The War Scare of 1946 and Its Consequences

Date: 7 July 1997

Dear colleagues:

Professor Pach has asked me to submit a post to begin the discussion of my article in the current issue of "Diplomatic History." I have mulled the matter over, and find that I am on the whole content to let the essay speak for itself. I have drawn the material from a work in progress, and hope to use your comments to improve the final study of American plans and preparations for the defense of Europe in the first decade of the Cold War.

I should like, however, to make a few observations. I am, as far as I know, the only diplomatic historian who works in both the newly opened archives of Eastern Europe and in the still classified records of the United States and several other Western countries. My research has left me with the conviction that the integration into the historiography of the Cold War of Western materials relating to intelligence and military planning will reshape our understanding of the postwar struggle as much as (and possibly more than) documents from Moscow and elsewhere in what was once the Soviet bloc.

There are three general reasons why I suspect that this will be the case:

(1) The scholar who has not reviewed the relevant intelligence cannot reasonably expect to know how officials perceived events in the wide world apart from what little was reflected in the daily scribbling of chanceries. It is for precisely this reason that so many historians have supposed that concern for Turkey was specious or otherwise misplaced.

(2) War plans influenced diplomacy in the early Cold War rather more than historians have supposed -- chiefly, I think, because the relationship between diplomacy and war plans sets off alarm bells in the minds of the government's declassifiers. (I could tell some funny stories if I were made of the stuff of martyrs.)

(3) The final reason for my belief in the importance of new Western material is less obvious: Archival glasnost in Moscow was limited in the best of times, and the general trend is now toward even greater restriction. It is, accordingly, quite likely that we shall learn more about certain Soviet activities from Western intelligence reports than from Russian records. The recent declassification of VENONA is an example of what I have in mind. Others impend.

My best wishes to all --

Eduard Mark

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 7 July 1997

Replying to a post of mine on H-DIPLO in late March, Lloyd Gardner bemoaned the idea that "there were no options in American Cold War policies." I wonder whether he would agree that there were worse options as well as better ones? In particular, it would be nice to know what he thinks of Eduard Mark's conclusion that "The contrast between Stalin's flagrant intimidation of Turkey in 1946 and the greater subtlety he later displayed suggests that he may owe his reputation for caution to the discovery that there were positions for which the president he dismissed as a 'gentleman shopkeeper' would fight." If Gardner denies this possibility, what are his grounds for doing so? Surely not that the Soviet empire was so obviously "counter-revolutionary by inclination" that American officials could not have been sincerely concerned over a possible Soviet invasion of Turkey?

Steven Schwartzberg

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 9 July 1997

I have not yet read Dr. Mark's essay on the 1946 war scare (that issue of DIPLOMATIC HISTORY sits in the "to be read" section of my bookshelf), but I would like to respond to his H-DIPLO post, which raises important questions about intelligence history and the larger significance of that enterprise.

> My research has left me with the conviction that the integration into the historiography of the >Cold War of Western materials relating to intelligence and military planning will reshape our >understanding of the postwar struggle as much as (and possibly more than) documents from >Moscow and elsewhere in what was once the Soviet bloc.

Dr. Mark's point that the integration of intelligence materials will allow for a more accurate understanding of Cold War events equally applies, I believe, to other historical eras. For example, in his superb study of Civil War intelligence (THE SECRET WAR FOR THE UNION, 1996), Edwin Fishel notes (p.1) that a previously unappreciated "intelligence explanation" can completely change our understanding of why the military campaigns happened as they did. Thus, according to Fishel, Union and Confederate armies did not blindly stumble upon one another at Gettysburg as stated in the traditional explanation, but rather an appreciation of Union intelligence operations leads to the conclusion that Northern commanders carefully tracked the progress of General Lee's army and deliberately engaged it under conditions highly disadvantageous to the Confederates.

To return to Dr. Mark's post, I am in danger of posing a question answered in his essay, and if so, I apologize. But I wonder if he could elaborate on the following observation:

>(1) The scholar who has not reviewed the relevant intelligence cannot reasonably expect to >know how officials perceived events in the wide world apart from what little was reflected in >the daily scribbling of chanceries.

Here Dr. Mark makes a very important and intriguing point: intelligence historians (who use intelligence archives) have an advantage over diplomatic historians (who use diplomatic archives) because "the daily scribbling of chanceries" do not contain the best information available to policymakers. If true in general, why is it that in the specific case of the 1946 war scare intelligence agencies picked up signals of a possible Soviet invasion of Turkey while diplomatic services did not?

Presumably, the Soviets conducted troop movements through urban centers where Western diplomats or Western businessmen were stationed, initiated troop concentrations along the Turkish border, and undertook other logistical preparations too elaborate to remain concealed even from observers not trained as intelligence officers.

Why was there so little diplomatic (as opposed to intelligence) reporting on these developments? After all, as has long been known based on materials published in FRUS and various memoirs, in 1941 the State Department obtained first-class intelligence on German plans for the invasion of Russia.

Finally, regarding Dr. Mark's point about "Archival glasnost in Moscow":

>(3) The final reason for my belief in the importance of new Western material is less obvious: >Archival glasnost in Moscow was limited in the best of times, and the general trend is now >toward even greater restriction. It is, accordingly, quite likely that we shall learn more about >certain Soviet activities from Western intelligence reports than from Russian records. The recent >declassification of VENONA is an example of what I have in mind. Others impend.

In his book THE COLD WAR AND SOVIET INSECURITY (1996) Vojtech Mastny (p. 195) states that US rather than Russian archival restrictions are preventing a full understanding of the extent and significance of US covert operations in the Cold War. If more declassification of Western intelligence reports is impending as Dr. Mark indicates, what are the chances for declassification of large numbers of operational documents relating to covert action?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Mike Dravis

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 10 July 1997

Like Mike Dravis I too have not yet had the advantage of reading Dr. Mark's article & therefore comment on his post with the recognition that he may already have addressed the issues I raise.

As a former assessments officer and Chancery scribbler I am aware of the political impact of hard intelligence (which Dr. Mark would be relying on), but I now think we have sometimes been deficient in looking at the possible antecedent explanations, one of which is the very operational basis of the intelligence community. For instance, threat assessments (war planning) starts from taking the worst case (this was explicit in Australian assessments based on British intelligence of the Soviet threat 1945-8) & as we know the worst case rarely happens there is an element of imaginativeness in such documentation. This, I might interpolate, is also apparent in planning for nuclear war about which US declassifiers are exceptionally sensitive (or obdurate).

In the case of Turkey '46 what Western intelligence & war plans did the Russians have which might have influenced their actions? I am thinking here particularly of documents which would have been passed by Maclean and Philby. There is also the matter of relevant British PHP documents which the KGB received in Canberra as shown in the Venona transcripts.

If this query seems parochial for H-DIPLO Dr. Mark might wish to reply to me direct.

Garry Woodard

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 11 July 1997

Dear Colleagues:

Michael Dravis and Gary Woodard have both posted questions based on my initial post in this string rather than on the article (which they have not read) my post was intended to introduce.

I shall treat Mr. Woodard's post first. If I have read him correctly, Mr. Woodard poses two questions: (1) Was the perception of a threat to Turkey a case of "worst-case" thinking (2) and might the Soviets have had information in their possession which might have influenced their actions.

With respect to the first question, the information on a Soviet threat to Turkey came from quite diverse sources, not all of which I am at liberty to discuss. So many were the sources, and in come case so concrete were the reports, that it is, in my view, quite unnecessary to resort to an essentially hypothetical explanation for Anglo-American concern. A reading of the article will, I believe, make this evident. It would have been a wonder, in fact, had the western powers not been alarmed at the reports they were receiving. As for (2) the relevant consideration is not so much specific intelligence or diplomatic reports that Soviets may have received as their settled conviction that the rival British and American imperialism must fall out and that the USSR could turn this antagonism to its advantage. One of the things that comes across from VENONA (which Mr. Woodard mentions) is that Soviet representatives in the USA were very much alive to hints of Anglo-American discord.

Mr. Dravis poses several questions, which I shall answer in his order:

(1) Responding to my observation "the scholar who has not reviewed the relevant intelligence cannot reasonably expect to know how officials perceived events in the wide world apart from what was reflected in the daily scribbling of chanceries," Mr. Dravis asks why western intelligence services picked up "signals of a possible Soviet invasion of Turkey while the diplomatic services did not?"

