The Lost Peace

74 His brief imprisonment: On Mein Kampf, see Dawidowicz, War against the Jews, 18, 150–51, 156–57; Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 455–56.

  75 The onset and spread: Kershaw, Hubris; Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000). See Nemesis, pp. 183–88, for the rise of the “Führer cult”; the young girl’s quote is on p. 184.

  76 Hitler’s manipulation: See Friedlander, Years of Extermination, 657–58.

  76 Although blind faith: The fighting is well recounted in Kershaw, Nemesis, chaps. 11–14, also pp. 687–95, “His left hand trembled” on 797, “The Führer was sent” on 685.

  77 It was not Providence: Kershaw, Nemesis, 728.

  77 The last four months: Ibid., 761–63; Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1219–20; Werth, Russia at War, 806–7.

  78 On the battlefields: Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The Soldier and Candidate, 1890–1952 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 371.

  78 Eisenhower had reason: Werth, Russia at War, 806–7; Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (London: Penguin Books, 1993); and Lipstadt, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005).

  79 Well after it was clear: Kershaw, Nemesis, 687–88, 746–47, 754–55, 779–80, 822, 829–41.

  81 In the end: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1273–76, 1278–81, 1289, 1299; Ambrose, Soldier and Candidate, 368–74.

  82 In the first months of 1945: Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 138–40.

  82 But it wasn’t only Americans: Werth, Russia at War, 848–54.

  83 In the spring of 1945: A. Russell Buchanan, The United States and World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), vol. 1, chaps. 3, 4, and pp. 214–17. The Churchill quote is in Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939–1945 (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 41.

  84 The only satisfactions: Manchester, American Caesar, 3–9, 213, 248–68. Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 36; William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 96.

  85 The following month: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 334–35; Buchanan, United States and World War II, 1:219–20.

  86 Symbolic slaps: The Pacific fighting is described in Buchanan, United States and World War II, vol. 1, chaps. 10–13, especially pp. 273–78, 280–87, and vol. 2, chaps. 24–26, especially pp. 550–57, 559–67.

  87 Japanese determination: Dower, War without Mercy, 52–53, 57–60, 232–33, 300; John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 87, 156.

  87 To Americans, the quintessential: Dower, War without Mercy, 141.

  88 It was not Tojo’s: For details on Hideki Tojo, see I. B. C. Dear, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1116–18, which includes the quote. Also see John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1970); and Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

  88 The vicious Pacific: Buchanan, United States and World War II, 2:568–80; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 44–46; Dower, War without Mercy, 40–41.

  89 Although U.S. military: For a biographical sketch of LeMay, see Thomas M. Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of Curtis LeMay (New York: Crown, 1986).

  89 Among the many frustrations: Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 187–88; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 328–30, 355, 384.

  91 If Roosevelt had any doubts: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 385–91.

  93 By 1944–45: Ibid., 398, 422, 485–502, 516–19.

  94 By the time of Roosevelt’s death: See Dear, The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, for casualties. For the quote, see Wright, Ordeal of Total War, 263–64.

  95 Only the United States: See the entries on China, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, USA, and USSR in Dear, The Oxford Companion to the Second World War. The U.S. economic statistics are on pp. 1180–82.

  96 It was not just optimism: Robert Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 6–12, 24–25, 57, 68–70, 168–71.

  97 Ever attentive to: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 342, 434–35, 466–67, 482, 508; Divine, Second Chance, 85–86, 114–15; Gilbert, Road to Victory, 471, 1198–99, 1279; William Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 88–90; Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (New York: Westview, 2003), 61.

  98 Roosevelt saw agreement: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 510–12; Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 92–93, 95–96; Butler, My Dear Mr. Stalin, 302–03, 305; Schlesinger, Act of Creation, 61–62.

  100 After Roosevelt died: Butler, My Dear Mr. Stalin, 323; Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 97–100; Schlesinger, Act of Creation, 87–91; McCullough, Truman, 382.

  101 Truman’s tough response: Schlesinger, Act of Creation, 91–92.

  102 American optimism: On Truman’s pre-presidential history, see McCullough, Truman, pts. 1, 2. On HST’s view of Stalin, see Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 100–101. On Stettinius, see Schlesinger, Act of Creation, 73–77.

  103 It was a daunting: Harriman is quoted in Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 106. The deliberations in San Francisco are covered in Divine, Second Chance, chap. 11; and Schlesinger, Act of Creation, White quote on 156. Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 114–16.

  105 Kennedy and White: Schlesinger, Act of Creation, 286–87, 294.

  Chapter 4: Hope and Despair

  107 The end of the war: Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), 73–74.

  108 The establishment of: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1299, 1306, 1320, 1334–35. For the war plan against Moscow, see BBC Documentary: World WarII: Behind Closed Doors, Episode Five.

