Having replied to the questions that Professor Miscamble put to me in
response to my observations in the roundtable devoted to his new book,
_From Roosevelt to Truman_. I turn now to Professor Trachtenberg’s
comments on my review. My distinguished colleague begins by observing
that in his _A Constructed Peace_ he advanced thesis that in 1945
Secretary of State James F. Byrnes accepted “a more or less friendly
division of Europe into spheres of influence,” averring that I have
erred in taking Professor Miscamble to task for accepting that thesis–
to wit, that Byrnes sought a “spheres of influence peace.”

Readers unfamiliar with the historiography of the Cold war would
likely conclude that the idea of American support for a
spheres-of-influence settlement in the first instance originated with
Professor Trachtenberg’s; they could scarcely avoid the impression
that I opposed that such interpretation.

The idea that the United States was willing to accept the division of
Europe into spheres of influence is in fact quite old, predating _A
Constructed Peace_ by nearly half a century. The charge of the extreme
Right that President Roosevelt sold out Eastern Europe at Yalta
implied as much, and the paleo-revisionist writings of Denna Frank
Fleming developed the ideas c. 1950 that Roosevelt had been amenable
to a Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe and that the reversal of that
stance by the Truman Administration did much to spark the Cold War.
This conception of what Warren Kimball has called a “naked reverse
right” was central to most later revisionist historiography, so much
so that Professor Miscamble wrote his book largely to refute it.

While the idea of Roosevelt’s support for a spheres-of-influence
settlement is venerable, I was the first scholar to propose way back
in 1979 and 1981 that the Truman Administration was also initially
willing to countenance a Soviet sphere, and that in 1946 Secretary of
States James F. Byrnes even tried to formalize a postwar settlement on
that basis in.[1] Since Professor Trachtenberg has at various times
cited the article in _The Journal of American History_ in which I
developed that thesis most completely, I am, to say the least,
astonished that a contrary position should be ascribed to me.

Nonetheless, the interpretation of American policy that I developed in
1981, and which I hold still, differs from that of Professors
Trachtenberg and Miscamble in a most basic respect: their position, if
I have not missed any understated qualifications, is that the United
States simply abandoned any concern for Eastern Europe without thought
for the consequences of that action for the international system, the
welfare of the peoples of the region, the influence politically
well-connected kin in the United States, or the obligations that the
United States had assumed under armistices agreements and treaties of
peace, and sundry other instruments. Eastern Europe, in their telling,
was flung at Stalin’s feet, to be his in fee simple. My position was –
and is – that while Washington accepted Soviet predominance in East
Central Europe and the Balkans, there were limits to that acceptance.
Against the conventional wisdom of the day, I wrote in 1981 that
“American opposition to spheres was conditional rather than
categorical. From the time that it was apparent that the USSR would
survive Adolph Hitler’s onslaught, policy-makers anticipated Soviet
predominance east of the Elbe. Their world view, a Wilsonianism deeply
colored by great-power chauvinism, disposed them to accept it;
untouched by illusions of omnipotence, they knew that uncompromising
resistance would in any case be futile. American efforts in Europe,
consequently, represented neither a utopian scheme to rid the
continent of spheres of influence nor a Faustian bid to dominate it,
but a search for stable spheres of a kind consonant with the interests
of the principal victors of World War II.” [2] As John L. Harper aptly
notes in his post in this thread, “Truman and Byrnes tried to slow
down and limit the consolidation of Soviet power” in Easter Europe.
But they did not try to eliminate it.

