they won their bet, Hussein would not only survive in power, but his

army would be largely intact and he could claim a victory of sorts for having advanced the “Arab

cause.” Bush consulted with the Allies and then set a final deadline for unconditional Iraqi

withdrawal from Kuwait.

The Soviets and Iraqis then produced yet another plan under which Iraq would withdraw. The

linkage to the Palestinians was dropped this time, but a number of other conditions remained

that flew in the face of Bush’s demand for “unconditional withdrawal” from Kuwait. Bush’s

deliberate policy of channelling all decisions through the UN now paid off. The Soviets called an

emergency session of the Security Council and presented their plan as the best chance for

peace, but the member states refused to throw out their own resolutions. The alliance held, the
Soviet gambit failed, and Gorbachev himself then backed off and expressed support for the UN

effort.

THE GROUND WAR

U.S. Marines entering Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War,

February 1991.© Christopher Morris—Black Star/PNIWhen the final deadline was passed on

February 23, the carefully planned UN ground offensive began at once. Saudi and Kuwaiti forces

moved up the coast of the Persian Gulf toward Kuwait city, and U.S. Marines punched through

the main Iraqi defenses on the southern Kuwaiti border, while more Marines on board ship

feinted at making an amphibious landing to tie down Iraqi reserves. The main thrust came far

inland on the desert flank, where American and Anglo-French armoured columns swept around

the flank of the Iraqi army and turned eastward through southern Iraq on a line toward Basra.

The Iraqi units in Kuwait were trapped in a pocket. The Republican Guards near the Iraqi–

Kuwaiti border were engaged and destroyed by Allied tanks and aircraft. Within three days
Hussein’s massive army ceased to exist; 100,000 Iraqis had surrendered and tens of thousands

more were trying to flee homeward. On February 27 the Allied forces had achieved all their

major objectives, and Bush announced a cease-fire to take effect just 100 hours after the

ground war had begun. Though Hussein still refused to make the personal confession of failure

that Bush desired, the Iraqi government conceded defeat by announcing its willingness to abide

by all 12 UN resolutions.

In retrospect, the war was a product of grave miscalculations on both sides. Throughout the

1980s U.S. policy had favoured Iraq in its war against Iran and permitted the continued export

of strategic materials to Hussein despite repeated indications of his fanaticism and ambition.

Hussein’s errors were even more egregious and deadly. In light of the Vietnam War and the

Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–80, he judged the United States to be unwilling and unable to

take up a serious challenge in Asia, even one mounted by a Third World country. Having

decided to invade, he threw away his advantage of surprise by stopping in Kuwait instead of

sweeping down the gulf coast and conquering Saudi Arabia and the emirates as well. He then

waited five months, affording the United States time to mobilize international support and send

military forces halfway around the world. Finally, he failed to extend his heavily fortified

defense lines westward along the Saudi–Iraqi border.

The war in the Persian Gulf thus proved to be an American and UN victory beyond the most

sanguine hopes even of its military designers. The Iraqi military suffered more than 100,000

casualties at a cost to the Allies of some 340 killed; it was the most one-sided major

engagement in the history of modern warfare. Kuwait was freed, albeit at the cost of terrible
damage, since the Iraqis practiced a scorched-earth policy that included setting ablaze

hundreds of oil wells. Above all, the UN had shown itself to be truly united and possessed of the

will to back up its resolutions with force. What the Bush administration did not accomplish,

however, was the overthrow of Hussein himself. On the advice of General Colin Powell,

chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bush decided not to press on to Baghdad or to destroy

all Iraq’s Republican Guard units. Hussein proceeded to crush challenges to his authority from

the Kurds in northern Iraq and Shīʿite dissidents in the south. In the first instance, Bush was

restrained by the interests of Turkey, which also contained a large Kurdish minority. In the

latter case, he was restrained by fear that Iran’s Shīʿite regime might try to expand its own

reach at Iraq’s expense. U.S. forces did provide humanitarian relief to 1,000,000 Kurdish

refugees and enforce no-fly zones to stop Iraqi attacks on civilians, but American policy clearly

meant to uphold Iraqi unity so as to preserve the regional balance of power. Bush probably

expected Hussein to be overthrown by the Iraqis themselves, but the dictator suppressed a

military coup on July 2, 1992, and was still in power long after Bush himself was out of office.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

Meanwhile, Gorbachev’s efforts to crack down on dissident Soviet ethnic groups failed

miserably. Within weeks of the January 1991 bloodshed in Lithuania, hundreds of thousands of

Muscovites defied the ban on public demonstrations, six Soviet republics boycotted a

referendum on Gorbachev’s new union plan, and Ukrainian coal miners went on strike.

When Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic with 60 percent of the vote on June

12, he clearly emerged as a more legitimate apostle of reform. Western governments observed
these challenges to Soviet authority with a mixture of delight and dismay. American

conservatives urged the White House to support the republics’ struggle for freedom, but Bush

insisted on caution. He had worked closely with Gorbachev to end the Cold War peaceably and

feared that his fall from power would mean either the return of Communist hard-liners or the

crack-up of the U.S.S.R. into quarreling regions. Moreover, given his lack of experience and

reputation as a hard-drinking, impulsive populist, Yeltsin seemed suspect. In what proved to be

a final bid to help Gorbachev, Bush flew to Moscow on July 29 to sign the START treaty for

reduction of nuclear arsenals, then delivered a speech, later mocked as his “Chicken Kiev”

speech, in which he warned the Ukrainian parliament against “suicidal nationalism.”

