America’s Post-War Transformation

With questions being asked about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and its apparent adherence to unilateral action, it is important to recognise that such questions have been raised before. The Resolute Group has long embraced Schlesinger’s concept of The Cycles of American History, of which this is another fine example…   

Despite the brutality and destruction of World War II, the United States of America emerged as a world leader with incalculable economic and political power. Immediately following the end of the war though, most Americans focused on rebuilding their lives and were not as concerned about foreign affairs, for in their eyes, they had won the war and the new United Nations would help keep the peace. However, the United States government saw a different turn of events unfold. First, many government officials recognized that civic participation and patriotism had declined dramatically since the end of the war. Second, America’s new role as a leader gave the administration the task of developing the United Nations and helping other countries rebuild after near total destruction. Finally, by the end of the 1940s, the threat of communism loomed beyond the Iron Curtain and even at home, with the potential to disrupt political and economic ideas of the West, as well as the peace. 

How was the United States government to address all these problems if the nation’s own citizenry did not pay attention and showed little concern for foreign affairs?  In the late 1940s, the government tried to reinvigorate the public with the desire to participate and express more patriotism through various campaigns, such as Rededication Weeks. These campaigns served as a reminder of America’s greatness and of the global responsibility the U.S. assumed after the war. Although the government’s primary goal of these campaigns was to regain the patriotism that had thrived during the war, the government was also able to capture the citizens’ attention and eventually mould the public opinion. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union began expanding its territory in ways that would suggest it had imperialist intentions rather than working to ensure its security. Worried American government officials recognized that they had to do something to stop Russia from expanding its totalitarian regime and threaten the West.  Now that they had the public’s attention, they were able to put together a foreign policy by creating an enemy in the public’s eyes: a totalitarian Russian regime was expanding its empire, establishing communism in its new territories, disrupting American capitalist trade, and would stop at nothing—not even using an atomic weapon—to achieve its goal, thus providing a grave danger to the United States.  By using the strong sense of nationalism based on America’s greatness and its global responsibility, the U.S. government was able to mould public opinion to make Americans came together to form the Cold War consensus that supported the government’s actions of containing communism abroad and at home. 

Though Americans had known about the war in Europe that started in the late 1930s, they were not directly impacted until the attack on Pearl Harbour, which catapulted them into a war with Japan and then Germany. The Second World War brought devastation to Americans, with almost 400,000 soldiers killed over the course of the four-year war.[1]  But at home, “Americans who had lived the previous ‘peace’ decade in the desperation of the Great Depression found themselves with jobs, cash, and prospects.”[2] Americans across the country had joined in the war effort through enlisting, working at ammunitions factories, buying Treasury bonds, planting Victory gardens, and so on.  A strong American patriotism cultivated around the main goal of the war: victory. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt defined victory as having two parts: “To defeat our common enemies as effectively as possible, and…to do everything…possible to prevent Germany, Japan, or any other aggressor nation from plunging us into another war in the next couple of generations.”[3] Most Americans agreed with Roosevelt and they not only wanted the soldiers home from the war, but they wanted the end of all wars. As victory neared, Americans saw a promising future, for their boys were coming home and they would emerge as one of the leaders of the world. 

Because the fighting of the war did not take place on the American soil, with the exception of Pearl Harbour, the U.S. did not have the “mines, fields, and factories of Eurasia [that] were flooded, ravaged, and bombed.”[4] Instead, “American manufacturing and agricultural production attained new peaks.” By the end of the war, the United States had more than half the manufacturing capacity in the world and was the world’s largest exporter. Additionally, the gross national product was three times that of the Soviet Union and more than five times that of Great Britain. This economic superiority, combined with the military supremacy, should have made the U.S. secure from the threat of any other country.  

Since victory was in sight near the end of the war, Americans shared the belief that American greatness had carried them to their new status as world leader.  With this new position came the global responsibility of maintaining the peace, working with, or even leading, the United Nations, and if necessary, helping other countries in need.  Historian John Fousek calls this cohesive ideology “American nationalist globalism,” for it “combined nationalist ideologies of American chosenness, mission, and destiny with the emerging notion that the entire world was now the proper sphere of concern for U.S. foreign policy.”[5] Americans became proud of the triumph of their way of life and “many Americans came to believe that in some fashion the American Way of Life, the American Dream, or the American Creed held the solutions to problems that plagued a war-ravaged world.”[6] Because of this victory, it was America’s responsibility to help people in other nations rebuild their lives around this “American Way of Life.” This global responsibility took on two forms, “economic stewardship and moral leadership.”[7] The United States’ vast economic resources allowed it to help finance reconstruction in countries devastated by the war, as well as ensure the implementation and stabilization of a capitalist system abroad, which would become vital in the years to come against rising Soviet Communism.  As the new moral leader, the U.S. government worked to show other countries how successful free nations could be without a totalitarian regime in place, especially if a democracy was established. 