The short answer to this question is that the diplomatic services DID pick up indications of a threat to Turkey, which is why the State Department and Foreign Office were so concerned. Both, after all received copies of all, or nearly all, the relevant intelligence. Not only are the reports addressed to the State Department in the case of the US, but a fair number of diplomatic documents, both cables from the field and assessments written in Washington, reference the intelligence reports with various degrees of explicitness. In some cases, moreover, diplomats reported directly reported directly on Soviet troops movements in the direction of Turkey. (Reports to that effect from Maynard Barnes in Bulgaria and Burton Y. Berry In Romania are printed in "FRUS.") One of the many strengths of Bruce Kuniholm's book on the Near Eastern crises is that he sensitive to these reflections of intelligence in diplomatic documents.

Two other observations are in order: (1) Diplomats did not often explicitly cite intelligence reports because it was bad security to do so. In 1946, for example, Charles Bohlen routinely visited the SSU's HQ on E Street here in DC to review the reports on Germany -- his initials appear on the cover sheets of most the reports issued while he was in town. Yet not a single report is explicitly cited in his memos, though the tenor of the SSU's excellent reporting on Germany is detectable in what Bohlen wrote. (Bohlen, incidently, was the point of contact in the State Department for the Secret Intelligence Branch of the Military Intelligence Service.) (2) The second point is one that is obvious to all us bureaucrats -- between the intelligence officers and the diplomats there was a division of labor. By and large, the Foreign Service was not in the business of collecting order-of-battle information. The War Department's MID did that.

Neither was the State Department in direct contact with MI-6, even though the Foreign Office directed MI-6. That was the SSU's job. Separate pipelines, so to speak, fed information back to Washington where, if all went well, analysts formed a comprehensive understanding of developments.

Some information, moreover, was very closely held. As far as I have been able to establish, less than a half-dozen diplomats were at this time authorized to see signals intelligence, and even they could not tell their colleagues about the origin of the information.

(2) Mr. Dravis also asked me when the CIA will declassify information on covert operations in the early Cold War. I am afraid that I really haven't a clue. I suspect, however, that Mr. Dravis will turn very blue if he is holding his breath as he waits.

Eduard Mark

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 11 July 1997

That Lloyd Gardner should not be interested in discussing Ed Mark's article is perhaps not surprising (although maybe he's just out of town for the summer). But the absence of any response from those sympathetic to "revisionism" does seem striking. If Mark is right, after all, then the origins of the cold war would appear to have a good deal more to do with a brave response to communist aggression than many of the critics of the "orthodox interpretation" of the cold war have contended for the last several decades.

Mark's evidence as to Soviet motives and strategy is not conclusive, but it is certainly suggestive, and very hard to square with the image which Gardner and others have advanced of Stalin as a "counter-revolutionary" bent on working things out with the United States. Where Mark's evidence is conclusive is with regard to the American side. His article leaves no room for doubt that American officials were genuinely concerned that Soviet armies "might take to the field against a state lying beyond the limits of their wartime advances" (p. 384). Far from being "contrived," as Gardner, Mel Leffler and others have suggested, this concern was rooted in the intelligence reports these officials were receiving and was serious enough to lead the Truman administration to designate the Near East as "a region so vital to American security as to be worth a world war" (p. 412).

Whether Stalin was scared into backing away from an effort to conquer Turkey by a report from Soviet spy Donald Maclean that the Americans were willing to go to war over the country remains to seen. Yuri Modin, who processed the Cambridge Ring's reports in Moscow in 1946, was perhaps exaggerating his own importance in his memoirs when he suggested that Maclean's report "may well have prevented the outbreak of war" (p. 408). I am inclined to think that no exaggeration was involved and that when we think of alternatives to the cold war, and paths not taken, we should remember that some of these could have been much much worse.

Steven Schwartzberg

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 14 July 1997

I liked the vignette of Truman Eduard Mark gives us in "The War Scare of 1946:" "On 1 November an assistant found him brooding over a map showing Turkey fenced in by a mass of tabs representing Soviet divisions" (p.389). How many of such like maps those of us of a certain age were to be regaled with during the decades of the Cold War! I recall a flurry of them--all those Russian tank divisions and fighter wings lined up against the slim NATO contingents--in the various popular newsmagazines in the propaganda run-up to Cold War II in the late 1970's. But Mark does thoroughly present an intelligence stream documenting Soviet military activity and preparations that indeed generated both serious apprehension and policy decisions that could have led to Middle Eastern intervention on the part of the Truman administration in the event of a genuine Russian offensive move.

In retrospect Stalin's threatening postures consisted of all smoke and no fire--perhaps another lesson of Mark's article is that at least in this case it helped to have a well placed Russian spy (Maclean) anticipating the efficacious hot-line in his ability to transmit the newly formed US resolve to the highest levels of the Kremlin--if indeed this was as instrumental as suggested.

Taking, however, I believe it was Palmerston's remark to the effect that many of the world's problems are the result of statesmen looking at maps that are too small, I would like to ask if any of the US or British warplans or staff thinkers contemplated what actually was involved, from the Russian point of view, in committing the Red Army to an invasion of Turkey and presumably from thence to Cairo and the Persian Gulf? Russian planning would have had to assume a US/GB military response absent clear signals that Neville Chamberlain had returned. The proposed conquest involves a lot of terrain and long long distances. All those divisions and impressive numbers would have had to become concentrated before Istanbul and the formidable barrier of the Bosphorus/Dardenelles. There they would presumably have made excellent targets for even the very few atom bombs the US might have been capable of assembling in 1946. Red Army operations into Turkey would have entailed a very long hard to sustain supply line indeed, as would have any invasion launched from the formidable terrain of the Caucasus. Mediterranean coastal cities would have had to be occupied in the course of defending against naval carrier operations by the US and GB against a lengthening flank. The best troops of the Red Army would be committed to this adventure while additional contingents would be needed for occupation and action in Europe. and . . . --further wargaming scenarios might best be submitted to H-War. Did anyone in Russia in 1946, even Stalin, want to fight another war? In short what were impressive assets on hand for Stalin to make a threatening show in the Balkans toward Turkey and lots of "smoke,"--seem to be far less invincible or invulnerable in the case of "fire," that is actual commitment to hostilities. Did anyone in the US or GB intelligence community look at these factors and say, "hey, come on, maybe it might be a bit harder for the Russians really to do this, let's stop spooking ourselves?"

But again, congratulations to Eduard Mark for presenting in such detail the information available to US policy makers in crucial and formative months of the early Cold War. Next inevitable question--how come so much of this stuff still seems to be classified fifty years later?

Diane S. Clemens UC Berkeley

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 14 July 1997

On 11 July, Garry Woodard of Melbourne University wrote:

>As a former assessments officer and Chancery scribbler I am aware of the political impact of >hard intelligence (which Dr. Mark would be relying on), but I now think we have sometimes >been deficient in looking at the possible antecedent explanations, one of which is the very >operational basis of the intelligence community. For instance, threat assessments (war planning) >starts from taking the worst case (this was explicit in Australian assessments based on British >intelligence of the Soviet threat 1945-8) & as we know the worst case rarely happens there is an >element of imaginativeness in such documentation. This, I might interpolate, is also apparent in >planning for nuclear war about which US declassifiers are exceptionally sensitive (or obdurate).

>In the case of Turkey '46 what Western intelligence & war plans did the Russians have which >might have influenced their actions? I am thinking here particularly of documents which would >have been passed by Maclean and Philby. There is also the matter of relevant British PHP >documents which the KGB received in Canberra as shown in the Venona transcripts.

Dr. Mark answers some of this query in his article. As I think he correctly points out, the United States and the West did begin war planning against the Soviets in 1946, but in response to Soviet actions in Iran and Turkey and not early enough to be provocations of the Soviet action. Moreover, we know that until 1947 the United States was doing very little to build up its atomic capability. And the U.S. war plans from 1946 through 1949 called for the rapid withdrawal of American occupation forces from Europe if the Soviets attacked. That was to be accompanied by an atomic attack on the Soviet Union, but U.S. war planners did not believe that the American nuclear arsenal was large enough to either stop the Soviet invasion or force the Soviets to surrender. I think one would be hard pressed to say that the Soviets were reacting in Turkey to Western war plans.

