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Historiography of the Origins of the Cold War

There are a gazillion books and articles on the Cold War and how and why it started, most of which incorporate the phrase “origins of the Cold War” in their titles. In general, this body of literature is aimed at doing two things: (1) describing the political, economic, military, and social factors that induced the Cold War and emphasizing the importance of which ever one the author chose to study, and (2) assigning blame, either to individuals or nations, for the Cold War.

Cold War historiography is generally categorized by the author’s conclusions regarding the latter. Orthodox interpretations assign blame squarely to Soviet Union, insisting that the Cold War was the result of America’s righteous response to Soviet aggression and abhorrent communist ideology. Revisionist interpretations take the opposite tack, claiming intrusive American policy, especially regarding economics, was responsible. Post-revisionist interpretations are more diverse, but generally attribute the origins of the Cold War to the security concerns of each nation and generally refute the central revisionist thesis. Other perspectives that defy such simplistic categorization have proliferated since the end of the Cold War, although most represent some synthesis of revisionist and post-revisionist interpretations.

More important for understanding the Cold War historically are the political, economic, military and social factors and the critical events. Many different factors have been identified as important or even central to the origins of the Cold War, among them: good versus evil, political ideology, economics, the atomic bomb and “atomic diplomacy,” the personalities of leaders, national and international security, the fate of Eastern Europe, the post-war “German problem,” and religion. Relatedly, some of the critical events associated with Cold War’s emergence and entrenchment are: President Roosevelt’s death and replacement by Truman, the Yalta conference, the Potsdam Conference, the adoption of “MC 48,” the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, and the utilizations of the Lend-Lease Act (though many others might be added to this list). This diverse array of events and political factors is accompanied by an equally diverse set of dates that mark the beginning of the Cold War, typically corresponding to which event or concept an author emphasizes.

In addition to critical concepts and crucial events, a recurrent theme in the Cold War literature is a set of related tensions regarding historical agency. The tension is between the relative power of structural forces and the choices of groups and individuals in shaping the outcome of world history. It has alternately been expressed in terms of the internal versus external concerns of a nation, the dispositional versus situational behavior of individuals , and economic, political, or personal determinism versus indeterminism. In this regard, thinly veiled metaphysics enters the historical discourse, and conclusions about what is most important for the origins of the Cold War often hinge on where authors place the equilibrium of this tension. Thus, there can be widespread consensus in the historical community as to what happened, and an incredibly broad spectrum of contradictory accounts of why.

Orthodox Cold War History

The orthodox views of Cold War history, also called “traditionalist,” encompass a range of explanations that justify U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and other communists and blame the Soviets for its origin. The central factors in the orthodox account coincide with lay perceptions about the Cold War, from its beginning to today: Soviet aggression/expansionism and the (evil) communist ideology. The Soviet aggression explanation was original put forward by diplomat and policymaker George Kennan, and came to define the terms of discussion during the early years of the Cold War. Kennan claimed (under the pseudonym “X”), in his article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” the Soviet Union, after having so much difficulty consolidating power after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, was anxious and paranoid about its security and thus wanted to expand and exert control on its neighbors. Additionally, the “Russian-Communist projection” of the “Marxian ideology” was diametrically opposed to capitalism and would try to undermine and attack it at every opportunity. To check this tendency for aggressive expansion before it became problematic for the West, it was the responsibility of the U.S. to support the neighbors of the U.S.S.R. and answer “the Kremlin’s challenge to American society” through containment of communism and Socialism.

Kennan also established another key feature of the early Cold War which is now acknowledged by historians of all persuasions: the relative weakness of Russia compared to the United States and the West. Thus, only a combination of Russian “self-delusion” combined with “the infallibility of the Kremlin” had locked the Soviets into their ultimately futile struggle with the West. Through manipulation and rhetoric, the Communist Party leadership was deceiving the Russian people and preventing the voice of reason from reaching them. They “look[ed] forward to a duel of infinite duration” with America and the capitalist West, so despite their weakness, the Soviets represented a real and dire threat, both physical and moral.