Gorbachev’s fate was sealed, however, on August 19 when a so-called Emergency Committee

of Soviet hard-liners removed him from office while he was vacationing in Crimea and imposed

martial law. The task of resistance fell to Yeltsin, who branded the coup leaders as traitors,

barricaded himself inside the Russian parliament surrounded by his supporters, and dared the

military to attack their fellow citizens. After one brief clash, the soldiers indeed wavered and

the coup collapsed within 48 hours. Gorbachev was returned to the office of Soviet president

but never regained real power, which had clearly passed to the courageous Yeltsin. Moreover,

the failed coup destroyed the last remnants of fear or loyalty that had held the Soviet empire

together. Estonia and Latvia joined Lithuania by declaring independence, and this time the

United States immediately extended recognition. On August 24 Ukraine declared

independence, Belorussia (Belarus) the next day, and Moldavia (Moldova) on the 27th. The

Russian parliament, in turn, granted Yeltsin sweeping emergency powers to liberalize the
economy and suppress the Communist party. Even then Gorbachev tried to salvage some sort

of economic and security union, but he gave up on December 1 when Ukrainian voters

approved independence in a referendum. On the 8th Yeltsin and the newly elected presidents

of Ukraine and Belarus declared that the U.S.S.R. had ceased to exist and replaced it with the

loose Commonwealth of Independent States. The U.S. ambassador, Robert Strauss, finally

acknowledged that Gorbachev was “in decline” and that henceforth Yeltsin’s government “are

the people with whom we’ll deal.” Gorbachev resigned on December 25, the hammer-and-

sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin, and in its place rose the white, blue, and red flag of

Russia.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union completed the liquidation of the Cold War by extinguishing

Leninism in its homeland. Happily, the chaos feared by the Bush administration did not erupt,

but the emergence of 15 independent states from the wreckage posed a plethora of new

problems. All the states were in economic distress as they began to make the transition from

centrally planned to market economies. All contained significant national minorities; none had

secure, legitimate boundaries; and Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan possessed sizable stocks of

nuclear weapons. Thus, the world might be less scary in the short run, but it did not promise to

be more stable.

THE QUEST FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER, 1991–95

In the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, Bush had summoned the United Nations to the task of

building a new world order. He was seeking to place the resistance to Iraqi aggression on a high
moral plane but was also responding to critics who accused him of lacking “vision.” In

fact, American opinion was sharply divided on how to take advantage of the sudden, surprising

victory in the Cold War. Neo-isolationists urged the United States to pare back foreign

commitments, neo-nationalists wanted the country to look more to its own interests abroad,

liberals hoped for a “peace dividend” that could be applied to a domestic agenda ranging from

education to health care and crime, and all hoped to address the yawning deficits in the U.S.

budget and trade balance. Internationalists of both parties, however, insisted that Americans

would miss a historic opportunity if they turned inward after the Cold War. Twice before in the

20th century the United States had led the world to victories over tyranny only to see its plans

for a democratic world order frustrated. As the only nation with the unique combination of

military, economic, and ideological strengths needed to lead, the United States now had a duty

to “win the peace.”

Was bold leadership in fact all that was needed to fashion a secure and free world order? Or

must the post-Cold War international system, like all previous ones, evolve according to the

play of power and interest among states? Would the end of the bipolar world eventuate in a

unipolar one led by the UN? Or would it fragment into a multipolar system, with new sorts and

sources of threats, such as ethnic and regional violence, terrorism, and the proliferation of

weapons of mass destruction to second-level states, some of them hostile to Western values?

PROSPECTS FOR PEACE

THE MIDDLE EAST

At least two abiding conflicts did seem ripe for resolution in the wake of the Cold War and the

Persian Gulf War. In the Middle East mutually reinforcing changes on the international,

regional, and domestic fronts breathed new life into the peace process. First, the American

commitment to gulf security raised U.S. prestige and influence throughout the entire region.

Second, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab governments cut financial support for the PLO.

Third, the foremost “rejectionist” Arab states like Syria and Iraq were marginalized—the former

because of the loss of its Soviet patron, the latter by military defeat. Fourth, weary Palestinians

and Israelis began to look for an alternative to the ongoing strife of the intifada in the disputed

territories. Sensing the opportunity born of these changes, Bush sent Secretary of State Baker

to the Middle East twice in the spring of 1991 in order to revive the peace process, then joined

Gorbachev on July 31 in calling for a Middle East peace conference. Other hopeful signs

included Jordan’s tentative moves away from Iraq and toward a more representative

government at home and the renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel by the U.S.S.R., China,

and India. In June 1992, the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, defeated the Likud in elections,

bringing to power a more flexible Israeli cabinet. Bush then extended $10,000,000,000 in

American loan guarantees to Israel, and Jerusalem in turn announced a moratorium on new

Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

Thanks to Bush’s leadership, the conference that opened in Madrid on October 30, 1991,

spawned three diplomatic tracks: Israeli–Palestinian discussions on an interim settlement;

bilateral talks between Israel, on the one hand, and Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, on the other;

and multilateral conferences designed to support the first two tracks. Syria’s President Assad
signalled a new flexibility when he first used the word “peace” in September 1992, and he later

indicated that the total return of the Golan Heights was no longer a precondition for

negotiations. A crucial breakthrough was made in May 1993 as Israel began secret negotiations

with the PLO that bore fruit in August when—just as the delegates were gathering for the 11th

multilateral round of talks—the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, made the surprise

announcement that an accord had been reached with the PLO. Secret talks held in Norway had

resulted in a plan to establish Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and in Jericho. As part of the

agreement ʿArafāt repudiated before the Israelis the long-standing Palestinian denunciation of

