Political ReviewNet
First for Politics and International Relations Book Reviews

• Home
• Search Reviews
• About Political ReviewNet

Book Review: From World War to Cold War

From Roosevelt to Truman places Wilson D. "Bill" Miscamble among the leading scholars of American foreign policy during the Truman era. Already the author of an award-winning study of George F. Kennan in the early years of the Cold War, [1]Miscamble now provides a thoughtful, clearly reasoned, and consistently judicious analysis of the transition in the direction of U.S. foreign policy following the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although he covers a story often told and retold, Miscamble's new work is nevertheless full of fresh observations and assessments. At the same time, this fascinating volume demolishes the revisionist interpretation of FDR as an enlightened visionary and master of diplomatic nuance, who, had he lived, would have skillfully maintained the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union without either pandering to the Soviets or threatening their interests, and thus have avoided the prolonged trauma of the Cold War.

Miscamble portrays Harry Truman in the early months of his presidency as ill-informed and overwhelmed as he struggled to lead the world's emerging superpower through the final months of the greatest war in the history of the world. Miscamble blames Roosevelt for Truman's lack of preparation, viewing FDR as "endlessly clever but ultimately unwise" (p. 85). Largely ignored by Roosevelt, whose ego and vanities would not allow him to share vital information with his vice president, Truman took the oath of office on the evening of April 12, 1945, without having been briefed on any of the most critical wartime issues, including specifics relating to the development of nuclear weapons and agreements recently concluded at the Yalta Conference. As he labored to determine the status of military operations in Europe and the Pacific, the new president understandably turned to his predecessor's principal advisers as he searched for elusive clues regarding what course the deceased leader had planned to pursue in bringing the war to a close and building a lasting peace.

During his first weeks in office, Truman endeavored to follow what he thought was his predecessor's policy of accommodation and cooperation with the Soviet Union, although he sensed trouble early on. He relied initially on two of FDR's closest confidants, Joseph Davies, a wealthy Washington lawyer and former ambassador to Moscow who "constantly advocated conciliation and cooperation with his friends in Moscow" (p. 136), and Harry Hopkins, perhaps the deceased president's closest aide and the individual viewed by Truman's White House staff as the most knowledgeable about FDR's postwar plans for cooperation with the Soviet Union. Dispatching Hopkins and Davies to Moscow and London, respectively, Truman hoped the special missions of these seasoned Roosevelt emissaries could secure Stalin's cooperation on a free Poland and reassure the British. In particular, the naïveté demonstrated by Davies in his dealings with Stalin troubled the emerging hard-liners in Truman's administration, including Averrell Harriman and George F. Kennan.

Discounting the notorious April 23, 1945, meeting between the new American president and Soviet Foreign Secretary Vyacheslav Molotov as insignificant (and overblown in Truman's retelling), Miscamble superbly analyzes the details surrounding Truman's early efforts to maintain what he understood to be FDR's policy of accommodation with the Soviets. In an excellent biographical sketch, Miscamble describes Truman as a Midwestern internationalist with Wilsonian roots, who, upon assuming the office of president, "did not bring to the presidency any significant reservations concerning the policies or goals of Franklin Roosevelt as he understood them" (p. 12). As he sought to provide continuity in U.S. foreign policies, however, Truman came to realize that the world order he had inherited had already come apart and that the United States and the Soviet Union had emerged from the Second World War as the world's major powers with irreconcilable ideologies, interests, and ambitions.

Perhaps Miscamble's analysis of the decision to use atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki provides the book's most compelling chapter. Observing that the flood of historiography on the issue generated at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (along with the controversial Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution) "generated more heat than light" (p. 219), Miscamble attacks the revisionist thesis, set forward by Gar Alperovitz and others, that the United States used the bomb on a Japan which was already on the verge of surrender. The revisionist thesis argues that the unnecessary use of atomic weapons on a helpless Japan was not so much a military tactic to force a quick surrender but rather a demonstration intended to intimidate the Soviet Union. In a superb review of a vast range of secondary works, as well as a thorough reexamination of primary sources, Miscamble explores the military and strategic uses of the bombs in bringing about Japan's surrender. Given the author's background as a Catholic priest and former dean of a seminary, it is not surprising that he devotes attention to ethical and moral questions surrounding the use in warfare of weapons certain to annihilate large numbers of civilians. In the end, Miscamble reasons that, by ending the war quickly and decisively, the bombs saved Japanese as well as Allied lives and created an environment for an orderly occupation and rebuilding of Japan. Furthermore, the Truman administration was anxious (for good reasons) to limit the Soviet military role in the defeat of Japan and thereby contain their military occupation to Manchuria and North Korea. However, Miscamble notes that the United States, although enjoying a monopoly on nuclear weapons for several years, never sought to intimidate Stalin by issuing ultimatums and threatening or implying the use of atomic bombs to secure a strategic goal.