Of course, one could always point to actions of the West other than military planning that the Soviets might have considered provocative if one is trying to demonstrate that the West was the aggressor in the Cold War and the Soviets were merely acting defensively before 1946. But after 1946, when western war planning against the Soviet Union (and Soviet war planning against the West) were more advanced, Professor Woodard's comment about planning for worst case scenarios might indeed be pertinent. Like Dr. Mark, I am studying Western plans for the defense of Europe in the early Cold war (in my case up to the mid 1960s) and this issue of planning not only to meet Soviet capabilities rather than intentions but to meet the maximum (or near maximum) of those capabilities was at the heart of the decisions the United States and NATO made in their war planning. As I hope will be demonstrated in an article I am readying with Phillip Karber for Diplomatic History about Western assessments of the Soviet conventional threat, the decision to arm against the near maximum Soviet capability was far more important to Western war planning in the 1950s than any supposed errors in intelligence about the size and strength of the Soviet Army. I would be very interested to hear from Professor Woodard about the Australian and British worst case scenarios between 1945 and 1948 and from anyone else who has information on the salience of this issue.

Jerry Combs, San Francisco State University

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 14 July 1997

I'd like to second Steven Schwartzberg's expression of puzzlement over the absence of discussion of Dr. Mark's article on the Turkish crisis by revisionists or the "security dilemma" school. Are they conceding the field of Cold War studies to the traditionalists? I certainly hope not! But I also hope that they are willing to engage scholars with other views on the new evidence.

That they appear not to be so willing is suggested not only by the non-response to Mark's piece, but by the absence of several prominent (and invited) revisionists (Kai Bird is the exception) from a conference on "The New Cold War History" organized by John Gaddis at Ohio University back in May. Do the deconstructionists have an explanation of silence?

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 14 July 1997

In a message dated 11 July, Steven Schwartzberg wrote:

<< Mark's evidence as to Soviet motives and strategy is not conclusive, but it is certainly suggestive, and very hard to square with the image which Gardner and others have advanced of Stalin as a "counter-revolutionary" bent on working things out with the United States. Where Mark's evidence is conclusive is with regard to the American side. His article leaves no room for doubt that American officials were genuinely concerned that Soviet armies "might take to the field against a state lying beyond the limits of their wartime advances" (p. 384). Far from being "contrived," as Gardner, Mel Leffler and others have suggested, this concern was rooted in the intelligence reports these officials were receiving and was serious enough to lead the Truman administration to designate the Near East as "a region so vital to American security as to be worth a world war" (p. 412). >>

I have not read Mark's article yet, but I do feel I can address these above comments by Schwartzberg. I am one of those who might be called "revisionist" though, new to the profession, I do not fully grasp what that means. My research of late has concerned the origins of NSC-68, with particular attention to the years 1949 and 1950, the years prior to and during which NSC-68 was drafted and implemented. As such, I have been pouring over the New York Times for those years, day by day--I assure you it is a laborious process. I've heard that historians do not make enough use of newspapers. I have also heard that newspapers as a source are "debatable," as to their worth. I won't speak on either of those propositions except to say that I find them extremely informative. In looking at those years it becomes very apparent that the Soviet Union is hardly the "monster" that "orthodox" views, like Schwartzberg's, would suggest. For instance, the "orthodox" (I really hate these labels but. . .) would suggest that the Soviet Union sought complete domination of its satellite countries, that, in fact, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe can be viewed as a measure of Soviet intentions for the rest of the world. According to the view put forward by Schwartzberg, the Soviet Union sought world domination (incidentally this is, of course, the exact same argument in NSC-68). As he says, the intelligence reports bear this out, to the refutation of the "revisionists." Well, I would like to hear how that view fits into the following:

1) In 1948 and 1949, Poland's largest trading partner was England. In fact, Poland, while under this supposedly tyrannical Soviet occupation force, made trade agreements in January 1949 with, besides some countries in the Soviet sphere, France, Denmark, and Argentina. The two largest trading pacts were with England and Argentina. The primary reason that Poland was turning to the West, the NYT reported, was because the Soviet Union was cutting off its trade with its satellites to concentrate on its own recovery. How does this fit into the orthodox view that the Soviet Union held an iron grip on its satellites? And, I think it follows, that the Soviet Union sought NOT to work with the West? (See NYT January 4, 1949, p. 1, "Britain and Poland to sign $6,000,000,000 trade pact").

2) The January 12, 1949 edition of the NYT ("Czech fair opening here to aid trade", p. 39) reported that Czechoslovakia was hosting a trade fair in New York City beginning on that day. The reason for the trade fair was, according to Dr. Karel Fink, commercial counselor of the Czechoslovakia embassy, because "Czechoslovakia is not a country that wants only to trade with the East. Today Czechoslovak industries are coming to New York, for Czechoslovakia has always been willing to trade with all countries in the world, whether located in the East, West, or even in the North or South." Again, the reason Czechoslovakia was seeking trade at all in the US, _with a trade fair in NYC of all things_, was because the Soviet Union was NOT using the satellites as imperial colonies. It was, in fact, doing the opposite, at least, economically. It did keep its armies there but this only supports the "revisionist" view that the Soviet Union's main concern was not world domination but security against a revived Germany. In other words, the Soviet Union was willing to allow its satellites to exist in the market economy as long as they continued to serve as a buffer zone against Germany.

This suggests that the Soviet Union WAS willing to work with the US.

3) In the early days of June 1949, the Big Four met to discuss the reunification of Berlin and, by virtue, the reunification of Germany.

"Orthodox" views tend to hold that the Soviet Union was not willing to work with the West. But, as reported in the NYT, this view is wrong. The Soviet Union was as much committed to its view of cooperation with the West over Germany as was the US. That is, the US was adamant that Germany, if it were to be reunified in such a way that there would be four-power control, as the Soviet Union wanted, would have to adopt policies that were compatible with US goals of creating an open and free international market economy. Anything else was verboten. The Soviet Union, primarily to protect itself against a revived Germany, was committed to joint control of a reunified Germany, which the US refused because it would mean that the US would have to give the Soviet Union a measure of equality in dictating German, indeed potentially world, affairs. The US was willing to forego "peace" in order to fulfill its own postwar goal (mentioned above), of which Germany was a central component. Thus, at the Big Four meeting, what becomes apparent, is that it was the US who was the obfuscator of peace, not the Soviet Union. The Truman administration ultimately said that Soviet peace moves were designed to confuse the West, to break down the West's guard on their way to world domination. But this is simply not bore out by the evidence. For, among many other evidences, the Soviet Union put out the proposal for joint control of the Germany at the Big Four meeting for all the world to see, as the NYT reported. The US rejected it. I may be the most ignorant man in the world but this kind of action on the part of the Soviet Union does not sound to me like a country aiming for world domination but truly for cooperation to prevent a revived German military state.

4) To jump ahead a bit, the "orthodox" point to the Soviet Union's acquisition of the atom bomb and China's going Red, both of which occurred in the Fall of 1949, as evidence that in late 1949 the Soviet-led, world-wide communist movement suddenly took a very aggressive stance toward the West, that indeed it became a true and verified threat. It is, in fact, held that these two events triggered the writing of, and ultimately the implementation of, NSC-68, the foremost foreign policy document in the cold war from the US side of things. Yet, during the months in which NSC-68 was being written, roughly Feb. to April 1950, President Truman asked for a REDUCTION in military spending to curb the recession that began in late 1948 in the US. Anyone who has read NSC-68 is well aware that it does NOT couch terms about the aggressive designs of the Soviet Union. If one is to accept that document, then the Soviet Union was indeed committed to "the complete subversion and forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin" (NSC-68, _FRUS: 1950_, Volume 1, p. 238). And, based on that thesis, the US embarked on a massive militarization program that, in essence, marks the beginning of the arms race and the escalation of the cold war from a war of words to one of potentially disastrous consequences. Yet, as NSC-68 was being written by Sec. of State Acheson and Director of the Policy Planning Staff, Paul Nitze, very much behind closed doors, the President of the United States of America was asking for a reduction in military spending. I can draw two plausible conclusions from this (I concede there could be others): 1) Truman was so ignorant that, though the Soviet Union was gearing up for world conquest, he didn't know it even though Acheson and Nitze did, or 2) the Truman administration did not believe that the Soviet threat had suddenly become greater because of those two events mentioned above, or, indeed, that it truly considered the Soviet Union a real direct threat to the US way of life at all in 1950.

