Was the U.S. government at the very end of World War II willing to
accept a more or less friendly division of Europe into spheres of
influence?  In a book that came out eight years ago, I argued that
President Truman and (even more) Secretary of State Byrnes were
willing by July 1945 to accept an arrangement of that sort, and James
McAllister made a similar argument about U.S. policy on the German
question in a book that came out three years later.  In _From Roosevelt
To Truman_, Professor Miscamble accepted much of what Professor
McAllister and I had had to say, but Eduard Mark, in his contribution
to the Miscamble roundtable, criticizes him for doing so.

Dr. Mark disagrees with the claim that the U.S. government "abandoned
Eastern Europe even before the Cold War had begun." The idea that the
Americans had written off Eastern Europe by late 1945, he says
(paraphrasing Wolfgang Pauli), was "not even wrong."  He thus seems to
think it was worse than wrong--that it was absurd to argue that Truman
and Byrnes could have pursued such a policy "in defiance of every
value that the government of the United States professed to represent
and every identifiable interest it possessed."

And he thinks there is very little evidence to support the argument
about the U.S. government at Potsdam opting for a spheres of influence
peace and thus in effect writing off Eastern Europe.  According to him
(in his n. 19), the evidence advanced in support of that idea "has a
certain fanciful quality."  He refers in this connection to Professor
Miscamble's discussion of a meeting at Potsdam on August 1, 1945, at
which Stalin, Truman, and Bevin were talking about dividing up
Germany's foreign holdings.  He points out, quite correctly, that "the
subject of the discussion" was reparation, but then goes on to claim:
"There is not a hint of a division of political influence."

No "hint of a division of political influence"?  When Bevin is quoted
in the minutes Dr. Mark cites as asking whether "Greece would belong
to Britain," or when he is quoted in another set of notes of that
meeting as saying "Greece would belong to Britain," isn't it
reasonable to assume that the British foreign secretary had something
more than just Germany's foreign assets in mind?  And if one concedes
that point about Greece, wouldn't that tell us something about what
was really going on, perhaps just a bit below the surface, at this
meeting as a whole?  More generally, isn't it reasonable to assume
that these discussions, although dealing directly with economic
issues, nonetheless had certain important political overtones?   Even
if remarks like Bevin's had not been made and the discussion had just
been about economic issues--about Germany’s foreign assets being
divided up using a "line running from the Baltic to the
Adriatic"--wouldn’t it still make sense to assume that what was said
might well have a certain political meaning, especially when the issue
was being discussed by the top political leaders (and not just by
experts)?  Or should the historian just put the blinders on, note what
the direct subject of the discussion was, and ignore the possibility
that the discussion might have a certain broader meaning?

These are very important issues, and I'm not trying to argue that the
historian should have carte blanche to read whatever he or she wants
into the evidence.   All I'm saying is that a document of that sort
has to be interpreted with some care--I'm sure Dr. Mark would agree
with this point--and in interpreting it you have to bring your whole
understanding of the period to bear.

In this context, certain particular documents might be of special
importance.  Professor Miscamble (on p. 212 of his book) cites
Forrestal's record of his July 28, 1945, meeting during the Potsdam
Conference with Truman; the whole document is in the Forrestal Papers
at Princeton. The president told Forrestal he was being "very
realistic with the Russians." He noted that thanks to Hitler, it
looked like "we shall have a Slav Europe for a long time to come,"
commenting that he didn't "think it is so bad."  A "Slav Europe" was
not "so bad"?   Wouldn't that imply, at the very least, that Truman
was willing to live with a Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe?   Or is
the idea that this document tells us something important about Truman
also to be dismissed as "fanciful"?

Now of course a single document can always be treated as something of
an anomaly.  So when you're making your mind up about this issue, it's
important to try to get some sense for the whole thrust of U.S. policy
at Potsdam and after, as reflected in hundreds of documents, many
easily available in the extraordinary second volume of the _Foreign
Relations of the United States_ collection on Potsdam.  You look at how
the Polish issue was treated (or not treated), how the German issue
was dealt with, and so on, and you try to understand what Byrnes's and
Truman's general approach to policy was.

In doing that, I think it's reasonable to assume that all these issues
were connected.  It was not as though German questions were in one
category and eastern European questions were in  an entirely different
category, and that policy in one area was independent of policy in the
other.  If Germany was being divided, that policy was rooted in a
certain set of assumptions.  If the basic assumption here was that the
way for America and Russia to get along was for each side to call the
shots in the part of Germany it controlled, then wouldn't that same
philosophy carry over, at least to some degree, to Europe as a
whole--that is, wouldn’t it go hand in hand with the idea that the way
for the two sides to get along more generally was to accept the
division of Europe into spheres of influence?   And if you're
convinced that in dealing with German economic issues, and especially
reparation, the two sides at Potsdam were really dealing ultimately
with fundamental political issues--and there are many indicators in
the documents that this was in fact the case--then wouldn't that basic
conclusion affect the way you interpret the sorts of discussions about
the dividing up of Germany's foreign assets that took place on August
1?   Finally, this sort of approach helps you assess how much weight
one of the arguments Dr. Mark makes should carry, namely the argument
that a divided Europe could not be accepted because it was assumed
that the division of Europe might well lead to war.  A policy that
looked toward the division of Germany would scarcely have been adopted
if it had been assumed that the division of that country between east
and west might well lead to war, so if Truman and Byrnes pursued such
a policy, they could not have assumed that a divided Germany would be
a major source of east-west tension.  But if that's the case, why
would they think the division of Europe as a whole between east and
west might well lead to war?  Why was the division of Germany okay,
but the division of Europe a source of danger?

None of this is to say that the sort of evidence Dr. Mark alludes to
(about the "constant encouragement of the opposition parties of the
region," radio propaganda, press leaks, and contacts with partisan
groups in Eastern Europe) is to be dismissed out of hand.  It
obviously has to be assessed carefully and fit into the larger story.
We'd like to know how serious those efforts were, the degree to which
they were controlled from the top, and especially how things in this
area changed over time.  So as someone who has deeply admired Dr.
Mark's work over the years, I'm very much looking forward to reading
the books he referred to in his footnotes when they come out.  But
chronology is crucial here.  The mere fact that there were "extensive
contacts in 1946 between the Central Intelligence Group and the
partisan formations of the Romanian opposition" doesn't tell us much
about what American policy had been in July and August 1945.

Let me make one final point, and this has to do with the idea that the
American government could scarcely have pursued a policy of dividing
Europe and consigning Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere "in defiance
of every value the government of the United States professed to
represent and every identifiable interest it possessed."  Well, not
every value and every interest.   The U.S. government certainly put a
high value on peace and thus on reaching some sort of accommodation
with the Soviets;  a spheres of influence policy would be perfectly
consistent with that value.  And the Americans certainly had a strong
interest in both avoiding war and preventing the Soviets from taking
over all of Europe;  the spheres of influence policy could plausibly
be viewed as an effective way to achieve those very fundamental goals.
 So it's by no means absurd to think that the American government at
Potsdam could have pursued a policy of this sort.  Whether it actually
did so turns on what the evidence shows.  I obviously can't review all
the evidence here, but I think it's safe to say that the evidence
supporting the "spheres of influence peace" thesis is by no means as
weak as Dr. Mark suggests.

Marc Trachtenberg
trachten@polisci.ucla.edu

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