Shortly after the war ended, Americans still believed in the notion of global responsibility, but it was not on the forefront of their minds.  Most people were too busy rebuilding their lives that they were not concerned with what else was going on, especially with what was happening globally.  International politics have always been more difficult for the public to understand because of the complexities of balance of power, trade, and the like.  Unless something big happens, such as the outbreak of a war, Americans have typically not cared, or at least not reacted, as evidenced by their relatively isolationist history.  But after its victory in World War II, America emerged as a world leader, which would lead the government to believe more people would care about this new position. However, in October 1945, only seven percent of the American people considered international affairs as vitally important.[8]  This number fluctuated over the next year, but never rose above 21%.  While most people were proud of their country’s new status, they were focused on rebuilding their lives and moving on. Soldiers coming home started families, thus beginning the Baby Boom. The great migration to the suburbs began, as thousands of communities with identical houses like Levittown, the original suburb, sprung up across the country. Therefore, people were more concerned about their personal lives than what was happening thousands of miles away.

For those people who were concerned, or were at least somewhat knowledgeable about what was going on, few had any idea of how to reach the ultimate goal of world peace, nor did they have much direction from the government.  The United Nations was formed with this goal of peace in mind, but after its establishment, nations, including the U.S., were still unsure about how to go about this.  In the U.S. during the summer of 1946, a third of respondents could not even answer a poll question identifying the main goal of the U.N.[9] Regardless of their level of knowledge of the U.N., most Americans held pessimistic views about issues abroad. In another poll, respondents were asked to identify which of four statements they most agreed with about the possibility of a future world war.  Forty-eight percent of respondents said there may (23%) or will definitely (25% be a war within the next 25 years, whereas 37% believed the nations could probably work it out to avoid war, and 11% chose that there would not be another war.[10] One thing to note, however, is that the majority of the 25% who chose the most pessimistic answer came from the least informed group, or those who “gave evidence of having little or no acquaintance with news of international significance,” and those who were more informed were optimistic about international cooperation and international organizations. Although people were pessimistic about the future, they were not apprehensive. For example, when people were asked about how worried they were about the atomic bomb, one-half said they were not at all worried, while only one-quarter admitted they had concerns.[11] Therefore, in the years following the war, public opinion called attention to the surprising pessimism after American victory, but also suggested that this pessimism was not founded on an accurate, complete picture of world affairs for most citizens.  The government was responsible for not providing this picture of world affairs because they themselves could not form a cohesive foreign policy.    

Despite their lack of a foreign policy, the American government had concerns about how the war-ravaged countries were recovering and how strong some were becoming.  By the end of the war, many European cities were in rubble and farmland was destroyed.  “For Europe as a whole, food production in 1945-46 was less than two-thirds its pre-war total” and the harsh winter of 1946 to 1947 only worsened the situation.[12] The U.S. had promised aid to these countries, especially its allies, but it had not figured out how to give a sufficient amount, without giving “unconditional post-war giveaways…of American wealth, of American sovereignty, [or] of American weapons,” because “There was no chance that Uncle Sam would play Uncle Sucker,” as historian John Morton Blum described it.[13]  U.S. officials were also worried about the future positions of Germany and Japan because, despite their occupation, officials were worried “that nationalists or neutralists would capture widespread support, challenge the status quo, and manoeuvre between the great powers,” or even worse, ally with Russia.[14] Since the meeting at Yalta, Americans tried to see the Soviets as cooperative in the post-war world, but lingering doubts about Russian ambitions began to surface. Russia had annexed surrounding territory, including parts of Finland, Prussia, and the Baltic provinces.[15] Moreover, U.S. government officials recognized the growing support of the Communist party throughout Russia and Eastern Europe during and after the war, but did not consider it as important at the time.[16]  However, the government was having trouble reaching the public and effectively communicating these concerns. 

Public opinion polls taken in the late 1940s reveal that Americans not only didn’t care much about world affairs but they also did not have strong, substantiated opinions. Of multiple polls taken by different organizations during this time, most affirm that a majority of the American people were supportive of becoming a member of the U.N. and providing some aid to other nations. But “the people’s responsiveness to the principle of international cooperation diminishes sharply whenever it is tested against a more or less concrete example of how such a principle would be applied.”[17] For example, a March 1947 Fortune survey showed that while 71% of respondents considered maintaining our military forces “at about their present strength” more important than a balanced budget, only 56% thought “continuing to send food to needy countries” was more important, and a meagre 14% thought the more specific plan of “continuing making loans to foreign nations” was more important.[18]  As Cottrell and Eberhart point out, this survey and many like it demonstrate how the people had not “accepted the facts and the necessity of international cooperation as a fundamental United States responsibility” like the government and others anticipated.[19] The American people still believed that they had some sort of global responsibility, but because they did not know what this responsibility entailed and there was no specified plan from the government, their support for individualized programs dropped because they could not see the big picture.