  109 Truman saw the need: Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, Year of Decisions (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 256; Ralph Keyes, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Harry Truman (New York: Gramercy Books, 1995), 124; McCullough, Truman, 404, 409–11.

  110 To ease his fears: Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkeley Medallion Books, 1973), 237.

  110 Truman took some comfort: Truman, Memoirs, 340; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 538; Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry Truman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 327–28; McCullough, Truman, 333, 368, 406–09, 412.

  112 Truman also found: Miller, Plain Speaking, 85; Keyes, Harry Truman, 124.

  112 After their morning meeting: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 538–39; Truman, Memoirs, 1:341.

  112 The scenes of destruction: “What a pity” is quoted in Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People, 328.

  112 As Truman and Churchill saw: McCullough, Truman, 407, 416; Montefiore, Stalin, 496.

  113 Churchill and Truman were sympathetic: Montefiore, Stalin, 498; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 541–42.

  114 Truman also saw Stalin’s: Truman, Memoirs, 1:341–42; McCullough, Truman, 417–18, 451; Hamby, Man of the People, 328–29, 331.

  115 Truman’s inclination: Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969 (New York: Norton, 1973), 340.

  116 On July 17: McCullough, Truman, 425–26.

  116 It was not misperceptions: The Potsdam conference is covered in Truman, Memoirs, 1:332–412; McCullough, Truman, 420–52. “Iron fence” and “Fairy tales”: Montefiore, Stalin, 499. HST on Attlee and Bevin: McCullough, Truman, 447–48. “Pig-headed” and “police government”: Truman, Memoirs, 402.

  118 During the conference: Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, 3d ed. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003). The
Groves and Farrell reports are on pp. 308–14.

  120 Truman was “immensely pleased”: Ibid., 223–24.

  120 Some of the scientists: Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 309, 314, 323.

  120 Truman was not unmindful: McCullough, Truman, 443–44; Hamby, Man of the People, 332.

  121 But how?: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 546–47.

  121 Truman preferred: Ibid., 572–73; McCullough, Truman, 442–43.

  122 Churchill and others watching: Anthony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin, 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 138–39; Montefiore, Stalin, 499–501.

  122 The Anglo-American-Soviet: Michael Ignatieff, “Getting the Iraq War Wrong: What the War Has Taught Me about Political Judgment,” New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2007, 28.

  125 Stalin told the president: Manchester, American Caesar, 437; McCullough, Truman, 425.

  126 The Japanese in fact: Dower, Embracing Defeat, 27–28.

  126 In a pronouncement: The Potsdam Declaration: Truman, Memoirs, 391–92. The Japanese response: Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 236. MacArthur’s view: Manchester, American Caesar, 437.

  126 Unless the Japanese: McCullough, Truman, 456–58; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 315–16, 320–21.

  127 Were the atomic bombings: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 546; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 44, 569 n. 12, 570 n. 13; Dallek, Truman, 25–28.

  129 On August 15: Dower, Embracing Defeat, 34–36.

  129 However absurd: Ibid., 25, 29–30.

  130 It was not as: Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 291–300, 302; Montefiore, Stalin, 502. On Stalin, also see Vladimir O. Pechatnov, “The Soviet Union and the Outside World,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. Melvyn Leffler (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Leffler gave me a copy of Pechatnov’s manuscript.

  131 In September: George F. Kennan, The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 72, 175–79; Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 106–10.

  133 Because such a prospect: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 116–20; Offner, Another Such Victory, 101–05; Hamby, Man of the People, 339.

  135 Soviet-American tensions: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 114–15, 119–20; Manchester, American Caesar, 439; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 73.

  135 The decision to have: Dower, Embracing Defeat, 69–73, also chaps. 6–7; Manchester, American Caesar, 441–48.

  136 MacArthur’s famous: Manchester, American Caesar, 466–74; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 223.

  138 In the summer of 1945: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 517, 530, 535.

  139 Korea was a minor: Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security , the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 88–90.

  139 Indochina: William Appleman Williams et al., eds., America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 30–32, 39–41, 61–62; Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 58–62; de Gaulle, Complete War Memoirs, 926–31.

  141 It was, however, a bitter: Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 62–72; Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 19–22.

  142 China was another matter: See John K. Fairbank, The United States and China (New York: Viking Press, 1958), 308, 313; and Tuchman, Stilwell, 460, for the White quote. See also the fine discussion of these China dilemmas in Offner, Another Such Victory, 307–21.

  144 Nevertheless, by the summer: Michael Schaller, The United States and China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 98–103.

  145 After Potsdam: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 508, 525, 536, 564.

  Chapter 5: Irrepressible Conflicts?

  146 In late August 1945, Charles de Gaulle: De Gaulle, Complete War Memoirs, 905–08; Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 550.