Israel’s “right to exist.” The signing of a Declaration of Principles based on UN Resolutions 242

and 338, presided over by U.S. President Bill Clinton, followed on September 13. Speculation

ensued as to whether ʿArafāt would survive to enforce the accord against the will of terrorist

groups like Ḥamās. Despite continued violence, however, an implementation accord was

reached on May 4, 1994, that in turn allowed the consummation of peace between Jordan and

Israel on October 26. As the year ended, hopes were high that Syria would also agree to terms.

Several sticky points remained between Jerusalem and Damascus, however, while the Israelis

and Americans discussed whether or not U.S. peacekeeping forces should be deployed on the

Golan Heights to monitor an agreement.

SOUTH AFRICA

The end of the Cold War also promoted progress in the long-standing South African conflict. To

be sure, Western and Soviet-bloc states had ritually condemned apartheid and imposed

economic sanctions against the white government. So long as South Africa could point to the
Communist backing received by the African National Congress (ANC) and neighbouring states

like Angola and Mozambique, however, it had a certain leverage with which to resist black

demands for majority rule. It was the disappearance of the Communist threat and the example

of brave eastern Europeans throwing off their chains that finally allowed President F.W. de

Klerk to persuade even the ardent Afrikaaners of his National Party to accept reform. So, too,

did the ANC, which affirmed its readiness, in January 1990, to engage the South African

government in peaceful negotiations. The following month de Klerk released the ANC

leader Nelson Mandela from prison. Talks began on May 2, complicated by intramural violence

among competing black factions, especially the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of the

Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. De Klerk pressed on, however, and in June 1991 Parliament

repealed its requirement that citizens be categorized by race. The following month Bush, citing

the progress made, lifted American sanctions against South Africa.

The final act began in December 1991 when de Klerk and Mandela sat down to design an

interim constitutional arrangement for the transfer of power. Mandela insisted on “one man,

one vote” at once, while whites, fearing retribution from an all-black government, insisted on a

guaranteed voice in the new regime. The stalemate was broken in September at the expense of

the IFP, which broke relations with Pretoria. De Klerk and Mandela proceeded bilaterally, and

on February 12, 1993, they arrived at a formula for a transitional “government of national

unity.” They eventually fixed the date for the first all-South African free elections for April 1994.

Ongoing factional violence in the black townships threatened to derail the plan, but in the final

weeks the IFP agreed to permit its KwaZulu territory to participate. In the voting on April 26
Mandela won a landslide victory, and he was inaugurated as president on May 10. He called on

all citizens “to heal the wounds of the past,” respect “the fundamental rights of the individual,”

and construct “a new order based on justice for all.” As the historic year closed, it appeared

that inter- or intraracial bloodbaths and confiscations would not occur and that South Africa

might truly be born anew.

ASSERTIVE MULTILATERALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

George Bush’s apparent triumphs in foreign policy failed to ensure his reelection in 1992,

however. Instead, Americans turned their attention to domestic issues and seemed to hunger

for change. Bush lost in a three-way race to Bill Clinton, a self-styled “New Democrat” with little

experience or interest in world affairs. His campaign staff’s reminder to themselves—“It’s the

economy, stupid!”—epitomized their candidate’s desire to take advantage of the U.S. public’s

discontent over economic issues. Like Woodrow Wilson, however, who had the same desire,

Clinton was harassed by overseas crises from the start.

Clinton’s foreign policy team, led by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National

Security Adviser Anthony Lake, included veterans of the Carter administration, which had

emphasized human rights. They, in turn, were influenced by academic theories holding that

military power was now less important than economic power and that the end of the Cold War

would finally permit the United Nations to provide a workable system of global collective

security. Clinton symbolized this neo-Wilsonian bent when he elevated UN

Ambassador Madeleine Albright to cabinet rank. She defined American policy as “assertive
multilateralism” and supported Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s call for a more

ambitious UN agenda.

THREE TESTS

The crises awaiting Clinton quickly revealed the pitfalls on the road to a new world order. The

most abiding was the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the most immediate impact came

in Somalia. That East African state had suffered a total breakdown of civil authority, and

hundreds of thousands of people were dying of famine as warlords fought for control. During

his last days in office Bush had approved Operation Restore Hope for the dispatch to Somalia of

some 28,000 American troops. He styled it a humanitarian exercise, and in December 1992

Marines landed safely in Mogadishu, with the aim of turning control of the operation over to

the UN as soon as possible. The Clinton administration, however, supported a UN resolution of

March 26, 1993, that expanded the mission to include “the rehabilitation of the political

institutions and economy of Somalia.” Albright lauded this effort at state-building as “an

unprecedented enterprise aimed at nothing less than the restoration of an entire country.”

Clinton officials articulated the principles of their new foreign policy in a series of speeches.