The lack of information reaching the public about what was going on created a rift between the government and the people.  Cornell University’s publication of Public Reaction to the Atomic Bomb and World Affairs recognizes that “While [the public] tend[s] strongly to apply the traditional American values of majority rule, equal rights, and fair policy for the little fellow to general considerations of international affairs, they fall into many inconsistencies when specific problems are raised.”[20] Part of this was due to the lack of the government’s direct communication of specific events and a comprehensive foreign policy to the American people.  In between World War II and the start of the Cold War, “much of the business that so deeply preoccupie[d] their leaders [went] on above people’s heads.”[21]  The majority of the public did not know what the government was thinking or planning as it formed its new foreign policy, or even the reasoning behind it. 

While writing their book in 1948 and in response the lack of public information, Cottrell and Eberhart suggest that the government use “greater effort and skill in focusing the attention of large segments of the public on the problems of our relations with other countries and on the related problems of the control of atomic energy.  This needs to be done in such a way that the citizen will see that he has a vital personal stake in constructive solutions of the problems in our relations with other nations.”[22] Building up to the Cold War and throughout its duration, the government did just this.  Through a series of speeches, letters, and articles, the government framed Russia as a totalitarian regime that threatened to spread communism by any means possible, even by using atomic weapons to attack the U.S. The government, especially conservative Republicans, encouraged their constituents to fulfil their duties as citizens by pointing out suspected communists during the time of McCarthyism.  Therefore, the government did heed Cottrell’s and Eberhart’s advice, but did not use it in the way implied because they did not provide the people with objective information to mobilize the public in stopping a clearly totalitarian, imperialist regime. Instead, the government used a revived nationalism, which it revived in a prior campaign, to frame the global situation in terms of oversimplified ideology rather than the actual disruption of the balance of power. 

The Second World War is often characterized by the immense patriotism displayed by American citizens in rallying to support the war effort. Up through V-E and V-J days, people celebrated America and its cherished values in parades and other holidays. Nevertheless, there was a marked difference in the intensity of celebration after the war; fewer people saw the need to celebrate values and characteristics that had proven triumphant during the war. For example, I Am An American Day, created in the late 1930s, helped Americans comprehend “the form and genius of their government and the responsibilities of citizenship,” according to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[23]  Celebrations sprung up all over the country during the early ‘40s, with some crowds getting as large as 750,000, such as the one in Central Park in New York City in 1941. But post-war I Am An American Days saw a rapid decline in participation and significance in the eyes of the people.  At the time, Americans thought World War II would be “the last time of unity, shared burdens and a sense of civic commonality,” because after the war, they saw “intolerance, civic apathy, crime and juvenile delinquency…and personal and group selfishness.”[24] Government officials, including President Truman, business groups, and many other organizations recognized the same lack of participation and wanted to do something about it. 

In particular, Attorney General Tom Clark also recognized the lack of civic duty and was quite disturbed by it, leading him to develop one of his aide’s ideas.  As Assistant Director of Justice’s Division of Public Information, William A. Colbenz had the job of collecting political documents from all points along the political spectrum to contrast with our democracy, and then to put them on display.  Colbenz suggested putting the exhibition on a railroad car to reach more people.  Clark agreed with the idea, and after some time of playing with the name of the project, the Freedom Train was born.  Clark brought the idea before President Harry S. Truman, who held a conference with 62 national organizations in May 1947, and the President and the organizations granted Clark their support.[25]  The American Heritage Foundation was chosen to carry out the project.[26] The Freedom Train became a great national program that revived Americans’ patriotism as it crossed the country from 1947 to 1949.

Its exhibit concentrated “on a sort of American Century triumphalism,” that included documents dealing with important rights and civil liberties, but was “balanced, if not outweighed, by items which vaunted national expansion and battlefield victories.”[27]  The exhibit, carried on a train painted with red, white, and blue stripes called “Spirit of 1776,” crisscrossed 48 states in 413 days from September 1947 to January 1949.[28]  Although an average of 8,500 people could enter the train daily at each stop, thousands of people lined up (hundreds of thousands in the big cities) so that usually, only one in eleven or twelve people got in.  Once inside, people could survey the historical documents, flags, and pamphlets, such as the Good Citizen, which “epitomized the AHF’s message” by outlining “the civic virtues for which the Freedom Train stood.”[29] One reporter described the experience of the Freedom Train pulling into town as, “the great train, symbol of American[s’] will to move and to ‘go places’ and the venerable documents which guarantee a man’s right to chart his own route, write his own ticket and take off at full speed for a destination of his own choosing.” [30]  By the end of the run, 3.5 million people walked through the train, each signing a scroll that was later given to President Truman.  However, because of the limited capacity of the train, the AHF anticipated that many people would stand in line and not be able to get on.  To reach these people, the AHF held activities outside the train that reflected the values and purpose of things inside it as part of the Rededication Weeks.