I do not know how the intelligence reports Mark's looks at fits into all of this. Again, I have not read Mark's article so I can't respond to it. Schwartzberg argues that there was a very real Soviet threat, which he wants to prove by, to some extent, saying that the Soviet Union was not interested in working things out with the West, what he accuses Gardner and others of falsely arguing. The evidence really does suggest otherwise. The "orthodox" want to see the so-called Soviet threat as the basis, indeed as the motive, of US cold war policy. They call those who don't entirely agree revisionists because "revisionists" have, I can only guess, the audacity to suggest that the cold war wasn't simply a case of good against evil. The authors of NSC-68 took a different view. They wrote:

"Our overall policy at the present time may be described as one designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish. It therefore rejects the concept of isolation and affirms the necessity of our positive participation in the world community. This broad intention embraces two subsidiary policies. One is a policy which we would probably pursue even if there were no Soviet threat. It is a policy of attempting to develop a healthy international community. The other is the policy of "containing" the Soviet system. These two policies are closely interrelated and interact on one another. Nevertheless, the distinction between them is basically valid and contributes to a clearer understanding of what we are trying to do" (NSC-68, _FRUS: 1950, Volume 1, p. 252).

My question is: why do scholars seemingly accept, to the utter disregard of the "revisionists," the Soviet threat argument over and above economic interpretations of the cold war?

Curt Cardwell

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 14 July 1997

A question:

Which is more amazing? Eduard Mark's attempt to win a scholarly argument by citing sources that he is "not at liberty to discuss" or the fact that fifty-one years after the fact, and six after the disappearance of the country in question, there is someone in authority anywhere who deems these sources too dangerous to be discussed?

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 15 July 1997

This is an interim reply to Jerry Combs which I shall be to amplify on my return from a conference next week - and first let me say that I am not trying to prove that the West was the aggressor in the early post-war years but only to understand as far as it is possible to do so what leaders and their support mechanisms thought and why there was such a pell-mell rush from Hot war to Cold War. In regard to the last-named surely there is now no dispute that a major contributor was British foreign/defence policy in its attempt to regain great power status and shore up its relations with Washington? I hope Donald Cameron watt or some other British historian can be asked to participate in discussion on Dr Mark's paper: an ICBH conference on 'Britain and the Cold War', at which 57 papers are being presented, including one on 'The third wheel: Britain in US-Iranian relations during the early cold war', is taking place in London as we write.

The basic Australian joint intelligence appreciation, then as now, with some change in terminology is JIC 1, in the 1940s titled 'Appreciation of Certain Aspects of the Strategical Situation of Australia'. In March 1947 it took the form of an irreconcilable juxtaposition of an External Affairs contribution addressing possible threats in the Middle East and Asia and a Director of Military Intelligence assessment (not fully shared by the Air Force) concentrating on the USSR and stating that 'the possibility of war with the USSR does exist'. This fitted in with the Chiefs of Staffs' consistent position that there would be no localised wars: any war would be a world war. (It seems that they were probably unaware of the War Scare of 1946 though the Chief of the Naval Staff was still a British-seconded officer and Field Marshal Montgomery was amongst the many senior Service visitors to Australia in 1947). By 1948 this difference had developed into a full-blown war of its own between External Affairs and Defence about whether Australia's future military commitments should be in Asia or in the Middle East &/or Europe. The American position as Australia understood it was that the security of the Middle East was in the first instance a Commonwealth responsibility. Although no Australian post-war Government ever did make a military commitment to the Middle East, it has been shown (Phillip Dorling) that the possibility of that commitment was a significant influence on washington in agreeing to the ANZUS Treaty with Australia & New Zealand in 1951.

Garry Woodard

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 15 July 1997

Dear Colleagues:

This rather long response is divided into sections devoted to the posts of the named individuals:

POSTS OF MR. CARDWELL AND PROFESSORS STUECK AND COMBS

I should like to thank Professors Stueck and Combs for their contributions to the discussion of my article. Their contributions require no reply from me. Mr. Cardwell, who has still not read my essay, raises some important questions regarding the nature of Soviet control of Eastern Europe and the origins of NSC-68. They are, however, rather far afield from the events of 1946 with which my article deals, and I should prefer to keep the discussion focused. Perhaps there should be a separate string for the points at issue between himself and Professor Schwartzberg.

POST OF PROFESSOR CLEMENS:

Diane S. Clemens raises some very interesting questions which deserve careful replies/

QUESTION 1: "I would like to ask if any of the US or British war plans or staff thinkers contemplated what actually was involved, from the Russian point of view, in committing the Red Army to an invasion of Turkey and presumably from thence to Cairo and the Persian Gulf? Russian planning would have had to assume a US/GB military response absent clear signals that Neville Chamberlain had returned."

ANSWER: I deal immediately below with the possible scope of any Soviet invasion of Turkey. Here I wish to stress that Stalin may well have thought the would not have to contend with either the United States or Britain. The reports that reached Anglo-American officials from Bulgarian and Czech sources indicated that Soviet staff officers believed that a lighting strike against Turkey would preclude western reaction -- the war would be over before the West could do anything. Much evidence, moreover, suggests that the Soviets regarded Britain as a spent force militarily. The question, then, was what the United States would so, Again, much evidence suggests (as many writers have by now observed) that the Soviets believed that they could turn to their advantage what they perceived as an inevitably imperialistic rivalry between the US and the UK. Ambassador Novikov's now famous report of September 1946 states explicitly that the US would not come to Britain's aid in the Middle. It is significant that Novikov explains in his memoirs that Molotov virtually dictated the contents of this report. So, in short, the Soviets may have supposed before the reports of American military preparations began arriving from Maclean in September 1946 that they had a free hand with respect to Turkey.

QUESTION 2: "The proposed conquest involves a lot of terrain and long distances. All those divisions and impressive numbers would have had to become concentrated before Istanbul and the formidable barrier of the Bosphorus/Dardenelles. There they would presumably have made excellent targets for even the very few atom bombs the US might have been capable of assembling in 1946. Red Army operations into Turkey would have entailed a very long hard to sustain supply line indeed, as would have any invasion launched from the formidable terrain of the Caucasus. Mediterranean coastal cities would have had to be occupied in the course of defending against naval carrier operations by the US and GB against a lengthening flank. . . ."

ANSWER: It is true that American war plans presupposed a major Soviet push into the Middle East. In the event of a general war this would have been a necessary step for the Soviets, both to deprive the west of the region's oil and to prevent the establishment of bases for American strategic bombers which, before the advent of the B-36 and in-air refueling, could attack Soviet industrial centers beyond the Urals only from bases in North Africa. Overrunning the Middle East, as Professor Clemens correctly observes, would have been a most formidable task But if the Soviets thought that would have to deal only with Turkey, none of these problems need have concerned. Stalin might, possibly, have considered a brief campaign of a few weeks' duration to seize Kars, Ardahan and European Turkey, whereupon he would declare victory. The West would fulminate, but the response would have been different in the Balkans. The Bulgarians would have satisfied deeply felt aspirations against Turkey they had nourished since the 1870s and, if the USSR had given Istanbul back to the Greeks, he would probably a have turned Greece into a useful ally.

This is of course all speculation. I think that the most probable explanation of Soviet actions in respect of Turkey was intimidation of the Turks, and that Stalin pulled in his horns when he learned that the US was preparing for the worst. But of course we do not really know what Stalin had in mind. We may never know.

QUESTION 3: "Did anyone in Russia in 1946, even Stalin, want to fight another war? In short what were impressive assets on hand for Stalin to make a threatening show in the Balkans toward Turkey and lots of "smoke,"--seem to be far less invincible or invulnerable in the case of "fire," that is actual commitment to hostilities. Did anyone in the US or GB intelligence community look at these factors and say, hey, come on, maybe it might be a bit harder for the Russians really to do this, let's stop spooking ourselves?'"

ANSWER: The short answer is yes, that there were ardent Communists in Russia at the end of World War II who wanted to finish the liberation of Europe from capitalism. In many personal conversations such persons spoke of this to Western representatives -- I cite some examples in my article. Some Soviet memoirs speak of the same phenomenon. (See Yuri Aksyutin, "Why Stalin Staked on Confrontation Rather Than Cooperation with the Wartime Allies After the Victory" a paper prepared for the Cold War History Conference, Moscow, January 12-15, 1993, esp. pp 23-24.) But of course only one man's opinion really counted and I know of no evidence that Stalin wanted a major war against the West in 1946. Much, indeed, indicates the contrary. Perhaps he viewed a short war against Turkey in a different light. Again, we do not know, but I suspect that intimidation is the most probably explanation of his actions.

As for the feelings of American officials, my sense is that there was a reluctance to believe that Stalin wanted any kind of war, given the shape the USSR was in. But then, as Professor Clemens notes, there was a lot of alarming evidence coming in that could not be ignored.