Lake explained on September 21, 1993, that democracy and market economics were in the

ascendant, so that, just as the United States had previously laboured to contain communism, it

should now work for “enlargement” of the community of free nations. Albright outlined the

moral, financial, and political benefits of multilateral action in regional disputes, and Clinton

defined his goal as nothing less than “to expand the reach of democracy and economic progress
across the whole of Europe and to the far reaches of the world.” Within three weeks of Lake’s

speech this bold agenda began to unravel. On October 3–4, more than 75 U.S. Army Rangers

were wounded in an effort to capture the renegade Somali warlord General Maxamed Farax

Caydiid (Muḥammad Farah Aydid), and two American corpses were dragged through the

streets of Mogadishu before television cameras. American opinion immediately turned against

the intervention, especially when it was revealed that the troops were fighting under UN

commanders and had been denied heavy weapons by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. Clinton

was obliged to announce a deadline of March 31, 1994, for evacuation of the troops, which in

turn meant abandoning the state-building mission.

Just a week later, the enlargement agenda received another public relations blow when a mob

of armed Haitians at Port-au-Prince forced the withdrawal of American and Canadian troops

sent to prepare the return of the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That dispute dated

from September 30, 1991, when a military coup led by Brigadier General Raoul Cédras had

exiled Aristide and imposed martial law. The United States imposed economic sanctions but

was preoccupied for the rest of Bush’s term with the question of what to do with the thousands

of Haitian boat people fleeing the country for American shores. Clinton embraced Aristide

despite his communist sympathies and record of political violence and brokered the Governors

Island accord of July 1993, in which Cédras agreed to reinstate Aristide in return for amnesty

and the lifting of sanctions. Aristide refused to return, however, until the generals had left Haiti,

while Cédras stepped up violence against Aristide’s supporters. It was then that a U.S. ship

attempted to intervene, only to be turned back at the dock.

The embarrassments in Somalia and Haiti and the indecision on Bosnia and Herzegovina,

combined with military budget cuts exceeding those planned by Bush, provoked charges that

the Clinton administration had no foreign policy at all, or an exceedingly ambitious one run

from the UN and beyond the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces. To stem the criticism, Clinton

issued a presidential directive that outlined precise rules for future deployments abroad. They

included the stipulations that a given crisis be susceptible to a military solution with a clearly

defined goal, that sufficient force be employed, that a clear end point be identifiable, and that

U.S. forces go into combat only under U.S. command. Trimming their sails, Lake and Albright

said that the administration would henceforth take multilateral or unilateral action on a case-

by-case basis. Dubbed “deliberative multilateralism,” it seemed another example of reactive ad

hoc policy making.

A final crisis inherited by Clinton was sparked by the North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung’s

apparent intention to build nuclear bombs and the missiles needed to deliver them. One of the

few remaining hard-line Communist regimes, North Korea had agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-

proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985 as the price for receiving Soviet technical aid for its civilian

nuclear program. When communism collapsed in Europe, the North Koreans also gave signs of

wanting to shed their pariah status. In December 1991 they joined South Korea in a pledge to

make the peninsula nuclear-free (thereby obliging the United States to withdraw its own

nuclear warheads from the South). By the end of Bush’s term, however, evidence had come to

light that the North Koreans were cheating, first, by diverting enriched uranium to military
research and, second, by inhibiting inspections. They threatened repeatedly to suspend

adherence to the NPT.

Western experts pondered what Kim was up to. Did he mean to go nuclear, perhaps as a last-

ditch demonstration to prevent the collapse of his regime? Did he intend to sell bombs and

missiles abroad to boost his failing economy? Or did he intend to use his nuclear potential as a

bargaining chip in exchange for foreign economic aid? The situation posed a terrible dilemma

for the Clinton administration, which had made nonproliferation a top priority. Sooner or later

the United States would have to threaten the use of force, either because Kim refused to allow

inspections or because inspections revealed that North Korea was in fact building bombs. A

threat of force, however, might provoke the mysterious regime in P’yŏngyang into unleashing

nuclear or conventional attacks on its neighbours. South Korea and Japan urged caution, while

China, North Korea’s only possible ally in the dispute, refused to say whether or not it would

support sanctions or help to resolve the dispute. The United States alternated between

brandishing carrots and sticks, to which North Korea replied with a bewildering mix of signals

that culminated in a June 1994 threat to unleash war against the South.

At the moment of greatest tension, when Clinton was engaging in a military buildup in East Asia

and lobbying the UN for sanctions, he suddenly seemed to lose control of policy altogether. On

June 15, former President Carter travelled to P’yŏngyang and engaged Kim in negotiations that

resulted, four days later, in a tentative agreement. North Korea would gradually submit to

international inspections in return for a basket of benefits. At times Clinton seemed unaware of
Carter’s activities and at one point even denied that the former president’s words reflected

American policy. Negotiations were then delayed by the death of Kim and the accession to

power of his son Kim Jong Il. On August 13, however, a nuclear framework accord was signed

under which North Korea would remain within the NPT and cease to operate the reactors from

which it extracted weapons-grade plutonium. In exchange, the United States would provide

North Korea with two light-water reactors, to be paid for by Japan and South Korea, and

guarantee North Korea against nuclear attack. The United States would also supply oil to the

North to compensate for the energy production lost during the transition and would work

toward full diplomatic and economic relations. Because it appeared to reward nuclear blackmail

and did not preclude possible future cheating, the pact was criticized in Congress. For the

moment, however, Carter’s intervention relieved the crisis.

Almost the same course of events followed in Haiti, only this time with Clinton’s approval.