Rededication Weeks attracted over 40 million people, or about one-quarter of the U.S. population at that time, to its patriotic festivities.  By participating in these events, people were “rededicating” themselves as citizens to the country, or committing themselves to be an active member of our democracy.  As a matter of fact, cities and towns held public ceremonies where citizens took the Freedom Pledge, which, comparable in length to the Pledge of Allegiance, lists the freedoms of an American and ends with an important promise: “This heritage of Freedom I pledge to uphold / For myself and all mankind” [31]  During the week, many days were designated as different celebrations, such as Veterans Day, Labour and Industry Day, Youth Day, and Women’s Day.[32] Some communities had their own unique feature such as a month-long Rededication in Greensboro, North Carolina, a Freedom Pageant in Bakersfield, California, and a Freedom Train Dance in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.[33] Therefore, the Freedom Train, accompanied by Rededication Week celebrations constituted the first wave of government-encouraged patriotism.

These displays of patriotism served as a reminder to people of America’s celebrated qualities of liberty, equality, and democracy that are responsible for America’s greatness.  In World War II, these qualities triumphed over the oppression and inequality of the totalitarian regimes of the Axis countries. Because Americans had let this fact slip their mind and did not celebrate it as much for a year or two after the war, the government felt obligated to remind them, and thus encouraged the multitude of patriotic celebrations.  It was important for the government not only to remind the people of America’s success and superior qualities, but also to unite the people in support for America and its ideals. By 1947, government officials could sense an oncoming “ideological-political threat,” as George Kennan described it, in which the citizens of the U.S. would need to be united in the support and defence of their ideologies.

Well before these patriotic rallies, the federal government had been trying to formulate a cohesive foreign policy that would protect and advance America’s power and leadership with the public’s support.  Truman realized that public opinions were shaped by the views of elites, but at the time, the elites seemed divided on what stance the U.S. should take toward Russia. “The public-attitudes branch of the State Department monitored editorials in 125 newspapers, assessed the articles of leading columnists, reviewed the statements of political leaders, and studied the resolutions of private religious, philanthropic, and economic organizations” to find a common belief among these groups that represented the public. [34]  

Public opinion on the United States’ relationship with Russia was gradually changing since the end of the war.  At first, “the trend in opinion probably paralleled the trend among foreign policy elites and decision makers.”[35] While hope for friendly relations with Russia remained high until the end of the war, the number of people believing that the United States could trust Russia declined from an all-time high of 55 percent in March 1945 to 35 percent a year later.[36] By August 1946, only 25 percent of people polled (in a different survey) trusted Russia, but only if Russia did not want war, was afraid of the U.S., or would find it profitable to stay on good terms with Americans.[37] During this time, people shifted their view from seeing Russia as acting to protect its security to wanting to increase its power as an emerging imperialist power. [38]  Leonard Cottrell Jr. and Silvia Eberhart make an interesting observation of how Americans do not immediately associate communism with Russia as the most fearful thing, especially in light of the fact that they wrote their book on public opinion before the Cold War consensus was established:

Interestingly enough, only a very small proportion explained their suspicions of Russia by the argument that she is trying to spread communism.  Undoubtedly, if questioned directly about the argument, many would agree with it.  But few spontaneously expressed such a view or argued that the Russian form of government makes discord with the United States or the rest of the world inevitable.  People’s feelings about Russia seemed to be based for less on ideological grounds than on a general belief that she is indifferent to all values except self-interest.[39] 

Therefore, the public opinion about Russia was not originally based on communism, which later became one of the main motives for the Cold War, but rather the fear of Russia pursuing its self-interest and upsetting the balance of power.

While Truman and his advisors were trying to form a policy in which they could “mold elite opinion and shape public attitudes …Winston Churchill’s visit to the United States provided the administration with an opportunity to launch a public relations and diplomatic offensive.”[40] In his famous “Sinews of Peace” speech on March 5, 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill called for a British-American alliance to help ensure the establishment of peace and to counter any future Soviet build-ups and expansion.  This alliance, based on the “fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples,” would primarily be a military alliance, which in effect would also secure foreign policy goals for the two nations.  The alliance could be useful in the future to deter the growing Soviet threat, as much of Eastern Europe had already come under the “Soviet sphere.”  From this division between the Western ideals and the Soviet sphere came one of Churchill’s most famous ideas that would come to characterize much of the Cold War: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent” (emphasis added).  Our side of the iron curtain stood for freedom and cooperation, whereas the Soviet sphere stood for totalitarianism, no cooperation, and a growing Communist influence.