Of course, Kennan’s account was calculated to justify the very foreign policy he helped put into place and does not represent the work of an “objective” historian, but it has been very influential. But other orthodox/traditionalist views, while still essentially blaming Russia and justifying U.S. foreign policy, analyzed the conflict through a “Great Powers” approach that drew on the history of the imperial powers of the past and considered Russia and the U.S. to be the new global superpowers. Later historians also use this approach to varying extents, but according to the orthodox interpretations, it was still only the Soviets who were misusing their position as a great power by trying to dominate Eastern Europe. The revisionist historians started from the opposite premise: the Cold War was indeed a struggle between great powers, but it was the aggressive policies of the United States that initiated it.

Revisionist Cold War History

The first and foremost revisionist history of the origins of the Cold War was William Appleman Williams’ The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, first published in 1959. The tragedy, according to Williams, is that the success of U.S. diplomacy, in the implementation of Open Door economic policies, is what led to the ultimate diplomatic failure in the form of the Cold War. Williams’ thesis is essentially that throughout U.S. history, a particular economic vision has been key: American prosperity is dependent on expansion. From geographical expansion in the era of Manifest Destiny to expansion of markets for American manufactured goods in the 20th century, Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis has been part of American ideology.

In Williams’ view, American foreign policy has been driven, especially since the 1890’s, primarily by economic factors and the need to protect and expand American markets. Thus, reduction or stagnation of American markets have been seen as the causes of the serious depressions, and our decisions to enter wars (Spanish-American, WWI, WWII) were made, partly but significantly, to preserve or expand American markets. But these expansions left the “underdeveloped” trade partners worse off; essentially, we were exploiting them in a new economic, rather than political, colonialism. Competition for markets (which needed to be free-trading and not self-sufficient) was the impetus for the Cold War sectioning of Europe into the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc, and for the intense perceived threat of Asian and Latin American communism. The protection of democracy in the face of communism was only pursued because democracy accompanied capitalism.

A number of other Left-leaning scholars, many of them students of Williams, expanded on the premise of Tragedy. Part of Williams’ critique of American diplomacy concerned the atomic bomb and how it affected U.S. foreign affairs (“The United States dropped the bomb to end the war against Japan and thereby stop the Russians in Asia, and to give them sober pause in eastern Europe .”) and that is the focus of Gar Alperovitz’ Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. Alperovitz argues that the realization of the atomic bomb, combined with Roosevelt’s death and Truman’s ascension to the presidency, precipitated a change in U.S. policy from conciliation with Russia to a more demanding and inflexible approach backed by the American nuclear monopoly. The decision to use atomic weapons against Japan was not, as President Truman claimed, necessary to end the war and prevent millions of unnecessary deaths; General Eisenhower and others believed the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway. Instead, that decision had its roots in the Potsdam Conference on European settlement negotiations among Russia, America, and Great Britain and the continuing war with Japan. During this conference, the first successful nuclear tests had been conducted, and this emboldened Truman to try to cow Stalin into submission regarding control of Eastern Europe and the terms of U.S. economic aid to Russia, although he did not reveal the nuclear results. In addition to an ultimatum to the Japanese, the conference resulted in heightened tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., as President Truman made U.S. objectives clear, especially regarding control of Poland, but Stalin refused to capitulate. Additionally, American policy makers were concerned with the expansion of Soviet power into Japanese-controlled Manchuria, now that the Red Army was free from the war in Europe. Although Russian assistance against Japan could not be refused, U.S. officials wanted to avoid a Russia invasion if they could. Thus, Truman used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki primarily to demonstrate the power of America’s awful new weapon to the Soviets and to end the war before the Soviets took over Manchuria, rather than to save lives.

Another revisionist take on the Cold War was advanced by D. F. Fleming in The Cold War and Its Origins, which departs from orthodox views but does not derive from the work of William Appleman Williams. Fleming traces the origins of the Cold War to Western intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918, which first made the Soviets (the victors in that war) suspicious of the West. American unilateralism and the failure of Roosevelt’s efforts to cooperate with Russia (which resulted from American anti-communism) were the deciding factors, and at each stage of escalation, Russian actions were a response to perceived American aggression. In particular, Truman, unprepared to become President and far less subtle than his predecessor, reversed the conciliatory policies of Roosevelt, bringing the Cold War to a point of no return. Though economic factors are not central to Fleming’s account, it formed the basis for other revisionist histories that synthesized Williams’ economic imperialism thesis with explanations of Soviet actions in terms of justifiable reactions to U.S. actions.