QUESTION 4: "Next inevitable question--how come so much of this stuff still seems to be classified fifty years later?"

ANSWER: I should begin by saying that only the material from RG 341 (HQ, USAF) was classified when I wrote this article. The SSU's reports, for example, have been declassified for about a decade. The British reports in the G-2 ID file have been declassified since about 1959. (That is not a typo!) But Professor's Clemens's point that much is still classified is valid and deserves an answer.

Apart from the particular causes for continued classification that I mention in note 6 (where I should have mentioned that foreign information is usually protected by executive agreements with other governments), lack of resources and inertia explain the continued classification of many records from the early Cold War. There is not a lot of interest in declassification among government officials other than historians. There is a general indifference to intellectual questions, always a sense that there are more pressing things to worry about in the here and now. As for lack of resources, the declassification staffs of most agencies are so absorbed with answering requests under the FOIA that they have no time left for declassification en bloc. And larger staffs can be created only with difficulty because of budgetary stringency. (I have to pay out of pocket for much of the research I do for the Air Force's projects.) My own view is that on the whole the FOIA has been a disaster for historians. One example will suffice. The records of the Plans and Operations Division of the Air Force from the early Cold War are almost entirely still classified TOP SECRET RESTRICTED DATA. The Air Force asked the Archives to review this material for declassification about 20 years ago. Almost nothing has been done to date. Why? Lack of resources.

I wish to conclude my response to Professor Clemens by thanking her for her compliments and, especially, for her open-mindedness. I should like to see all debate on the Cold War conducted with such charity for the work and opinions of others.

And now for something really different . . . .

POST OF ERIC ALTERMAN:

Mr. Alterman asks "Which is more amazing? Eduard Mark's attempt to win a scholarly argument by citing sources that he is "not at liberty to discuss" or the fact that fifty-one years after the fact, and six after the disappearance of the country in question, there is someone in authority anywhere who deems these sources too dangerous to be discussed?"

First, it is neither accurate nor just to say that I am trying to "win" (whatever that may mean in this context) a debate by referring to classified sources. The citations for my article stand on their own. I have, to be sure, said that there other sources that remain classified, but this is a statement of simple fact which all historians of the Cold War should understand for their own good.

It is not clear whether I am supposed to be the person "in authority anywhere who deems these sources too dangerous to be discussed?" If Mr. Alterman thinks me this villain, let me disabuse him of the thought that I have any authority at all over declassification. Each agency controls the declassification of its own records. I have no say even in the declassification of the Air Force's records. As I have discussed above the reasons why materials remain classified further comment would be superfluous -- except for this. It is precisely the unnecessary and unpleasant spirit of partisanship that Mr. Alterman typifies that makes me wonder in weak moments whether I should not have become a bond salesman. We shall all be better off when we realize that with so much material remaining to be explored in both the East and West it is quite premature to speak of winning and losing some great historiographical battle. We are starting all over again, and we are all of us in for many surprises. What is required now, more than ever, is open-mindedness and tolerance. The Cold War is over -- for which God be praised -- and the partisanship it inspired should be one with Tyre and Nineveh. I am neither Guelph nor Ghibelline.

Eduard Mark

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 15 July 1997

Although perhaps inevitable, I was rather hoping that the young Turks of H-DIPLO would not seize on the Mark article as a polarizing device between alleged "orthodox" and "revisionist" camps. I have always been rather puzzled at the pejorative use of the term "revisionist" because re-visioning is what historians are supposed to do as, with the passage of time, new materials and new perspectives become available. With the passing of the Cold War are we still confined when it comes to investigating the roots of this complex event into a dichotomy between those who wish to argue that it only takes one to tango versus those who suspect it still takes the proverbial two?

One reason (pace to Bill Stueck and Steven Schwartzberg) that "revisionists" are not staggering around gasping from the purportedly mortal shaft of Eduard Mark's article or else cowering in their bunkers rendered incapable of speech is that the main outlines of the War Scare of 1946 have been a staple of diplomatic history for a long time. I quote below the relevant passages from a favorite textbook by "non-revisionist" Alexander DeConde, my dissertation advisor, written in 1963. What Eduard Mark has done is given us in considerable more detail the military nature of the posturing by which Stalin conveyed his demands. Yes, Stalin did want to see how far he could push the US and GB who had a clear treaty obligation with Turkey to respond as they did. One might also note that the Turkish army had mobilized in face of this provocation.

US public opinion in this early postwar period did not favor provoking the Soviet Union, still favorably perceived in the light of the wartime alliance, and Stalin might have sensed a point of leverage here. Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech, which closely preceded the "War Scare" was NOT received well in the United States, indeed to such an extent that Truman (who of course knew very well what content was to be delivered) distanced himself from the speech, disavowed any prior detailed knowledge of its text, and wrote a letter to Stalin "offering to send the *Missouri* to bring him to the United States and promising to accompany him to the University of Missouri so that he too might speak his mind, as Churchill had" (according to David McCullough's _Truman_, p. 490, who otherwise does not note the source of Truman's invitation). That would have been an occasion! (Stalin declined the invitation). So Truman may have been perceived as more potentially accommodating then he proved to be. But one point of the "1946 War Scare" episode seems to be that a conventionally threatening development was countered by conventional diplomatic signals--another, as Mark points out, that behind the scenes this episode put the US into a much more serious mode of thinking, involving the influence (ultimately pernicious as several other posters have indicated) of building to respond to worst case scenarios (war plans "Pincher" and "Griddle" being early examples). Certainly the War Scare of 1946 primed Truman and his advisors for the much more comprehensive response of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 when Great Britain relinquished its imperial responsibilities toward Greece and Turkey.

In 1946 Stalin's fallback position was probably a more realistic hope that he might renegotiate the Montreux Convention, which gave Turkey the right to deny passage to nations at war or to warships if Turkey felt threatened). Insofar as I can check from my home office the Montreux Convention was never abrogated. Was it, however, revised? In the years to come it did not hinder Soviet naval forces from traversing the Bosphorus/Dardenelles into the Mediterranean and from thence to great waters, nor did it prevent NATO naval contingents from appearances in the Black Sea.

Here is the DeConde text from 34 years ago. It perhaps provides a useful brief contextualization of the Mark article.

From Alexander DeConde, _A History of American Foreign Policy_, 1963, pp. 667-8.

"In March, 1945, the Soviets announced that they would abandon a twenty-year-old treaty of friendship and neutrality with the Turks, and in June told the Turks they could have a new treaty, but for a stiff price. Arguing that the Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan were historically Russian, the Soviets said they should be ceded to them. The Soviets asked the Turks to replace the Montreux Convention with an agreement between themselves, to eliminate British influence in Turkey, and to lease them strategic bases in the straits for the purpose of 'joint defense.'

When Turkey rejected the proposals, the Communist press unleashed a violent anti-Turkish campaign. The Turks defied the threats and strengthened their already mobilized army. Then, on August 7, [1946] the Soviets presented formal notes to Turkey, Britain, and the United States, making a second bid for the straits. The United States backed up the Turks, sent a naval task force to the Mediterranean and took the position that Turkey's independence was at stake. In a note of August 19 [1946], it told the Soviets that any threat or attack against the straits would be a matter for action by the Security Council.

[One might infer from this the US awareness of the military nature of the Soviet threat which Mark documents. James Gormley in _From Potsdam to the Cold War_, 1990, but earlier text printed in 1982, also notes "three hundred thousand Red Army troops massed on Turkey's borders." p. 182]

That note went to the Soviets at approximately the same time the United States was sending an ultimatum to Marshal Tito (Josip Broz), Communist dictator of Yugoslavia. Within a space of ten days Yugoslav fighter planes had shot down two American transport planes, killing the soldiers in the second plane. The ultimatum demanded that the Yugoslavs release the survivors from the first plane within 48 hours. Tito complied and agreed to pay an indemnity to the families of the dead soldiers. The tension then eased. The strong stand against Yugoslavia and the concurrent firm note to the Soviet Union indicated a toughening of American policy.

When the Soviets renewed their demands on Turkey in October [at the same time, according to Mark, that they were standing down from their military posturing in the Balkans], the United States and Britain, who had a mutual assistance treaty with Turkey and military rights there, encouraged the Turks to hold fast. The President and his advisers believed that if the Soviets gained control over Turkey, Greece would be the next victim. With the fall of Greece and Turkey, Britain might lose her grip in the Mediterranean and the Soviets would be masters of the Middle East."

