No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Hopes and Failures: American Policy Toward East Central Europe, 1941–1947
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
When the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into its second world war, the immediate concern of political leaders and public opinion alike was to train its manpower and to mobilize its industrial resources as the fisrst step in the long up-hill climb from initial defeat to decisive victory, first against Germany, then against Japan. Its prime political aim was to forge and maintain an effective working alliance with its major allies, Britain and the Soviet Union. If either faltered or failed in the joint effort, the road to victory and postwar security would stretch out beyond the horizon. After almost two decades of selfimposed isolation, American power was now to be concerned intimately with decisions, taken or not taken, which would in turn affect all parts of the world. Neither possessing the British tradition of continuity in its diplomacy nor possessed by the ruthless Soviet drive for expansion, impsrovised American policy-making toward many areas, including East Central Europe, sometimes mistook sympathy for policy, hope for action.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1955
References
1 For example, the Arciszewski Government in London, formed in late November, 1944, declared itself incompetent to agree to the detachment of any part of Poland's pre-1939 territory until the Polish state had been restored within its prewar boundaries and the people could be consulted under constitutional processes.
2 On November 18, 1944, Roosevelt, to Churchill, : “You know, of course, that after Germany's collapse I must bring American troops home as rapidly as transportation problems will permit.…” 11 19, 1944Google Scholar, Churchill, to Roosevelt, : “Para two of your 649 causes me alarm. If after Germany's collapse you ‘must bring the American troops home as rapidly as transportation problems will permit’ and if the French are to have no equipped post-war army or time to make one, or to give it battle experience, how will it be possible to hold down western Germany beyond the present Russian occupied line? We certainly could not undertake the task without your aid and that of the French. All would therefore rapidly disintegrate as it did last time. I hope, however, that my fears are groundless. I put my faith in you.” The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945Google Scholar, Part I, Galley, 281.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., Part I, Galley 139.
4 Ibid., Part I, Galley, 139Google Scholar, and n. 4, Galley, 138.Google Scholar
5 Penrose, E. F., Post-War Economic Planning (Princeton, N. J., 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Notter, Harley A., Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945 (Washington, 1949)Google Scholar; Department of State Publication 3580.
7 The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), II, 1314–1315.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., II, 1298.
9 The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, Part I, Galleys, 136–138.Google Scholar
10 Stimson, Henry L. and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in War and Peace (New York, 1948), p. 416.Google Scholar
11 Leahy, William D., I Was There (New York, 1950), p. 181 (early September 1943).Google Scholar
12 Ibid., p. 173.
13 ibid., p. 264.
14 The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, Part I, Galley 265.Google Scholar
15 The Forrestal Diaries, edited by Millis, Walter (New York, 1951), entry for April 17, 1945; dots as in original.Google Scholar
16 Stimson, and Bundy, , op. cit., p. 559.Google Scholar
17 Stimson, and Bundy, , op. cit., p. 609 and n. 6.Google Scholar
18 An incomplete account in Hull, , op. cit., II, 1298–1299.Google Scholar
19 Hull, , op. cit., II, 1451–1459.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., II, 1458. According to an unpublished official record, the ratio was stated to be 60/40 or 70/30 with respect to ‘predominance’ in Hungary. In Churchill's version (Churchill, Winston S., Triumph and Tragedy, Boston, 1953, p. 227)Google Scholar, the ratios he proposed were: Rumania 90/10, Greece 90/10 in favor of Britain, Yugoslavia 50/50, Hungary 50/50, Bulgaria 75/25. The discrepancies in the various percentages reported cannot be fully clarified on the basis of the present evidence.
21 For terms of armistice with Bulgaria, see Executive Agreement Series 437 (Washington, 1945); with Hungary, Executive Agreement Series 456 (Washington, 1945); with Rumania, same series, 490 (Washington, 1946).
22 The Conferences at Malta and Walta, 1945, Part I, Galleys 131–134.Google Scholar
23 For the basic Joint Chiefs of Staff recommendation on the necessity of Soviet cooperation in the defeat of Japan, January 23, 1945, see ibid., Part I, Galleys 368–371.
24 An incomplete account of the April 23, 1945 conference, Forrestal, , op. cit., pp. 48–51Google Scholar; also, Stimson, and Bundy, , op. cit., p. 609 and n. 6.Google Scholar
25 Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins, an Intimate History (New York, 1948), pp. 883–917.Google Scholar
26 Leahy, , op. cit., pp. 405–406Google Scholar; Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), pp. 73–76, 79–81.Google Scholar
27 Leahy, , op. cit., p. 421.Google Scholar