Other revisionist histories marshaled more evidence for the Williams’ work and expanded upon Fleming’s scholarship to support the general revisionist account, creating a largely consonant body of literature that indicted the U.S. for starting the Cold War.

Revisionist Backlash

While a number of revisionist studies of the Cold War appeared in the 1960s, such a critical and controversial approach remained well Left of mainstream history. Reviews of revisionist works were often highly critical and defensive of the orthodox views. One important critique of revisionism is Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s article “Origins of the Cold War” from 1967. Schlesinger distances himself slightly from the orthodox view as he describes it (though this essay is considered part of the orthodox historiography), in which “the Cold War was the brave essential response of free men to communist aggression.” He characterizes revisionism as a healthy phenomenon that has followed every American war, which adds depth to our understanding of history.

Nonetheless, he concludes that the revisionist conclusions are generally wrong. They focus on the words and actions of three men in Roosevelt’s and Truman’s government—Secretary of War Henry Stimson, George Kennan, and Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace—who were not representative of the government’s attitude in foreign relations. By focusing on these men, who did not hold to a universalist Wilsonian ideal of international politics but instead thought in terms of “spheres of influence” (power relations), Schlesinger implies that revisionists have denied the reality of America’s generally benevolent vision of foreign policy (with only occasional “backsliding”). Moscow, on the other hand, thought only in terms of spheres of influence; U.S. reactions on behalf of freedom and democracy were therefore at the root of the Cold War.

Another key critique of revisionist scholarship is The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War by James Robert Maddox, which simply consists of short essays on the use and misuse of sources in each of seven revisionist books, including those of Williams, Alperovitz, and Fleming discussed above. Though briefly praising the revisionists for addressing issues that had been completely ignored by orthodox historians, particularly economics, he concludes that they pursue such arguments far beyond what the evidence warrants and privilege economic concerns unduly and generally denigrates revisionist scholarship as unfit for professional historians.

Maddox takes Williams’ The Tragedy of American Diplomacy to task for his construction of the Open Door Policy as a reified ideology in the Truman administration: “The mortal weakness of William’s interpretation lay in his inability to produce even the scantiest evidence that American policymakers actually regarded an Open Door in Eastern Europe as the critical factor, rather than as one of many subsidiary goals, in relations with Russia.” Although the Open Door Policy was real enough, Williams extends it far beyond its real role in dealing with the communists. Because there is no direct evidence of the centrality of the Open Door, Williams must claim that it became an unspoken assumption for the administration, though it was spoken of readily regarding Asia (rather than Eastern Europe). Maddox also analyzes many of the ellipses in Tragedy, accusing Williams’ of using gross distortions of the documentary evidence in order to prove his point. At times, Williams misrepresents the subject topic of conversations; at others he simply ignores large amounts of contextual material that undermine his thesis. Though not completely refuting the legitimacy of Williams’ narrative, this critique demonstrated the need for a more nuanced approach to the actions of American officials.

Fleming’s The Cold War and Its Origins is given a slightly gentler treatment. Maddox focuses on Fleming’s claims of Truman’s complete departure from Roosevelt’s diplomacy, which he constructs substantially based on account in the popular press and printed opinions of officials. Roosevelt’s policy was not so free of strategic thinking (instead of Wilsonian thinking), and Truman’s was not so dominated by it. Additionally, Maddox deconstructs the evidence for Fleming’s claim that the U.S. assumed Russia would enter the war in the Pacific on August 8th, 1945. This knowledge, according to Fleming, prompted the U.S. to issue the ultimatum to Japan during the Potsdam conference, so that upon rejection of that warning, America would be free to use the atomic bomb as soon as it was ready. This, in turn, would end the war before the Russians had taken over much of much Chinese Manchuria, which the Japanese controlled. Maddox argues that Fleming misinterprets documents regarding the call for Japan’s surrender and those that seem to suggest concern about Russia’s part in the Pacific war were a primary concern of the President and his advisors; the date of August 8th was not if fact so crucial in the minds of U.S. policymakers.