Diane Clemens UC Berkeley

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 15 July 1997

Bill Stueck is right that it would be a shame if the revisionists were simply to concede the field of cold war studies to the traditionalists. They have made a number of valuable contributions to our understanding, not least by their emphasis on the internal as opposed to the external sources of American policy. It is impossible to go through the relevant postwar planning documents from the State Department and not be struck by the presence of a vision for world order and a set of strategies for promoting it. As early as 8 November 1944, the State Department's Policy Committee decided that "A situation in which British-dominated Greece and Turkey (and perhaps Albania) would become isolated economically and politically from a group of Russian-dominated Slavic neighbors on the North would be dangerously menacing to world peace." (1) The Policy Committee adopted the view that the United States ought to be involved in preventing such a development and that the way to do so was, as Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle put it, "to persuade the British and the Soviets to abandon their exclusionist and domination policies in the Near East and Eastern Europe and to apply a good-neighbor policy in those areas." (2) In other words, these American officials hoped that the Soviet Union could be persuaded that it was in its interest, and within its ability, to operate its sphere of influence after the fashion of the United States in Latin America. As this unrealistic hope faded over the course of 1945 and 1946, officials like Berle were increasingly inclined to hold the Soviet Union responsible and to draw analogies between the prewar conduct of Nazi Germany and the postwar conduct of the Soviet Union. Yet as important as such mechanisms were to the emergence of cold war attitudes among American officials, they seem to have been strongly supplemented by the geostrategic concern for Turkey's position which Ed Mark stresses in his article (see especially p. 393). It was in part for this reason (as well as in the hope of provoking some discussion) that I framed my initial posts as I did. To emphasize the various entelechies within American politics, or American ideology, or the American economic system which contributed to the cold war risks losing sight of some of the basic and proximate reasons why American officials decided in 1946 that the Near East was worth another World War and worried that they might have to fight one.

Whether a determination to fight a World War over Turkey should be seen to rest in part on a "brave response to communist aggression" is not yet clear. It is clear that American officials saw themselves in this light, and were certainly not simulating a concern over what the Soviet Union might do in order to mask their true motives, but we still know too little of the Soviet side of things. Perhaps, as Diane Clemens suggests in her post, Stalin's threatening moves were "all smoke and no fire" and there was nothing brave or extraordinary about the Anglo-American response since, "absent clear signals that Neville Chamberlain had returned," anyone else could have been expected to take the same course. Why, on this supposition, there was so much "smoke" before 24 September and so little after remains an unanswered question.

It is difficult to know what to make of Curt Cardwell's post. Presumably he will be in a better position to discuss the issues involved after he has read Mark's article. On the other hand, he appears to have read my post and to have found in it all sorts of views which I have never advanced. Since Lloyd Gardner did the same thing in late March, I will take the liberty of quoting myself by way of a response to Cardwell:

"I did not mean to imply, as Prof. Gardner seems to assume, that I thought there was some sort of blueprint for world conquest locked away in the Kremlin. The letter from Stalin which I quoted seems to me striking evidence that--at least in October 1950--he worried that recovery in the capitalist world would significantly worsen the medium-term global position of the Soviet empire and that he was willing to run some risk of a third World War by encouraging the dramatic escalation of a military venture to improve his empire's position after that venture appeared to be turning sour. If he looked at the world in a similar fashion in 1946, it would hardly seem useful to describe him as a counter-revolutionary who was attempting to work things out with an American empire. One could, at least as appropriately, describe him as a revolutionary opportunist who thought that the global correlation of forces provided a temporary window to pursue an expansionary policy, at considerable risk, the limits of which were unclear."

Steven Schwartzberg

(1) "Report to the Policy Committee Regarding United States Interests and Policy in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Near East," 1 November 1944, Box 137, Records Relating to Miscellaneous Policy Committees, Papers of Harley A. Notter, National Archives; and Policy Committee, Minutes of the 85th Meeting, 8 November 1944, Box 138, Notter Papers.

(2) A. A. Berle, A-B/1, "Principle Problems in Europe" 26 September 1944, Box 134, Notter Papers. The text is reproduced in Adolf A. Berle, _Navigating the Rapids 1918-1971_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 460-468.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 15 July 1997

On 14 July 1997 Eric Alterman wrote:

>A question: Which is more amazing? Eduard Mark's attempt to win a scholarly argument by >citing sources that he is "not at liberty to discuss" or the fact that fifty-one years after the fact, >and six after the disappearance of the country in question, there is someone in authority >anywhere who deems these sources too dangerous to be discussed?

Alterman makes a very salient point about Mark's sources that he is "not at liberty to discuss." What are the implications for a discipline whose scholarly integrity relies upon an evidentiary base available for peer review?

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 16 July 1997

Professor Mark's article confirms that senior American officials were deeply concerned over Soviet movements in the Balkans (as they had been a short time earlier in Azarbaijan). But I came away wondering what the Turks thought about these events; the article is silent on this subject. Did they confirm American fears? Did they contribute to the war scare? The answer to these and similar questions could give us perhaps a better understanding of the crisis.

The Turks, like their Iranian neighbors, had (have) been dealing with the Russians for centuries. Wouldn't their experiences have been helpful in trying to assess Soviet plans? Did American intelligence even take their views into account? What was THEIR understanding of the situation along their borders in 1946?

From my own research on Iran during this period, it appears that US officials often showed more concern about a Soviet threat than did their Iranian counterparts. Was this true for the Turks as well?

Maybe the answer is simply that US intelligence ignored the Turks--but we ought to know.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 16 July 1997

I have read Eduard Mark's article with great interest and plan on having students (both undergraduate as well as graduate) read it in order to gain a better appreciation for the circumstances faced by American foreign policymakers in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.

I also appreciated the issues raised by Diane Clemens in her posts. I would like to raise a few concerns myself.

First, there is some speculation in Mark's article, and I think it important to separate what is known from what is inferred given the nature of the sources cited. Conjecture is part of history, to be sure, and I think Professor Mark goes to great lengths to indicate when his statements are clearly based upon the existing record and when he is speculating. Soviet military actions are one thing; Soviet intentions are another. The two may be related, but distinguishing whether the "smoke" really had "fire" behind it is something, I imagine, that will require greater access to Soviet archives.

Second, since Professor Mark specifically cites Lloyd Gardner and Mel Leffler in his text and notes and indicates that they have not taken seriously enough the legitimate threat posed by Soviet military actions in 1946, I would like to respond to this matter. I should confess here that I received my Ph.D from Rutgers University a few years ago and keep in contact with Professor Gardner regularly, though my own work is much more focused on the cultural aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

In reading Professor Mark's article I am struck by just how much it confines itself to events within a relatively short period--approximately six months, understanding that there were two peaks within that time period, most notably in the late summer period. At any rate, the war scare evaporated by early November. In his book, _Architects of Illusion_, Professor Gardner takes a broader perspective on the development of the Cold War and discusses many events that came before 1946. In both his chapters on Dean Acheson (specifically cited by Mark) and in his conclusion, Gardner discusses many issues that arose during World War Two (he even has a chapter on William Bullitt) and many more events that occurred after the war scare of 1946. The same holds true for Mel Leffler and Thomas Paterson, whose work is also cited early in the article. Gardner's conclusion is straight-forward: "Responsibility for the way in which the Cold War developed, at least, belongs more to the United States." He then goes on to discuss three incidents, which, in his view, had they been handled differently, might have "spared the world the worst moments of the Cold War." Two of those incidents predate the war scare of 1946. The third is the Baruch Plan, which unfolded during 1946. Eduard Mark has provided an impressive array of details from the American perspective surrounding one specific incident. I appreciate and value his contribution, but I do not see where this requires certain historians, or certain "kinds" of historians, to concede larger points they made earlier. It might be that given the new evidence provided by Professor Mark, they would want to change some things, though I am in no sense trying to speak for any of the historians cited in the article. Personally, I doubt they would, since the books by Gardner, Leffler, and Paterson are based on a preponderance of evidence, if you will, and are concerned with a larger scope of history.

What I appreciate most about Professor Mark's article and the discussion he has offered for H-DIPLO is the careful way in which he has framed his position and his responses to various posts. What I find perplexing, and somewhat disturbing, is the rush by a couple of other historians to infer that the reason certain historians, or certain "types" of historians, have not responded, is because they are apparently "conceding the field of Cold War history to the traditionalists." I would assert that nothing of the sort is happening. I imagine that many historians--revisionists as well as non-revisionists--are taking advantage of the summer months to vacation, conduct research, and travel to conferences. I have noticed that the general number of postings on any given day is lower than it was during the academic year. And as to Professor Gardner specifically, I happen to know that he is currently traveling.