Through September 1994 the Haitian military junta continued its harsh rule in defiance of

sanctions and American threats. Clinton’s credibility would suffer further if he failed to act, and

he was also under pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus to help Haiti and was anxious

to stem the flow of refugees. After receiving UN approval for an invasion, Clinton issued an

ultimatum on September 15, advising General Cédras that “Your time is up. Leave now or we

will force you from power.” Republicans, however, warned of more bloodshed like that in

Somalia if the United States sent in Marines, and so Clinton searched for a way to oust the junta

without having Americans fight their way in. On the 17th, even as military units converged on

Haiti, he sent Carter and a blue-ribbon delegation to Port-au-Prince. After 36 hours of intense
discussions, Cédras agreed to leave the country and order his soldiers not to resist a U.S.

occupation, in return for amnesty. The first contingents of Operation Uphold Democracy

arrived on the 19th, and President Aristide returned home on October 15. U.S. forces remained

until March 1995 and were then replaced by a UN force.

DEVELOPMENTS IN FREE TRADE

Throughout 1993 and 1994 Republicans accused Clinton of naïveté and vacillation. Opinion

polls showed that the American people lacked confidence in U.S. foreign policy, while European

and Asian leaders were dismayed by what they saw as weak leadership from Washington. On

issues of international trade, however, Clinton scored major successes, albeit with Republican

help. As befitted a president who wanted to focus on the economy, Clinton stood forth as the

strongest proponent of free trade in decades. First, he completed negotiations begun under

Bush for a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to forge a common market among

Canada, Mexico, and the United States and won its passage in Congress in November 1993.

Clinton then dispelled fears that NAFTA might divide the world into hostile commercial blocs

when he won passage in December 1994 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT), dedicated to reducing trade barriers worldwide and establishing the World Trade

Organization (WTO).

The November 1994 elections transformed the environment of American foreign policy making

by giving the Republican Party control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Indications were that the new Congress would insist on higher military budgets but be less
willing to see armed forces deployed in regional crises. Beyond that all one could predict was

that Clinton’s foreign policy was likely to tilt more toward the “realistic” direction and less

toward the “idealistic” one that had informed the sanguine rhetoric of assertive multilateralism.

EUROPE ADRIFT AFTER THE COLD WAR

For 45 years Europe had been divided by the Iron Curtain. Though tragic and often tense, the

Cold War nonetheless imposed stability on Europe and allowed the western sector, at least, to

prosper as never before. The end of Communism, therefore, posed several vexing questions.

Would a united Germany dominate Europe economically and waver dangerously between East

and West in foreign policy? Could the new democracies of east-central Europe achieve Western

levels of prosperity and avoid the ethnic strife that had sparked two world wars? In the short

run, the worst fears were not realized. Chancellor Kohl took every opportunity to reaffirm

Germany’s commitment to the idea of a united Europe, while the high cost of rehabilitating the

former East Germany allayed fears of a German economic hegemony. Europe’s long-term

stability, however, depended on the continued vitality of institutions built up during the Cold

War. Would the EC and the NATO alliance remain vigorous in the absence of a Soviet threat?

In the 1980s the dynamic Jacques Delors had revived the momentum of European integration

by promoting the Single European Act, under which EC members were to establish full

economic and monetary union, with substantial coordination of foreign and social policies, by

1992. Most of Delors’s provisions were embodied in the Maastricht Treaty approved by the 12

EC member states (Spain and Portugal had been admitted in 1986) in December 1991. This
unprecedented surrender of national sovereignty worried governments and voters, however. A

national referendum in France barely approved the treaty, the Danes rejected it the first time

around, and the government of John Major, Thatcher’s successor as British prime minister,

nearly fell from power before persuading Parliament to ratify Maastricht in July 1993. The

treaty went into effect on November 1. In order to create “an ever closer union among the

peoples of Europe,” Maastricht replaced the old EC with a new European Union (EU), enhanced

the powers of the European Parliament at Strasbourg, promised monetary union by 1999,

promoted common policies on crime, immigration, social welfare, and the environment, and

called for “joint action” in foreign and security policy. The EU promptly voted to “broaden” as

well as “deepen” its membership by approving the applications on March 29 of Norway,

Sweden, Finland, and Austria (although Norwegian voters later rejected joining).

RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA

Even the prospect of a unified Europe could not ensure peace and prosperity unless two other

issues were addressed: the future of NATO and the relationship among the EU, the United

States, and the struggling democracies of eastern Europe, above all Russia. Western relations

with the new Russia began auspiciously. In early 1992 Yeltsin toured western Europe and signed

friendship treaties with Britain and France in exchange for aid and credits. On January 3, 1993,

Bush and Yeltsin signed the START II pact, promising to slash their long-range nuclear arsenals

by two-thirds within a decade. After a personal appeal from former President Richard Nixon,

the Bush administration also approved an economic assistance package for Russia, and

Congress voted funds to help Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons. On April 4, 1993, at a
summit meeting with Yeltsin at Vancouver, Clinton pledged an additional $1,600,000,000 in aid.

It remained unclear, however, how much the Western powers could influence Russia’s future.

Did outside assistance hasten Russia’s progress toward capitalism, or just help it to subsidize

old, inefficient industries? Should Western leaders urge “shock therapy” to propel Russia

quickly into capitalist modes even at the risk of high unemployment, or should they advise

Yeltsin to reform slowly? Should NATO stand firm against signs of Russian assertion in foreign

policy, or might accommodationist policies boost Yeltsin’s popularity at home?