Maddox similarly addresses the context of quotes used in Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy, as well as the works of David Horowitz’s broad statement of Cold War revisionism in The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War, Gabriel Kolko’s treatment of the wartime roots of the Cold War in The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945, and Lloyd C. Gardner’s Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949. He also disputes the conclusions, though not the historical scholarship, of Diane Shaver Clemens’ Yalta, in which she argues that the America’s disregard for the Yalta accords was extremely threatening to Russia and had a key role in sparking the Cold War. Though Maddox did not offer new interpretations, he addressed and repudiated the central revisionist canon, marking the arrival of a systematic new approach that deradicalized the work of the revisionists while largely absolving American foreign policy from having started the Cold War.

Post-revisionist Cold War History

John Lewis Gaddis is usually considered the first and foremost post-revisionist, and his The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 was published in 1972. One of the hallmarks of post-revisionism is a realist attitude regarding foreign policy decisions and focus on the perceptions and misperceptions of policymakers. Though moving past communist ideology and Soviet aggression as the roots of the Cold War and examining as many relevant factors as possible (including those central to revisionist history), Gaddis nevertheless comes to a generally orthodox conclusion about America’s role: the “theme which runs through this book…,” writes Gaddis, “is the narrow range of alternatives open to American leaders during this period as they sought to deal with problems of war and peace.” The events that created the Cold War, for America’s part, were tough but reasonable decisions of U.S. policymakers caught between rocks and hard places. Although Americans were appalled by communism, cooperating with Russia to win the war in Europe and Japan was a lesser evil than an Axis victory. The German problems of reparations, of how to rebuild that war-torn country without facilitating future German aggression, and the question of who would control Germany represented an early split between Soviet and American goals. Similarly, there was a choice regarding control of Eastern European countries between Russia’s security goals (that is, Moscow wanted to set up friendly governments) and the political autonomy of the people of those countries. Although the United States clearly had the upper hand militarily and economically, policymakers were constrained by what decisions would be acceptable to the American public. Thus they could not act in terms of realpolitik the same way the Soviets could.

Beyond America’s unrealizable desire to balance the conflicting needs of too many groups and the confining nature of the American political system, misperceptions about Soviet intentions were a vital factor in the origins of the Cold War. U.S. policymakers did not understand the intensity of Soviet concerns about Germany, and they mistook Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe as an attempt to export communism rather than a strategy to ensure Russian security. And the Russians mistook Truman’s tougher style of negotiation for a reversal of Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation. Gaddis ultimately concludes that circumstances, both internal external, that were beyond the control of leaders were the determining factors: “Leaders of both superpowers sought peace, but in doing so yielded to considerations which, while they did not precipitate war, made a resolution of differences impossible.”

Other post-revisionist historians, particularly Melvyn Leffler, have argued that geopolitical strategy and fundamental ideological differences were the central factors that created the Cold War, though strategy trumped ideology when they worked at cross purposes. Thus, after two and a half decades of communist history that counseled the Soviets not to trust the West, Stalin knew (as did Roosevelt) that there were deep rifts between Russia and her allies in the last years of World War II. Yet cooperation was the strategic imperative. After the war’s end, Stalin’s chief concern was reaching a settlement that addressed Russia strategic security needs through control of Eastern Europe and strict allied limitations of Germany and Japan (the principle enemies of Soviet Russia) while facilitating Russian reconstruction. To that end, he encouraged cooperation between communists in the Eastern Europe and non-communist country to which they belonged. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was engaged in a Byzantine balancing act between democratic imperatives, American strategic concerns, the pacification of Stalin, and the demands of the rest of the Allies.

Truman, “untutored in foreign policy and military affairs,” could not maintain this balance, and his advisors feared the moment might be right for communist governments to take hold even in the West. Bolstered by the atomic monopoly and the economic power of America, Truman and his top advisors pushed harder and harder to secure American strategic interests, eventually resulting in the articulation of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (entailing promotion of freedom worldwide and economic assistance to promote democracy in countries vulnerable to communism), which spelled out the terms of this “moment in history [in which] nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life.” From then on, the interests of the two great powers were clearly at odds, and geopolitical strategy dictated the further escalations of the Cold War through the articulation of the containment strategy of NC 68 to the Korean War.