  148 In the fall of 1945: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 534–35; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 40–48; Offner, Another Such Victory, 23–24.

  149 Truman tried: Offner, Another Such Victory, 107–09.

  149 Stalin was never: George F. Kennan, Russia and the West: Under Lenin and Stalin (New York: New American Library, 1962), 361; Montefiore, Stalin, chap. 46, pp. 514 and 531 for the quotes.

  150 In October: Montefiore, Stalin, 532–37; Kennan, Russia and the West, 235.

  151 Although his ruthless: Kennan, Memoirs, 279.

  151 During the all-night: Kennan, Russia and the West, 241; Montefiore, Stalin, 524, 526.

  152 A more important question: For Kennan’s early life, see his Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967). The quote is in Kennan, Russia and the West, 244–45. On Stalin’s response to the outbreak of the war and his ultimate realism, see Montefiore, Stalin, 363–83, especially 374–77.

  153 My point here: Robert L. Messer, The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 134–35.

  154 Mindful that Byrnes: Kennan, Memoirs, 284.

  154 Kennan: Ibid., 286–88.

  155 Kennan’s observations: Offner, Another Such Victory, 112–24; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 47–49; McCullough, Truman, 356. See also Messer, End of an Alliance, chaps. 8 and 9.

  156 Truman’s personal antagonism: Offner, Another Such Victory, 111, 117, 121.

  157 By the time Byrnes: Ibid., 113–14, 120; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 79–81.

  157 The differences over Iran: Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 78–79; Offner, Another Such Victory, 84–85, 112–13, 120.

  158 American sleight of hand: Messer, End of an Alliance, 132, 150.

  158 While the United States: U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper: August 1949, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 1:64–65, 96–100, 108–10, 131–32; Kennan, Memoirs, 236–39; Forest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945–1959 (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 56, 59–60; Offner, Another Such Victory, 309–21.

  160 At the end of November: U.S. Department of State, China White Paper, 2:581–84.

  161 The overt sympathy: Dallek, Truman, 30.

  161 Eager for both: Pogue, George C. Marshall, 525, 597, 685; McCullough, Truman, 472, 534–35, 794, 862.

  162 Marshall’s instructions: For Marshall’s mission, see Pogue, George C. Marshall, chap. 4. On Dies, see Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Free Press, 1987), 231, 256, 281. On Dewey, see James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 529.

  163 The tensions with: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 502; Kennan, Memoirs, 373–74; Kennan, Russia and the West, chaps. 18 and 24; Pogue, George C. Marshall, 86–90. For the views of leading scholar Chen Jian, see Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), chap. 2, especially 38.

  165 In going to China: Pogue, George C. Marshall, 107.

  165 After Marshall arrived in China: Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall: Soldier and Statesman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 562–63.

  166 Although Marshall: Ibid., 570.

  166 The temporary gains: Ibid., 566, 572–73.

  167 The forty-seven-year-old Chou: Pogue, George C. Marshall, 84–85; Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 743–46.

  169 As World War II ended: See Stanley Wolpert, Roots of Confrontation in South Asia: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Superpowers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 96, 116.

  169 In the 1920s and ‘30s: Ibid., chap. 7; Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), chaps. 17–21, especially
pp. 258–60, 265–68, 316–18, 321, and 326.

  171 “The greatest menace”: Herbert Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy and War (London: Epworth Press, 1953), cited in Platt, Respectfully Quoted, 47.

  172 After World War II, the Middle East: Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Conversation between Weizmann and Balfour cited from Current Biography Yearbook, 1942 (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1942), 877–80.

  174 The United States: Miller, Plain Speaking, 230–32; Dallek, Truman, 63–65.

  177 The partition and British withdrawal: Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 237–46.

  Chapter 6: The Triumph of Fear

  179 For a country: Stalin quoted in Montefiore, Stalin, 539.

  180 Andrei Zhdanov: Ibid., 136–39, 540–44, 547; Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 558–64, 577–78. For the Soviet joke, see Lawrence W. Levine, The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Kennan, Memoirs, 541.

  182 On February 9, 1946: Vital Speeches of the Day 12 (March 1, 1946): 300–04.

  183 Stalin’s principal associates: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946: Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1969), 694–96.

  184 Whether Stalin actually thought: Walter Bedell Smith, Moscow Mission, 1946–1949 (London: Heinemann, 1950), 51–65; Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 133–34; Montefiore, Stalin, 556–57.

  185 The response in the United States: Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 187; Offner, Another Such Victory, 128–29; James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 148–49; Kennan, Memoirs, 539.

  187 Soviet preoccupation: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 555, 557, 564.

  187 This outlook existed: Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, 170–71; Offner, Another Such Victory, 126.

  188 The revelations: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 564–67.