Such questions became paramount after September 1993 when a coalition of Yeltsin’s

opponents in the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies challenged his reforms and emergency

powers and called for the President’s ouster. On September 21 Yeltsin dissolved the parliament,

and the latter promptly impeached him in favour of deposed Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy.

Violence soon erupted between security forces and mobs of Communist and nationalist

sympathizers marching in support of the insurgent deputies. On October 4, Yeltsin ordered

army units to attack the parliament with heavy weapons, resulting in an estimated 142 deaths.

He clearly was acting in “undemocratic” fashion, but he did so to suppress opponents of

democracy who had been elected under the Communist constitution. When fully free elections

were held in December 1993, however, ex-Communists and extreme nationalists led by

Vladimir Zhirinovsky won stunning victories. Clinton’s expert on Russian affairs, Strobe Talbott,

immediately called for “less shock, more therapy” in Russian economic policy, and Yelstin

proceeded to dismiss his more liberal ministers. He also took a harder line in foreign policy in

hopes of deflecting the criticism that he was too eager to please his Western benefactors. This
ominous turn of events called into question the fundamental assumption of Russian

partnership that underpinned Clinton’s foreign policy.

THE ROLE OF NATO

Russian assertiveness complicated Clinton’s efforts to recast NATO for the post-Cold War world.

American neo-isolationists thought that the alliance had outlived its purpose, but moderates of

both parties shuddered to think of a world without it and recalled that its function had been

not only to “keep Russia out” but also to “keep the Americans in and the Germans down.”

Another slogan, “out of area or out of business,” expressed the view that NATO should assume

the task of defending Western interests outside Europe. Still others urged NATO to expand

eastward and embrace the eager Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians. Yeltsin, after initially assenting

to Polish and Czech membership, announced in September 1993 that Russia would oppose

NATO expansion unless Russia were included. Defense Secretary Aspin floated Clinton’s

attempt at a solution on October 21, 1993, when he announced that NATO would offer less

formal partnerships for peace to former Soviet-bloc states, including Russia. Clinton toured

Europe in January 1994—after the Russian elections—to promote this so-called Partnership for

Peace, but he was met with disappointment in Warsaw and Prague and continued

intransigence from Moscow. In May 1994 the Russian defense minister, Peter Grachev, insisted

that if NATO was bent on expansion it must subordinate itself to the CSCE, an unwieldy

organization that included all the former Soviet republics. Then, on June 22, Russia insisted on a

voice in the Partnership for Peace that reflected its “weight and responsibility as a major

European, international, and nuclear power.” Meanwhile, American critics pointed out that not
to expand NATO implied recognition of a continued Russian sphere of influence over eastern

Europe, while to expand NATO would require the West to guarantee boundaries beyond its

capabilities. (The Kohl–Gorbachev accord on the reunification of Germany prohibited NATO

deployments east of the old Iron Curtain.) Finally, to admit new nations would simply “draw a

line” against Russia farther east. Clinton denied such an intent, but if he honoured Russia’s

wishes he would be permitting Russia to draw lines against NATO. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar

accordingly dismissed the Partnership for Peace as “an artful dodge,” while Yeltsin, in

December 1994, warned of a “Cold Peace.”

Russian assertiveness was more evident with regard to its “near abroad,” the former republics

of the Soviet Union. These states were indisputably within Russia’s sphere of influence, and

their economic, demographic, and security interests overlapped with Russia’s. Moscow also

claimed a right to intervene in its near abroad in order to keep the peace and defend Russian

minorities and economic interests, a claim the United States had little choice but to tolerate

because of its similar assertions regarding Panama and Haiti. By 1994 Belarus and several

Central Asian republics were coordinating their financial, economic, and security policies with

Moscow, and all the former Soviet states feared incurring Moscow’s displeasure.

THE BALKANS

There was a growing disarray within NATO and the EU in the post-Cold War world, a fact

evident in their ineffective and vacillating policies toward the former Yugoslavia. From its

inception in 1918, Yugoslavia had been subject to strong centrifugal tendencies as its many
constituent ethnic groups harboured ancient and current grievances against each other. World

War II resistance leader Josip Broz Tito restored Yugoslav unity but only through the imposition

of Communist ideology and complicated mechanisms for doling out benefits. This balance

teetered after Tito’s death in 1980, then collapsed after January 1990. By July, Slovenians voted

for autonomy and the Serb minority in Croatia sought to unite with Serbia. In December

Serbians elected a fiery nationalist and ex-Communist, Slobodan Miloševic, who exploited his

waning power over Yugoslav institutions to seize national assets on behalf of the Serbs.

Slovenia declared independence in December. As fighting erupted over disputed territories of

mixed population, the presidents of the six republics—Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,

Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro—failed to revive a loose confederation. On June 25,

1991, Croatia declared independence, and the fighting spread.

During the Cold War the United States patronized Yugoslavia because of its independence from

the Soviet bloc. The Bush administration, preoccupied elsewhere, regarded the Yugoslav

breakup as a European problem. The EC, in turn, did not want to wade into a civil war and could

not agree on a common posture until Germany abruptly recognized Slovenia and Croatia. In late

1991 and early 1992 Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, the EC

and the United States imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia, a UN delegation sought Serbian

support for a cease-fire and peacekeeping forces, and the Security Council approved the

dispatch of 14,400 UN peacekeepers (mostly British and French). A UN plan, which would have

divided Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia into a crazy quilt of cantons based on local ethnic

majorities, pleased no one, and fighting escalated throughout 1992 amid atrocities and
evidence of “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs. UN sanctions, imposed in May, had little effect,

and the UN peacekeeping forces had no peace to keep and no power to impose one.