What We Know Now That the Cold War is Over

Since the end of the Cold War, new archival materials have become available, and scholars are increasingly detached from the conflict. John Lewis Gaddis presents a synthesis, strongly infused with his own perspective, of Cold War scholarship up to 1997 in We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Building upon is previous work but shifting his emphasis, Gaddis actually moves closer to the original orthodox position on the Cold War: new Russian documents demonstrate that Stalin was truly motivated by communist ideology, and the ideological differences between communist Russia and capitalist America were at the center of the conflict. Claiming that “Western democracies sought a form of security that would reject violence or the threat of it…” while for Stalin, “security came only by intimidating or eliminating potential challengers,” Gaddis returns to the orthodox description of the West as passive and the East as aggressive. The atomic bomb was dropped “to achieve victory as quickly, as decisively, and as economically as possible” and thereby save lives, while intimidating Russia, though a factor, was only of minor importance. The subsequent aggressive nuclear diplomacy was the only choice Stalin left for the United States, because he refused agree to the American plan for United Nations regulation of atomic weapons. While not espousing a ‘communism is evil’ position, Gaddis also considers good versus evil as an important factor in the Cold War, “because ordinary people at the time looked at in these terms.”

Another post-Cold War work focuses on an entirely different issue as the key to the conflict: Marc Trachtenberg’s A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963. Trachtenberg argues, contrary to the main schools of Cold War thought, that the problem of Germany’s place in the post-war world was the most important factor in the Cold War. The geopolitical power struggle played out over the issues of how West Germany’s military should be rebuilt and whether it should have a nuclear arsenal. The West wanted to rapidly and fully assimilate West Germany (and thus prevent the threat of future German militancy), and Russia feared the potential of German aggression (after suffering from it in two world wars). Both sides’ objectives seemed compatible, and the initial peace settlements were relatively stable; such a peace might have lasted and the Cold War might have ended sooner. But the American strategy of preparing, from Moscow’s perspective, for first-strike nuclear scenarios and rearming Germany destabilized the situation. Thus, a lasting peace (in Europe, at least) was not reached until it became clear to the Russians that Germany would not be given nuclear capabilities and would be integrated into NATO so as not to pose a threat to Russia.

Cold War histories continue to be written, and many other works address many other aspects of this conflict. The post-Cold War histories will increasingly fail to fit the Orthodox/Revisionist/Post-revisionist classification, and novice Cold War historians will increasingly have their work cut out for them before in coming to grips with this field.

I Now Know?

I would like to be able to say that I now have a firm grasp of the origins of the Cold War, but I cannot. I know some of the factors that were important, but it would take a much more intensive study of the Cold War literature I neglected as well as diplomatic history more broadly before I could make a sound judgment as to which factors deserve more emphasis, which less. It would be easy to take a side based on politics, and there are enough well-argued books to back up whatever position I took, but that is not the way history should be used, at least by historians.

Mary Kaldor presents another way, besides the one based on blame, of interpreting the traditional categories of Cold War historiography in terms of the whether the actions of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were reactions to internal or external conditions:

Figure 1. Historiography schematic. Adapted from Kaldor, p. 41.

Thus, orthodox and post-revisionist scholars share a vision of the Cold War having been essentially forced on the United States, while revisionists and post-revisionists agree that it was, at least to some extent, forced on Russia. Kaldor argues that reality is closer to the empty box; the Cold War was largely created not by conflict of ideologies or a geopolitical power struggle, but by domestic needs to justify economic and political imperatives. However, as she states, “[t]hese different stories about the origins of the cold war stem from different world views,” and her schematic for Cold War historiography helps clarify these differences in worldview. I am disinclined to think that more philosophizing is a positive thing in the writing of history, but for the Cold War, it might actually help clarify and make explicit the assumptions scholars bring to their work. For this topic in particular, the boundaries between history and politics break down, and I do not know how to reestablish them. Hopefully increasing distance from the Cold War will facilitate a definitive synthesis of Cold War history sometime in the near future. But it may be as Melvyn Leffler predicts in his lengthy critique of We Now Know and overview of contemporary Cold War historiography: “the story of the Cold War is likely to become more contentious as it becomes more interesting and complex. The Cold War will defy any single master narrative.”

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