Although From Roosevelt to Truman offers a concluding chapter that summarizes the policies of Truman's entire administration, Miscamble concentrates his study on the sixteen months following the death of Roosevelt to the September 24, 1946, arrival of the "Clifford-Elsey Report" on President Truman's desk. Miscamble credits presidential adviser Clark Clifford with the report's co-authorship, although it was essentially the work of George Elsey, a junior White House naval aide who had studied history as a graduate student at Harvard under Samuel Eliot Morison. The document Elsey prepared at Clifford's request argued that the Soviet Union considered war with the world's capitalist states inevitable and was building its military accordingly. The report stated clearly that the USSR was actively engaged in a program of subversion and espionage against the United States, and concluded by calling for the maintenance of sufficient U.S. military strength to counter Soviet expansionism and aggression. The president's immediate reaction to the report was to have Clifford retrieve all copies and place them under lock; he did not share the Clifford-Elsey document with anyone in his administration, not even Secretary of State James Byrnes and his assistant, Dean Acheson. [2] Miscamble observes that Truman's response to the report's harsh assessment of U.S.-Soviet relations indicates a president who, in late 1946, still hoped for improved relations with Stalin's regime and one who had not yet developed a confrontational strategy for his administration. Nevertheless, throughout the next twelve months, a major transformation of U.S. foreign policy emerged.

Miscamble has little patience with the revisionist school of diplomatic historians who see sharp reversals and policy shifts during the first years of the Truman administration leading to a dangerous and unnecessary Cold War. In contrast to the revisionists, Miscamble concludes that while reassuring and placating Stalin in futile efforts to reach settlements, Truman, Byrnes, and others in the administration took more than a year to learn the true nature of Soviet intentions and ambitions. Miscamble concludes that "despite an uncertain start during which the American policy makers worked their way beyond Rooseveltian assumptions, the Truman administration eventually grasped the essential world realities and assumed the demanding responsibilities of genuine international leadership" (p. 322). As for revisionism, Miscamble considers it long overdue to be "pensioned off once and for all from use in accounts of post war foreign policy," or assigned to "the burial grounds for flawed interpretations" (p. 323).

Within weeks of President Roosevelt's death, a melancholy Harry Hopkins, while preparing for his final trip to Moscow at the behest of the new chief executive, spoke at length in a quiet East Wing office with White House aide George Elsey. In a long and rambling conversation, Hopkins's thoughts were uncharacteristically focused on the past, not the challenges of the future or his mission to Moscow. He wondered how the late president's legacy would be perceived. Would future generations be willing to overlook FDR's "pettiness and meanness," understand his complexities, and recognize his greatness? At last, perhaps realizing that both he and Roosevelt had failed to foresee the coming of a new and volatile world order, Hopkins offered a final thought on FDR. "It was lucky he died when he did." [3]

---

[1]Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1992). This volume won the Truman Library Institute's Book Award in 1993. The author of this review was not and is not involved in the selection of awardees.

[2]The Clifford-Elsey Report first saw the light of day when it was published in its entirety as the "Clifford Report" in Arthur Krock's Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York, 1968). Clifford had provided his own "top-secret" copy to Krock for inclusion in the autobiography of the New York Times executive at a time when Clifford was secretary of defense in the Johnson administration and apparently felt the need to shore up his anti-Soviet credentials. The report was not declassified in the holdings of the Truman Library until 1976. See Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York, 1991), 115-16, 124-29 and George McKee Elsey, An Unplanned Life (Columbia, MO, 2005), 141-44.

[3]Elsey, An Unplanned Life, 86.

• Home
• Search Reviews
• About Political ReviewNet

Privacy Policy