According to historian Fraser Harbutt, Churchill’s speech accomplished the U.S. government’s goal of “accelerat[ing] a widespread hostility to the Soviet Union.”[41] “[H]e simplified the threat, framed it in ideological terms, and merged the spectre of Soviet expansionism and Communist subversion” so more people could understand this simplified version of world affairs.  This was indeed a successful way to reach the American public because Winston Churchill was a well-respected foreign diplomat.  Churchill’s speech reinforced the public’s idea that Russia was straying from its original plan to secure its western border from Germany and was perhaps pursuing an imperialist expansion. Though communism was brought up in the speech, people still did not see it as a primary concern, as evidenced by the previous poll data.  In addition, many Americans were against the suggested military alliance because people thought the U.S. did not need Britain’s militarily, and a complicated web of alliances had already attributed to two world wars, so this one could lead to the third.  While Churchill’s speech marked the beginning of the U.S. government’s campaign to rally support against the Soviets, and some would argue it also marked the beginning of the Cold War, the American public was not yet receptive to the idea of preparing for a confrontation with Russia. 

On February 21, 1947, Great Britain presented the United States with news that it could no longer provide support to Greece and Turkey, thus giving the U.S. the opportunity to put its words into actions by aiding countries that could be shown the benefits of democracy and capitalism instead of communism.  The geographic location of Greece and Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean area left the two countries in a precarious situation for the U.S., for if they did not succeed Britain in providing aid, they risked the Soviets stepping in.  President Truman voiced the concern that “If we were to turn our back on the world, areas such as Greece, weakened and divided as a result of the war, would fall into the Soviet orbit without much effort on the part of the Russians,” which could eventually “lead to the growth of domestic Communist parties in such European countries as France and Italy, where they were already significant threats.”[42] Since the U.S. accepted the responsibility of providing aid to Greece and Turkey, “Great Britain had within the hour handed the job of world leadership, with all its burdens and all its glory, to the United States,” according to one State Department official. [43]  

The transfer of power from Great Britain to the United States paved the way for Truman’s famous speech on March 12 to a joint session of Congress that outlined America’s goal in doing what it could—mostly through financial aid—to help support countries so they would not fall prey to the Soviets.  He managed not to mention the Soviets by name, but referred to them as a totalitarian regime.  Most noteworthy though was his dichotomy of the world situation at the time; there was a free world with “free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression, and a slave world with “terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.”  At this critical time, Truman declared that nations “must choose between [these] alternate ways of life,” though the U.S. hopes all nations choose freedom, for “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world.” 

Event though few specific plans were mentioned, the Truman doctrine had several implications on the newly-formed foreign policy, as well as on public perception of this policy.  First, and most important, Truman created a clear enemy in the public’s eye.  Though he did not create it out of nothing, he drew from the people’s fears of Soviet expansion, added a distinguishing, yet evil ideology, and essentially made an enemy against which the American people would want to defend their nation and other nations (because of their global responsibility).  From this point on, the U.S. foreign policy would be designed to keep the Soviets from expanding into other countries and imposing communism in them.  Although Churchill used the phrase “iron curtain” a year earlier, the curtain did not descend until after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine.  Also, “By portraying the Soviet-American conflict between two irreconcilable ideologies, the President and his advisors managed to shock Congress and the public into providing the support necessary to implement a tough policy.”[44] Although the media praised Truman, the people were not as receptive at first, for they still did not see the need to spend money on foreign affairs and “Though critical of Russia, most Americans were content with the existing ‘firm’ policy.”[45] Truman and his advisors sensed this hesitation, so they tried to convince Congress of this threat first in order for the people to see that more than one small group of the government was concerned.  “By seizing the initiative, using ideological language, embarking on a crusade, and placing the prestige of the presidency and the country at risk over the issue of aid to Greece and Turkey, he elicited support from a weary Congress” [46] 

Congress granted the $400 billion of aid to Greece and Turkey as Truman requested in his speech, but needed to come up with a plan of executing the Truman doctrine.  Secretary of State George Marshall led the way through his speech at Harvard on June 5 that outlined a program of providing financial aid to European countries to stabilize their economies and political structures with the ultimate goal of ensuring that these institutions remained free. In proposing this, Marshall assumed the American public understood that “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Therefore, it would appear to the people to be an act of fulfilling America’s global responsibility, but it also had important implications in regards to Russia.  By building up the economies of Europe, they would be less susceptible to communist parties coming into power or from the Soviets taking over.  This proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was soon “recognized as a step toward deeper political and even military involvement in Western Europe at a time when increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union made war a not unthinkable possibility.”[47]