Nothing has been conceded. No one was won the debate. We do not now know the Truth. What we have is a far more nuanced perspective on the situation for that particular episode at that specific time courtesy of Eduard Mark.

By the way, I would like to offer the following for consideration: would those who find the information provided in Professor Mark's article so compelling be willing to bring into the discussion, for comparative purposes, the military activities and exercises conducted by the United States against Cuba in 1961 and 1962? I remember James Hershberg's article in _Diplomatic History_ a few years back and wonder if there isn't something to this idea of military planning, military exercises, and the response it can generate in other countries.

Christopher Jespersen, School of International Affairs and Development, Clark Atlanta University

P.S. I must take a group of students in a summer program to Washington and New York and will not return until July 24. I hope people will not draw any conclusions from my absence from the discussion during that time.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 16 July 1997

In response to Dr. Mark's Biblically-inspired post, let me assure him that no one implied, that he, personally, was responsible for the irrational security classification system that plagues our national security bureaucracy, though I did (and still do) find his lack of "liberty" regarding the citations in question, a bit on the comical side.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 16 July 1997

I have now had the opportunity to read Dr. Mark's article and would like to add a few comments. Dr. Mark comes at his subject with an assumption that is apparent throughout--Soviet interests in Turkey equaled Soviet determination to conquer, if not the world, then certainly Western Europe. This assumption seems to dominate much of the cold war historiography emanating from the US--that Soviet Union' s primary goal in the postwar era was world domination. That this assumption dominated military intelligence observers, such as the JCS and the MID in 1946, is not very surprising, conditioned as they are to operate from worst-case-scenario positions. It is the historians job to weigh through both intelligence reports (if and when they are available) and diplomatic memoranda to determine what top-level government, the final arbiter of action, determined to be the merits of Soviet expansionistic goals as doled out by intelligence agencies.

In the case of the "war scare of 1946," what is important, from the larger issue of the causes of the cold war, is that Dr. Mark has NOT shown that top-level government was convinced that a Soviet invasion of Turkey equaled Soviet goals to subvert the world to Kremlin control. Yet this seems to be the premise of his article, that, in answer to the "Holy Pretense" argument, Soviet limited objectives with regards to Turkey, if they in fact were to invade Turkey and make it a satellite of the Soviet Union, prove that the Soviet Union was bent on world domination. What is not FULLY explored in Dr. Mark's article is why the US would have been willing to go to war to stop Soviet aggressive aims toward Turkey. If, as he says, it was to save British interests in the Middle East and, by implication, US interests there (oil and other resources), that merely adds fuel to the argument that US goals of creating an open and free international market economy, not Soviet designs for world domination, drove US foreign policy in the immediate postwar years. Yes, the US may have had an interest in stopping Soviet domination of Turkey, but it was not to save Turkey from a tyrannical, revolutionary power whose primary interest was the enslavement of the "free" world. If anything it was to further the US's own postwar agenda. That the Soviet Union had limited objectives that may have caused it to consider invading Turkey is granted. But the operative phrase here is limited objectives. Stalin, in many respects, merely carried on the policies of the czars who for centuries governed Russia. Central to those policies was the acquiring of a warm-water port for Russia, which the Montreaux Convention assured. That the Soviet Union wanted access to the oil fields of Iran is granted. We must not forget that the Soviet Union was desperately trying to recover from the war. It would be disingenuous to claim that the Soviet Union's wanting access to the oil of the Middle East, and to a warm-water port, was part of some plan for world domination, and that US interests in that area, for which it was willing to go to war (if Dr. Mark's is correct), were merely to protect freedom in that region.

Ultimately, according to Dr. Mark, Stalin backed down from any aggressive moves toward Turkey once it became clear to him that the US would intervene. Far from supporting the view that the Soviet Union was militantly expansionistic, this suggests the opposite--that it had limited goals which it quickly abandoned once the Western Powers, especially the US, made any serious protest. This would seem to equate with the view that Soviet Union was ultimately interested in its own preservation (not world conquest) and in protection from a revived German militarism.

In response to Steve Schwartzberg, that (quoting him) "I did not mean to imply, as Prof. Gardner seems to assume, that I thought there was some sort of blueprint for world conquest locked away in the Kremlin," which Mr. Schwartzberg used to respond to my last post, I just want to say that Mr. Schwartzberg might not feel this way, but top-level government certainly argued that there was a "blueprint for world conquest locked away in the Kremlin." If he doesn't believe that he need only read NSC-68. Since most of the assumptions that appear in Dr. Mark's article, and most of the cold war historiography emanating from the US stem from, I feel, the "psychological 'scare' campaign"(1) foisted on the American people to accept this document (NSC-68), Mr. Schwartzberg might want to rethink his statement lest he is ready to concede that NSC-68 had other purposes than stopping Soviet designs for world domination.

1. "Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Edward Barret to the Secretary of State, April 6, 1950, FRUS: 1950, Volume 1, p. 226. This comment was made in relation to a review of a draft of NSC-68 that state department officials were asked to review pursuant to NSC-68's delivery to the President on April 7, 1950.

Curt Cardwell

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 16 July 1997

The lively exchanges about Eduard Mark's article have moved me to read it. Both the exchanges and the article have been most interesting.

The article is fascinating and contains lots of extraordinary data. It certainly shows that Stalin was engaged, at the very least, in a campaign of intimidation against Turkey in 1946, and that the American government took it very seriously. I hope that it will stimulate further research in all the critical capitals. Yet I feel that some of the key arguments are not fully demonstrated, and probably could not be without the availability of a lot more information.

Two questions stand out.

The first is the exact relationship between the war scare and American planning for war with the Soviet Union. I am not an authority on American war planning in the postwar period, but my colleague Steven Ross is. His book, American War Plans, 1945-50 (New York & London, 1988), traces the development of the Pincher plan during 1945 [sic] and 1946. While American military planners did not believe that war with the Soviet Union was imminent, they were preparing for it very seriously well before the war scare, and it would seem to me that they would have continued to do so without this particular war scare. More to the point are the following excerpts (P. 34):

". . . .the Joint Strategic Planners on July 8, 1946, accepted the basic concept of Pincher and directed the JWPC to keep the concept up-to-date in the light of changing conditions and to prepare a number of strategic studies of various world areas based on the Pincher concept."

These studies, he goes on to explain, included "Broadview," on the defense of North America, completed in its first version on August 5, 1946; Griddle, dealing with Turkey, which Mark discusses at length, presented on August 15; Caldron, presented on November 2, dealing with the Middle East; Cockspur, on threats to allied forces in Italy, presented on December 20; and finally, an apparently unnamed appreciation of the consequences of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe on May 15, 1947. Appreciations on the defense of the Iberian peninsula and the Far East followed.

I want to make myself clear. I am depressed when partisans of various cold war interpretations seize upon specific data in an attempt to convict either the USSR or the US of "original sin", that is, of militarizing the Cold War. That is not what I am trying to do. Given the situation in 1945 and the political conflicts between them, one should not be shocked that the Soviets and the US began looking into the possibility of war between them; and given what they had just been through, it is understandable (although in my view unfortunate) that they used the same kinds of analyses they had done during the recent war.

To return to the article, what I am saying is that it is not clear to me that the scare over Turkey really gave American military planning a decisive push in any particular direction, or had a lasting impact on the Cold War.

For the book I am just finishing on the origins of the Vietnam War, I have looked into military planning a good deal myself, and it seems that it frequently takes place in a political vacuum.

My own rather tentative view over this, as a partisan of realist interpretations of the Cold War such as Adam Ulam and, I think, George Kennan have advanced, is that in practice, both the US and the Soviets had to recognize that war between them would be a catastrophe that simply had to be avoided, and thus, they had to solve their problems through political conflict and mutual accommodation. Actually some American planners, Prof Ross shows, did suggest such an approach: "On July 9, 1946, the Joint Intelligence Staff suggested that the western powers might solve their problems with the USSR by negotiating a general agreement with Moscow dividing the world into spheres of influence. The Chiefs never approved the proposal." (p. 9.) In practice, I think that was the only alternative, with lots of pulling an hauling at the periphery of their spheres. This is what happened in practice, but never in theory, with all sorts of very unfortunate consequences. This, however, is a digression.

