* The last, and certainly most conspicuous, of the four events that transformed the political culture of Washington in 1946 was a speech given in early March by Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Truman's home state of Missouri.
* Like Stalin's speech of four weeks earlier, it was prepared for public consumption.
* Truman had read a draft in advance and approved it, though he would later equivocate on this point.
* He sat behind Churchill as the legendary leader, speaking in the great rolling cadences now so familiar to Americans, declared that an "iron curtain" had fallen on Europe, dividing the free people of the West from a tyrannical, totalitarian regime in the East.
* Sometimes called the opening shot of the Cold War, this passage is one of the most often-quoted in post 1945 world affairs:
* Churchill said near the end: "I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines ... What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will be."
* This is coming from the guy who bitterly opposed to collapse of the British Empire which controlled 25% of the world only a few years earlier.
* Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
* These four developments of February and early March 1946 - Stalin’s speech, Pearson’s revelations, the Long Telegram, and Churchill’s speech - went a long way toward solidifying American attitudes with respect to the Soviet Union.
* The Pearson revelations and the Stalin speech demonstrated to lawmakers of both parties that continued efforts at cooperation with the USSR would be risky to sustain in the hardening atmosphere of American politics.
* General suspicion of the Soviet Union moved to the mainstream-it was now the easier, politically safer stance for a congressional representative or senator to take.
* Add the four together and the picture was clear: Stalin's Soviet Union presented no immediate danger, but neither could it be trusted.
* Because the Soviets could not be trusted, the United States needed to act, rather than stand idly by as it had in the 1930s.
* The questions now was - what to do about it?
* They didn’t want another war.
* And at this stage, the U.S. didn’t have a tradition of carrying a highly military budget during peacetime.
* Many in congress, and perhaps even Truman, believed that the expensive game of military readiness was something the old, defunct European nations did - the U.S. was an exception.
* Plus, Truman wanted to keep the government budget low and balanced and to avoid the inflation that a lot of people were predicting would come after the war ended and the economy returned to a consumer footing, with millions of soldiers returning home.
* As the Soviet threat seemed a long way off, Truman could afford to take his time and do it on the cheap.
* One of the first things he did was to screw Stalin on Iran.
* As we’ve mentioned in the past, Stalin had troops in Iran during WWII to stop the Nazis taking the oil reserves.
* As did the British, who of course had a long history with oil concessions - I think we talked about that on the Bullshit Filter series on Syria.
* Stalin demanded an oil concession from Iran that was equivalent to the one they gave the British.
* American and British diplomats worked with the Iranian leader Ahmad Qavam (and, secretly behind the scenes, with the heir to the Persian throne, Reza Pahlevi) to demand the removal of Soviet troops sent by Stalin to the northern part of the country and to suppress the Iranian communist party, Tudeh.
* Stalin agreed to withdraw his forces in exchange for an oil concession; but once the troops were out, the Iranians-backed by Washington-reneged on the oil agr
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