The Marshall Plan logistically took the form of the European Recovery Program (ERP) as it promised to be the main focus of U.S. economic foreign policy for the next four or five years.[48] Unlike aid that was freely given immediately after the war, the ERP called for the European nations to work together, instead of as individual nations, to find their collective necessities that the aid could go toward directly.[49] Although it helped “bring about economic recovery in western Europe, in order that this area might end its special dependence on American aid, regain its share of world production, resume its active role in world trade, and establish a solid underpinning for democratic institutions,” it tended to alienate Russia and its controlled countries because they did not agree with the terms set by America, thereby strengthening the growing divide between the West and the East.[50]  The divide deepened once again after the adoption of a new aspect of the United States foreign policy, containment. 

In July, Foreign Affairs published an article by a mysterious writer, “X,” who assessed the Soviets’ foreign policy and prescribed a policy of “containment” for the U.S. to counter the Soviets, which became the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War.  Despite the fact that Russia’s power was characterized by “the pursuit of unlimited authority domestically” and the encouragement of the fall of capitalism and the rise of socialism abroad, Russia “[was] still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy [was] highly flexible, and that Soviet society may well [have] contain[ed] deficiencies which [would] eventually weaken its own total potential.”[51] The author, who was later revealed as George Kennan, the Under Secretary of State, recommended that “the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvres of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”  This policy of containment “was in fact already evolving in the Truman Administration, but Kennan gave it an intellectual and analytical framework and brought it to public attention”[52] Bringing the policy to the public’s attention was just as important as the policy itself, for as Kennan wrote later in life, “by providing the American people with this implacable challenge [that the Kremlin made to American society], has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.”[53]  This last statement explains the growing concern of Truman’s administration of how vital it was to shape the public’s opinion to support the new containment policy. 

Although it took a while, the public gradually started supporting containment.  Historian John Fousek explains, “The new vision of a divided world helped to explain the turmoil and complexities of the post-war era in a way that ideas of national greatness and global responsibility alone had failed to do. The image of Soviet communism as a threat to the United States and the world it sought to build helped to explain why the responsibilities of world stewardship, leadership, and peacekeeping were so urgent, so extensive, and so sure to require long-term commitments.”[54] Therefore, to maintain the national greatness that brought the global responsibility, the U.S. would also have to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism through containment. [55] 

The North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 provided the first true test for the government to see if the public would support anticommunist action.  Although the invasion was part of an ongoing civil war in Korea, the administration was able to guide the American people to believe that it was a battle between the “Communist North” and the “Free South.”  Because of the general feeling of America’s global responsibility to prevent the spread of communism, three out of every four Americans supported sending U.S. troops to Korea, according to a State Department poll. [56]  The government also saw the need to intervene especially after the National Security Council Memorandum Number 68 (commonly known as NSC-68) was issued.  NSC-68 outlined the current state of foreign affairs, though mostly in regards to Russia and prescribed a plan of action for winning the Cold War.  To achieve this, they needed “to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom by its constructive application, and to attempt to change the world situation by means short of war in such a way as to frustrate the Kremlin design and hasten the decay of the Soviet system (National Security Council).  By intervening in Korea, the United States was not only working to protect a free state from a communist state, but they were upsetting the Kremlin by challenging communism.

Up until the intervention in Korea, government officials worried that the public would not be supportive of taking action as outlined in NSC-68, which could interfere with the plan because “The whole success of the proposed program [hung] ultimately on recognition by this Government, the American people, and all free peoples, that the cold war [was] in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world [was] at stake.” [57]  “But then, as [Secretary of State Dean] Acheson later said, while the nation’s foreign-policy leaders grappled with this question, ‘Korea came along and saved us.’” [58]  Americans saw the war in Korea not as a civil war but as a war with international consequences in the fight between the “slave world” and the “free world,” thus solidifying the Cold War consensus.  Several polls conducted in the months following the start of the Korean War showed that the majority of people supported military build-up in case a conflict with Russia or other communist countries were to build up.  In one poll, 68 percents said it was more important to stop Soviet expansion than to keep the U.S. out of a major war, which shockingly contrasts with the general desire of Americans less than five years earlier to maintain peace at any cost. [59]  Americans also sent thousands of letters and telegrams to the President in response to Korea and an overwhelming majority of them commended him for his actions and vowed their support in the fight against Communism.  For example, the crew of the SS African Moon “telegraphed the president from New York City to endorse Truman’s stand in Korea and pledge their support for ‘complete victory in defeating any form of Communism throughout the world and to preserve the American way.’” [60]