Professor Trachtenberg asked why Truman and Byrnes should have feared
“that the division of Europe as a whole between east and west might
well lead to war” The reasons for that concern and for the consequent
attempt to keep Soviet predominance within certain limits varied over
time and from player to player, but those that obtained during Byrnes’
tenure will be familiar to those versed in the diplomacy and
geopolitical thinking of the day. From 1943 on there was general
concern at the rivalry for influence in Europe that was developing
between Britain and the Soviet Union. The Soviet treaty of mutual
assistance with Czechoslovakia was one prominent marker; others were a
much-publicized speech by Jan Christian Smuts called for a British
security sphere in Western Europe, a call taken up and repeated at
full volume by the _London Times_ The next year American diplomats
learned that the British Chiefs of Staff were planning how best to
mobilize German strength for use against Russia in a future war and
working on plans for that war. The Foreign Office, thoroughly alarmed,
put a stop to the Chiefs’ projects but not before the Soviets had
learned of them, as they learned of almost everything of consequence
that happened in Washington and London. (Smuts’ idea lived on to
become first the Treaty of Dunkirk and then the Brussels Pact.) As the
State Department conceptualized these developments, there had
developed an Anglo-Soviet “power politics scramble for position.” The
presidential briefing books for both Yalta and Potsdam included a
letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff underlining how potentially
ominous the scramble was for the United States: in brief, it might
lead to an Anglo-Soviet war, which would lead to England’s defeat,
even in alliance with the United States. That result would leave the
USSR in possession of most or all of the continent. [3] By the end of
World War II no proposition commanded more support in the United
States that the domination of Europe (Eurasia) by a single power would
be a disaster of unimaginable proportions, tantamount to defeat in the
war, whatever the fate of the Axis. [4]

The contention of Professor Trachtenberg and Miscamble that Byrnes
categorically turned Eastern Europe and the Balkans over to the USSR
at Potsdam without a further care for the place rests upon Byrnes
handling of reparations in Germany – an issue separate from Eastern
Europe – and a few anecdotes. What finds no place in their narratives
– none at all – is the actual course of American diplomacy in Eastern
Europe after Potsdam. There is no mention of Byrnes’s proposed treaty
of disarmament, the peace treaties with the former German satellites,
or the constant encouragement of the opposition parties in the Soviet
sphere, which continued down to their suppression. The essence of
these initiatives was this: to keep the spirit of resistance to Soviet
*domination* alive while pursuing expeditiously treaties of peace that
would secure the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Meanwhile, the Soviets
were to be reassured by measures to guarantee their security and to
preserve their *influence* in Eastern Europe. These included the
guaranteed disarmament of Germany, acceptance of the Soviets’ treaties
of mutual assistance with their neighbors, and the far-reaching
guarantees included in the peace treaties for the former German
satellites which, inter alia, limited the size of their armies,
limited the permissible range of political activity in the these
countries by banning fascist parties and all propaganda hostile to the
Allies and giving to the USSR the right of intervention to enforce
these terms.

None of this is mysterious. Before Byrnes began his epic efforts in
1946 his chief adviser, Charles E. Bohlen, outlined the problem: the
chief concern that the United States had in relation to the USSR was
“Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe,” which appeared to aim
“complete Soviet domination and control over all phases of the
external and internal life of those countries.” In time this could
only lead to “increasing friction with the western democracies and the
eventual division as a last resort of the world into sphere of
influence in the most undesirable and dangerous sense” and “the
formation of the world into an armed camp in preparation for the next
war.” On the other hand, the Soviets were entitled to “the legitimate
prerogatives of a great power in regard to small countries resulting
from geographic proximity,” which included a veto over the actions of
the smaller states in the “politico-strategic aspect of their foreign
relations.” This, Bohlen urged, should be made clear to the Soviets.
[5] The use of the peace treaties to create a stable situation in
Eastern Europe through the creation of an open Soviet sphere of
influence was discussed and approved by the
State-War-Navy-Coordinating Committee on which Byrnes sat. Byrnes
later explained his purposes to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. [6]

We can argue about how realistic Byrnes’s policy was, whether it could
have achieved a stable European settlement if it had been realized in
its entirely, or whether it provided a sufficient guarantee of Soviets
interests. But what we are not free to do construe the efforts of
Byrnes and other American diplomats during the conferences of 1946 as
a sort of masquerade to hide their indifference to the fate of Eastern
Europe and the European balance of power. Why, then, did Byrnes
threaten to resign when in September 1946 when Henry Wallace delivered
a speech calling for just the policy that Professor’s Miscamble and
Trachtenberg now attribute to him? Why, after Byrnes efforts to
moderate Soviet influence had failed, did the United States hope to
draw Eastern Europe from the Soviet orbit with what Bohlen in July
1947 called the “magnetism” of the Marshall Plan? And why, when that
effort had failed, did the United risk World War III by trying to
“roll back” the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe through various
forms of direct action in the region? And how in the world can we
explain what policymakers among themselves about the policies they had
carried through?