During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Clinton criticized Bush for his ineffectual Balkans’

policy. After Christopher toured European capitals in early 1993, however, it became clear that

the NATO powers were unwilling to discipline the Serbs unless the United States contributed

ground troops. The bombing of a crowded market in Sarajevo in February 1994 forced Clinton

to threaten Serbia with air strikes. Russia then argued in support of Serbia and promoted its

own plan for a partition of Bosnia. Clinton vetoed any plan that rewarded “Serbian aggression,”

yet he also refused to lift the arms embargo on the beleaguered Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks).

By mid-1994 the confused battle lines had somewhat clarified themselves. Slovenia was

independent and at peace. Macedonia was admitted to the UN under the curious name (in

deference to Greek sensibilities) The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and a small

international force, including Americans, protected it. Croatia controlled almost all its putative

territory, including the Dalmatian coast. What remained of Yugoslavia included Serbia,

Montenegro, and portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina inhabited or claimed by Bosnian Serbs,

including a corridor stretching almost to the Adriatic Sea. The would-be state of Bosnia was

strangled within this noose as the fighting among Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, Bosniaks, Muslim

renegades, and Croats shifted from Sarajevo to Goražde to Bihad. To combat Serb aggression,

the UN, NATO, and the United States debated whether to retaliate with air strikes. Each time a

truce seemed near, fighting broke out anew. By the autumn of 1994 UN peacekeepers were
literally being held hostage by the Serbs, and it was estimated that as many as 50,000

additional troops might be needed to extricate the UN force. Clinton pledged 25,000 American

troops to such an effort, but everyone—not least the Serbs—hoped to avoid a deeper Western

involvement.

There was little progress toward resolving the conflict between 1991 and December

1994. Carter then embarked on his third mission as a freelance mediator, and in the days

before Christmas he shuttled between Bosnian Serbs and Bosniaks and fashioned an interim

truce of at least four months’ duration, which was reaffirmed in a UN-brokered accord on

December 31. Although the truce gradually began to break down, by December 1995 a peace

accord was drafted that created a loosely federalized Bosnia and Herzegovina divided roughly

between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (a decentralized federation of Croats and

Bosniaks) and the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb Republic).

TOWARD A NEW MILLENNIUM

CONFLICT AND PEACEMAKING, 1996–2000

The second half of the 1990s was marked by conflict between age-old enemies and efforts to

bring peace to the world’s trouble spots. The Middle East peace process suffered a series of

delays and breakdowns. In November 1995 a Jewish extremist opposed to negotiations with

the Palestinians assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

negotiated the Hebron agreement, which provided for the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops
from that city, with ʿArafāt in January 1997, new Jewish settlements were constructed and each

side accused the other of undermining the agreement.

With Oslo’s deadline of May 4, 1999, looming for the resolution of all outstanding issues, fears

arose that the Palestinians might independently declare statehood—a move that would

escalate tensions with Israel. In 1998 at Wye Mills, Maryland, Netanyahu and ʿArafāt signed an

accord in which the Palestinians agreed to amend the provision in their charter that called for

the destruction of Israel and Israel agreed to grant the Palestinians an additional 14 percent of

the West Bank. The agreement immediately began to unravel, however, and Netanyahu—citing

continued Palestinian violence and making new demands—refused to proceed with the second

phase of Israel’s withdrawal.

Netanyahu’s landslide defeat by Ehud Barak in the 1999 elections raised hope that a final

agreement would be reached. Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, and

later that year Clinton arranged a summit at Camp David between Barak and ʿArafāt. Despite

far-reaching concessions by both sides, the summit failed. Meanwhile, a visit by Ariel Sharon,

the new Likud party leader, to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to emphasize Israeli sovereignty

over the city sparked Palestinian protests and the worst violence in the region in decades. As

the fighting intensified, Barak came under increasing domestic pressure and called an early

prime ministerial election. Sharon’s landslide victory in February 2001 signaled a more cautious

Israeli approach to the peace process.

In the former Yugoslavia, civil protest gave way to wide-scale fighting between Serbs and ethnic

Albanians in Kosovo in February 1998, when Miloševic ordered troops into the province to

regain territory controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army. In October Miloševic agreed to a

truce and the removal of Serbian troops from Kosovo, though the fighting continued, as did the

slaughter of ethnic Albanians. To force Serbia’s withdrawal, NATO launched air strikes against

Serbia. The 78-day bombing campaign exacerbated atrocities in the short term, but by June it

had forced Miloševic to accept a peace plan jointly sponsored by Russia, the EU, and the United

States. In 2000 Miloševic was forced to resign following massive street demonstrations held to

protest his fraudulent attempt to declare himself the winner (over Vojislav Koštunica) in the

first round of the Yugoslavian presidential election. Miloševic was later arrested and extradited

to the Netherlands to stand trial before the UN war crimes tribunal.