By rallying in support of intervention in Korea, Americans has translated their belief in America’s greatness and its global responsibility into actions against communism with sweeping public support, thus creating the Cold War Consensus. By now, most dissenters were marginalized and not a part of the policy conversations.  In his first radio address to the American people concerning Korea on July 19, Truman rejoiced, “the American people are unified in their belief in democratic freedom.  We are united in detesting Communist slavery.”[61]  He also reminded citizens “At this critical hour in the history of the world, our country has been called upon to give its leadership, its efforts, and its resources to maintain peace and justice among nation.  We have responded to that call.  We will not fail.” [62] 

Although the American government was working to fulfil its global responsibility abroad in trying to stop Soviet expansion, Americans felt they could do their part at home by working to build up the image of America’s greatness and to contain communists within the U.S.  Communism in the United States was not new, for it had existed since after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and had experienced rises and falls in popularity over the course of its existence.  An opposing anti-communist movement experienced similar rises and falls.  Right before World War II, another anti-communist movement began to strengthen.  In Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee formed in the 1930s with the original intent to find connections between Communists and labour unions and people involved in the New Deal programs.  Although the movement was halted by the start of the war, it was revived after the war to become a key instrument for investigating Communist ties in the government, universities, and even in Hollywood (Powers 124-5).  The HUAC suspected that people in Hollywood were producing films that subtly conveyed communist values, so in October 1947, they blacklisted a group of ten people, mostly writers, who became known as the “Hollywood Ten”[63] The group refused to give political information about themselves and so by not denying the accusations, they found it near impossible to work in the movie industry for quite some time[64]

The Truman doctrine essentially captured this underlying current of anti-communism and made it one of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy.  While the American people saw Russia’s expansion and communism abroad as a threat, it took a few years for them to see communism at home as a threat.  Once the president and other government officials used frightening rhetoric in speeches that framed the situation in ideological terms—“good, democratic America versus evil, communist Russia—people started worrying about Russia’s communism and ultimately the public became fearful.  Many people felt that communism was “omnipresent yet impossible to target” because Communists, unlike past enemies had no physical distinction.[65] “There was no obvious rule-of-thumb for isolating Communists by dress, customs, language, or religion; nor, like Japanese-Americans during World War II, could they be rounded up and incarcerated by look.” [66] This undistinguishable enemy could be anyone, even the next-door neighbour. Because government officials had turned opposition to communism into actual fear, a strong movement grew in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s to rid the United States of communists within their borders.  On a larger scale, the anti-communist movement also arose to protect America’s greatness from the Communist threat and to show the world that they were not hypocritical by containing Communists abroad when Communists lived in their own country.  Therefore, this fear led the people to unite in supporting the government in its work against Russia abroad and in exposing Communists at home, thus forming the Cold War consensus. 

Historian Tom Engelhardt identified two approaches that were proposed to contain Communists within the U.S., inclusion and exclusion.  Inclusion, “the politics of tolerance and of coalition, of the mobilization of all domestic groups,” was the response of the “vital centre” which included the liberal elite, globalizing corporations, and the CIA.[67]  Those who believed inclusion was best worked to pull in groups of people together, even those that had previously been marginalized to show that America could still be great while tolerating a small, powerless group of communists.  Although the liberal elite played a significant role in shaping the foreign agenda to encourage the strengthening of capitalism and other democratic features to show off the virtues of the free world, they were generally unsuccessful at containing Communists at home.  Instead, the political right, which included Republicans, Southern Democrats, and the military and domestic policing agencies were more influential in their program of domestic containment by encouraging methods of exclusion, such as “Censorship, deportation, suppression, the purge, and the mobilization of surveillance resources”[68] They wanted to enforce national conformity to promote “Americanness” in order to separate what was acceptable American behaviour from that which was not, which mostly means communism. 

Because the liberal elite’s plan of tolerance never came to fruition, the conservative-led “nightmarish search for enemy-ness became the defining, even obsessive dominance act of the Cold War years,” as it was supported by a consensus among the American people.[69] Starting in the winter of 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin sparked the largest witch-hunt of Communists in the United States by claiming “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State [Dean Acheson] as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department”[70] Although many of his claims were eventually proven inaccurate, the Republican right defended him, mostly to avoid conceding to the Truman Administration which they detested, and the hunt for Communists spread from the federal government to the state and local levels.[71] For example, local governments began investigating professors at universities for communist ties and between 1952 and 1954, “about one hundred professors were fired for refusing to answer questions about their possible Communist affiliations.”  McCarthyism became mass hysteria for four years, as government officials and ordinary people alike tried to identify people who could be Communists and turned them in to the authorities. “The grassroots anticommunism in the McCarthy era reflected the great struggle of the American public to come to grips with the monumental challenge history had imposed on their generation—to lead the world against a militant and expansive Communist movement” [72] Nevertheless, while America was filling its global responsibility abroad, individual citizens were doing their civic duty by looking out for Communists in their own neighbourhoods.