As I read the evidence, Bohlen was the intellectual architect of
Byrnes’s policy, though it surely appealed to the Secretary’s
well-known penchant for compromise. And this is what Bohlen had to say
in the classified speech of mentioned just above: Contemporary charges
that the United States was “attempting to deny to Russia . . . special
interests, based on geography, in Eastern Europe” were simply not
true. After reviewing Byrnes’ efforts of 1946, he said, “All the
arrangements that the United States has reached, and many they have
sought with the Soviet Government, have indicated perfectly clearly we
were not attempting to deny to Russia the prerequisites of a great
power, namely that she has a certain primary strategic interest in the
countries that lie along her borders. It has been the abuse of that
right which has caused most of the trouble we have had.” [7] Perhaps
Professors Miscamble and Trachtenberg know something that Bohlen did
not.

Eduard Mark



[1] “Charles E. Bohlen and the Acceptable Limits of Soviet Hegemony In
Eastern Europe: A Memorandum of 18 October 1945,” Diplomatic History, 3
(Spring 1979), 201-213; “American Policy Toward Eastern Europe and the
Origins of the Cold War: An Alternative Interpretation,” _Journal of
American History_, 68 (September 1981), 313-36.

[2] Ibid., 314,

[3] For State’s warning and its context, see ibid., 232-26. For the JCS’s
views, see Attachment to “American Policy Towards Spheres of Influence,”
FRUS: 1945: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 106-108; Attachment to
“British Plan for a Western European Bloc,” FRUS, 1945: Conference of
Berlin, 1: 264-266.

[5) Memorandum by Charles E. Bohlen, 18 October 1945, in Mark, “Charles E.
Bohlen and the Acceptable Limits of Soviet Hegemony In Eastern Europe.”
Byrnes’s speech to the Herald Tribute Forum on 31 October 1945, among other
statements of his at the time, appears to reflect Bohlen’s counsel. Ibid.
Significantly, the State Department’s USSR Committee described Byrne’s
speech of 31 October 1945 as a definitive statement of American policy.
Minutes of the U.S.S.R. Committee, 26 June 1946, NARA, RG 59, Records of the
Interdepartmental and Intradepartmental Committees of the Department of
State, Box 16. For the tremendous importance that Byrnes attached to the
treaty of demilitarization for Germany, see Oral History Interview with
James W. Riddlesberger, April 1972, Harry S. Truman Library.

[6] State-Navy-War Coordinating Committee, SWNCC 244, 5 January 1946, subj:
“Treaties of Peace with Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary,” NARA, RG 165, ABC
Files, Box 248, 336 Rumania (26 September 1943), Section 1-B; JCS Memorandum
1595/1, Joint Secretariat to distribution, 25 January 1946, subj: “Military,
Naval and Air Clauses of the Treaties of Peace with Rumania, Bulgaria and
Hungary,” ibid.; State-Navy-War Coordinating Committee, SWNCC 244, 12
February 1946 (as revised 5 March 1946), subj: “Treaties of Peace with
Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary,” ibid.; US Senate, Committee on Foreign
Relations, _Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United
States Senate, Eightieth Congress, First Session, Treaties of Peace with
Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary_ (Washington, 1947), 28-29.

[7] Charles E. Bohlen, “U. S. Relations with the Curtain States,” 10 July
1947, NARA, RG 59, Records of Charles E. Bohlen, box 6.

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