Negotiations in Northern Ireland produced the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement) in

1998. After voters in both Ireland and Northern Ireland ratified it, power was officially devolved

on December 2, 1999, to an elected assembly headed by a Protestant first minister, David

Trimble of the mainstream Ulster Unionist Party, and his Roman Catholic deputy, Seamus

Mallon of the moderate Roman Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party. However, the

issue of decommissioning (disarmament) of paramilitary groups continued to undermine the

agreement into the 21st century. Less than three months after devolution, direct rule from

London was restored, though the assembly was recalled again in May. The resignation of

Trimble as first minister in 2001 over the IRA’s continued resistance to decommissioning

highlighted the tenuous nature of the peace process.

After 155 years of British rule, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 under the political

formula of “one country, two systems,” which preserved much of Hong Kong’s economic

autonomy. In the run-up to Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, China held

military exercises and fired missiles off Taiwan’s coast to discourage moves toward

independence. Relations between China and Taiwan further deteriorated in 1999 when

Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui announced his opposition to the “one China” policy, a move

that was interpreted as a declaration of independence. In March 2000 Ch’en Shui-bian, who

had earlier supported Taiwan’s independence, was elected president. Chen sought to placate

China by foregoing independence as long as China did not threaten Taiwan. However, China

spurned Chen’s offer and demanded that he endorse their version of the “one China” policy.

In a 1998 attack allegedly organized by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born leader of an

international terrorist network, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing

nearly 300 people and injuring more than 5,000. The United States responded by bombing

suspected terrorist-training bases in Sudan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the Taliban

(Persian: “Students”), an extremist Islamic group, consolidated its rule, though largely because

of the regime’s repressive methods—including public floggings and stoning to enforce rigid

social restrictions and prohibitions on many activities by women (e.g., attending school,

working, or appearing in public unaccompanied by a male relative)—it was not recognized by

most countries. Reports estimated that more than one million people died as a result of the

constant warring in Afghanistan and that there were more than three million refugees. Despite

international protests, in 2001 the Taliban destroyed much of the country’s pre-Islamic past,
including two large Buddha statues (standing 175 feet [53 metres] and 125 feet [38 metres]

high, respectively) that had been carved in the mountains at Bamiyan more than 1,500 years

earlier.

In 1998 India and Pakistan conducted a series of nuclear tests despite the opposition of world

leaders; Iraq ended its cooperation with UN arms inspectors; and, after widespread

antigovernment protests and rioting, Indonesian President Suharto resigned under pressure

after 32 years. In 1999, his successor, B.J. Habibie, ordered a referendum on independence

in East Timor. After nearly 80 percent voted in favour of independence, paramilitaries—aided in

some cases by Indonesian soldiers and police—burned and looted major towns and villages and

forced tens of thousands of refugees to flee to Australia and neighbouring islands. After intense

international pressure, Habibie allowed UN peacekeeping forces to secure the territory.

The new century brought hope to the Korean peninsula. In 2000 South Korean President Kim

Dae-Jung visited the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, thereby becoming the first South Korean

leader to visit North Korea. A summit followed, and in August, 100 North Koreans traveled to

Seoul for a reunion with family members, while 100 South Koreans arrived in Pyongyang. In

September, 63 North Koreans held in South Korean prisons as spies and political prisoners—

some for more than 40 years—were allowed to return to North Korea. North Korea also

reestablished relations with Italy and Australia and opened a consulate in Hong Kong.

Economic globalization brought benefits and concerns in the late 1990s. An economic crisis in

Asia threatened to undermine the region’s governments and to destabilize the world economy.
The WTO, which was established in 1995 to liberalize trade and enforce trade agreements, was

targeted by anticapitalist groups, who viewed it as an undemocratic tool of wealthy countries

that would undermine economic development and labour, health, and environmental

standards. Protests at IMF, World Bank, and WTO meetings—including one in Seattle,

Washington, in 1999, which involved approximately 50,000 people—became common and

threatened to hamper the efforts of these international institutions.

TENSION AND COOPERATION AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

The 1990s revealed how difficult it would be to design a global structure of peace that was

based on institutions and values shared by all the leading powers and capable of imposition

upon the lesser ones. After the collapse of communism, some analysts had talked buoyantly of

the triumph of capitalism and human rights, of the “end of history,” of a new world order. By

the late 1990s, however, Russia was in such a dire condition—lawlessness and organized crime

were rampant, in 1998 alone inflation was nearly 85 percent, Yeltsin fired two prime ministers,

and the Duma launched impeachment proceedings against him—that analysts began to wonder

if it would implode. The rosy scenarios gave way to suggestions that the world might soon be

rent by a “clash of civilizations” pitting the democracies against militant Islam and an imperial

China; by the spread of “chaos” as millions of refugees from the southern half of the world

invaded the wealthy lands of the north; by ecological and demographic disasters touched off by

the spread of industry and disease in the developing world; or by the spread of nuclear and

missile technology into the hands of terrorists. These visions were perhaps overly pessimistic,

but there were serious strains in the relationships of the great powers. Relations between the
United States and Russia were often tense—especially because of Russia’s opposition to NATO’s

use of force in the Balkans—and China’s dealings with the United States were likewise strained

over Taiwan and China’s human-rights policies. The 1990s showed how vital it was for the

world’s predominant powers to act together and with other countries to prevent conflict and to

meet the many challenges facing the globe. At the very least, the leaders of the 21st century

might derive hope from the fact that humanity survived the 20th century and acquire wisdom

from its turbulent history