Americans also practiced their civic duty by celebrating America’s freedom and democracy in celebrations called Loyalty Days.  Every year, Communists celebrated May 1 as May Day in which they would usually have parades in the large cities.  In 1948, a leader from the Veterans of Foreign Wars group planned to “capture the May Day streets from the Left” by planning a parade of their own in New York City to “compete with them in time, spirit and ideologies,” as one observer noted. [73]  Several other groups, including many religious ones, joined the festivities.  On Loyalty Day, patriotic Americans and Communists went head to head battling for the larger group of supporters right in the streets of New York and as the rest of America and the world watched, the patriotic Americans triumphed.  Although sources differed in the exact number of participants in each event, the Loyalty Day parade clearly had more people attend.  By 1950, Loyalty Day was celebrated nationally in over four hundred parades attended by over five million people. [74]   Like the Freedom Train, which was used to renew the citizens’ sense of civic duty, Loyalty Days served as a way for citizens to stare down Communism, and help defeat it on the home front. 

Within the ten years after World War II, American sentiment changed drastically from that of triumph and hope for peace, to that of defensiveness and fear from a new threat.  However, America’s sense of greatness and their global responsibility in the new world order remained constant during this time.  Americans did not always express it strongly, like immediately after the war when America’s own democracy experienced some slow downs in growth as Americans retreated to their own homes after war and civic participation declined, but it was still there.  Because the people wanted to focus on rebuilding their lives and because they assumed the United Nations would help lead the world toward peace, there was a general lack of concern for foreign affairs.  As important international events unfolded, public officials realized that Americans not only needed to become more involved and concerned about their government for democracy’s sake, but also that these international events could call for more help from the U.S. that would need the public’s support.  Accordingly, civic participation programs like the Freedom Train and Rededication weeks were created to bolster America’s own democracy and at the same time, strengthen the United States’ appearance of greatness.

By emerging as the new world leader, the U.S. used its economic superiority to help other nations rebuild through programs like the Marshall Plan.  The Plan was not as altruistic as it would appear on the surface because simultaneously, the U.S. was using its hegemonic power to build up relations with these countries in case they were faced with choosing between the Communist “slave world” led by Russia or the democratic “free world” led by the U.S.  This dichotomy between the free and slave worlds was first introduced by the Truman Doctrine and later, containment was proposed to prevent the slave world from expanding. Also, by introducing some countries to democracy and encouraging others to rebuild their democracies, the U.S. was also fulfilling its new role as a moral leader in the world, for democracy seemed to provide the road towards peace. 

The Truman administration had finally pieced together a cohesive foreign policy that was based on using America’s role as world leader to help contain Communism, which stood as the biggest threat against the entire free world.  “The pivotal foreign-policy decisions of 1947-48 and the events that triggered them…produced a sense of alarm to be tapped by civic and patriotic activists.”[75] However, it took some time for this alarm to reach all citizens.  The administration had trouble communicating this threat to the people because of its complexities and the lack of public interest at first, and it eventually succumbed to exaggerating and oversimplifying the threat to win the public’s support.  Once the situation was framed in ideological terms—the free world versus the slave world—many people started to grasp the severity of the threat that the administration saw.  But the real threat did not sink in until the Korean War when there seemed to be a blatant communist threat against a free country after North Korea invaded South Korea.  Around the same time, Senator McCarthy began talking about his famous list of supposed Communists in the federal government, thus inciting a wave of hysteria as the American citizens felt obligated to free their own country from this menacing threat. 

By about 1950, the Cold War consensus had formed, for a strong majority of Americans supported the administration’s implementation of its policies that aimed to protect America from the Communist slave world while the few dissenters were marginalized.  The world had seen America’s greatness after its victory in World War II, and as this greatness seemed threatened by a new, dark enemy, Americans understood that they needed to protect this in anyway possible.  They gave in to higher taxes to provide aid to other countries that could prove essential in an actual war with Russia and to build up the United States’ military in case this war did come.  Although the practice of trying to prosecute people for different political beliefs is undemocratic, the American people saw communism as such a big risk that the vast majority of people saw it as their civic duty to help the government in locating these threats.  It took a couple of years to mould public opinion into this consensus, but the Truman Administration effectively took the Americans’ pride and patriotism left over from the war, revived it through patriotic programs, and used it to form a consensus that supported a seemingly impossible task of making the U.S. the main defender of the free world throughout the Cold War. 

Kristen Demeter