The second question the article raises for me involves the claim that information from Donald McLean deterred Stalin from the attack on Turkey. The only source for this is the memoir of Yuri Modin, McLean's Soviet controller. While the story Modin tells is very interesting, I think more information from Soviet archives will be necessary to confirm it. Modin makes clear claims about what McLean said, but it isn't at all clear how Modin claims to know what Stalin was thinking. He would hardly be the first intelligence officer to exaggerate his own importance, or his agents, in reminiscences many years later.

David Kaiser

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 17 July 1997

With Jim Goode I too hope that Eduard Mark can elaborate on what the Turks knew and thought about Soviet movements in the Balkans and American plans for a response. The degree to which American officials consulted with their Turkish counterparts is an interesting issue because it may suggest an answer to David Kaiser's question regarding Donald McLean's role in alerting the Soviets.

Turkish communication circuits were probably insecure. Before and during WWII Ankara's codes and ciphers were broken by anyone who tried -- the US, Britain, the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria. And these are just the governments we're sure about! Signals intelligence materials remain unavailable for the period after August 1945, but it is unlikely that Turkish communications security improved much over the next year. Despite popular impressions, governments do not just "change their codes" from one day to the next. The process of devising, testing, and distributing new cryptosystems is expensive and time consuming, so much so that during World War II some governments were still using systems introduced in the First World War, and many (including Turkey) were using systems from the early 1930s. For Turkey, whose diplomatic, military and police agencies had in service over a dozen different codes and ciphers at one time, the problem would have been formidable. We can only speculate, but if the Soviets continued to read all or part of Turkey's diplomatic and military attache traffic, especially on the Washington-Ankara, London-Ankara, and Moscow-Ankara circuits, then they will have had an intelligence source more precious than McLean.

David Alvarez

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 17 July 1997

Can anyone disagree with Diane Clemens' hope that with the passing of the cold war we will no longer be confined "when it comes to investigating the roots of this complex event into a dichotomy between those who wish to argue that it only takes one to tango versus those who suspect it still takes the proverbial two [or better yet a crowded dance floor]"? I certainly assign Gardner, Leffler, Paterson and others to my students, have learned from their works, and particularly value their emphasis on what might be termed--to extend the metaphor--the American urge to dance. Where I part company with those I would term revisionists, and yes I appreciate that the label is crude and an infringement on the bland self-definition of serious scholars which we all prefer, is with what I consider their obvious overemphasis on this urge and especially their apparent willingness to ascribe motives to historical actors on the basis of this overemphasis. Where I thought Ed Mark's article might, in Clemens' words have left the revisionists, "cowering in their bunkers rendered incapable of speech" was with regard to the specific claim that the war scare of 1946 had been "contrived" by the Truman administration. If Gardner and Leffler had followed Alexander DeConde's text in this regard, they might have avoided an ascription of motives to the Truman administration which was not only gratuitous but inaccurate.

In the broader scheme of the history of historiography, the revisionists appear to me to be much like those historians of the origins of the First World War, perhaps most notably Sidney B. Fay, who were apparently so revolted at the injustice of their government's claim to be exclusively on the side of the angels in a fight against the devils (aka the Central Powers), as to have lost perspective on the vital differences between the Kaiserreich and the Western democracies and to have seriously underemphasized the contribution which Imperial Germany made to the outbreak of the war. The approximation of an international scholarly consensus which has emerged on such questions over the past few generations (I am thinking here of the work of scholars such as Hermann Kantorowicz, Bernodette Schmitt, Luigi Albertini, Fritz Fischer, and Paul Kennedy) is grounded in decades of research in the archives of the major players and shows no signs of coming under serious challenge. In asserting that "the books by Gardner, Leffler, and Paterson are based on a preponderance of evidence," Christopher Jespersen seems to be trying to invoke a similar consensus on behalf of these works and such revisionist claims as Gardner's assertion that "Responsibility for the way in which the Cold War developed, at least, belongs more to the United States." The problem with this, which is particularly acute as far as Gardner's counterfactuals are concerned, is that we still know very little about the Soviet side and simply ascribing motives to Stalin & Co. which seem "reasonable" does not carry us very far. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about what seems reasonable and such conjectures are certainly no sort of foundation for an international scholarly consensus on the origins of the cold war, or on the likely alternative paths which might have followed from different American policies.

I was glad to learn that Professor Gardner's absence from the discussion reflected the fact that he was out of town and am hopeful that he can be talked into contributing his thoughts on Mark's article upon his return. Indeed, it might be nice to have a broader discussion on the origins of the cold war at some point during the fall semester, perhaps using John Lewis Gaddis' latest book as a jumping off point. I myself will be on vacation and in the archives until late August and would, like Christopher Jespersen, appreciate it if no conclusions were drawn from my absence.

Finally, I suppose I should say something in response to Curt Cardwell's suggestion that "Mr. Schwartzberg might want to rethink his statement lest he is ready to concede that NSC-68 had other purposes than stopping Soviet designs for world domination." The underlying assumption here, and in many of Mr. Cardwell's comments, seems to be that if B follows logically from A, and someone believes B, then they must believe A. In other words, if NSC-68's concern with a Soviet design for world domination was a mask for other interests, and I reject the idea that there was a blueprint for world conquest locked away in the Kremlin, then I should "concede" that NSC-68 was some sort of ruse. This seems to me absurd on many levels, but I will do what I can to oblige. I think that American officials during the Truman administration generally believed that democracy, prosperity, security, and an international order which was generally respectful of the national sovereignty of others, and conducive to the survival and success of liberal civilization, were complementary objectives which could and should be pursued simultaneously by the United States and its allies to mutual benefit. Unlike the revisionists, who are inclined to emphasize the obvious contradictions among these objectives, and the numerous cases in which American policy sacrificed or violated one or more of them, I am inclined to think that the Truman administration generally did a fairly good job of harmonizing these objectives and of encouraging governmental and nongovernmental actors in other countries to join with the United States in their pursuit.

Steven Schwartzberg

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 17 July 1997

Dear Colleagues:

There has been an rich crop of serious posts today, and I shall respond to them as time and energy may permit. If now or later I seem tardy with my comments, the reason is to be found in my schedule. As a federal historian, I do not have the summer off -- I have only just returned from work as I write -- and there are completing claims for what remains of my day.

POST OF T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN:

Professor Jespersen makes two main points:

(1) The first is that my article contains speculation. But Professor Jespersen allows that I have gone "to great lengths" to separate speculation from fact. I agree that I have speculated, and am pleased that Professor Jespersen thinks that I have indicated adequately where I have done so. I see no need for further comment on my part regarding this point.

(2) Professor Jespersen notes, again correctly, that I cited the works of Lloyd Gardner, Melvyn Leffler, and Thomas G. Patterson, indicating that they did not adequately appreciate that American policymakers had ample grounds for fearing Soviet aggression against Turkey. He then observes that my article is confined to a period of six months (I should say a year), whereas Professor Gardner's "Architects of Illusion", Professor Leffler's "Preponderance of Power," and Professor Patterson's "On Every Front" deal with considerably longer periods. Then, observing that a number of contributors have used my article to refute the broad positions represented by the three scholars just named, Professor Jespersen writes that no should change his views on the origins of the Cold War on the strength of my article (though Professor Jespersen seems not to fault in any way) since the works of Gardner, Leffler, and Patterson are based are based "on a preponderance of evidence." The logic of Professor Jespersen's post is apodictic -- I offer not a general explanation of the Cold War, but an exploration of certain aspects of one crisis. I also agree with part of his conclusion --" No one was won the debate. We do not now know the Truth" -- and I thank him for the rest: " What we have is a far more nuanced perspective on the situation for that particular episode at that specific time courtesy of Eduard Mark."

A tremendous amount of work remains to be done on the origins and course of the War, as I never tire of saying. I am not at all the sort of Rankean positivist who insists that we need only accumulate enough facts and we shall have. ipso facto, the Truth. But we must at least establish the basic course of events before we can even pretend to decide What It All Meant.

POST OF JIM WOODS:

Mr Woods asked what the Turks thought of the events of 1946, and what effect they may have had on American intelligence. For the Turkish reaction, Mr. Woods should read Bruce R. Kuniholm's indispensable "The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East." (In brief, they were very worried, though resolute.) The Turks did share intelligence with the United States -- chiefly order-of-battle reports on the Soviet forces. MID tended to discount these reports as exaggerated. and I do not think that the Turks shaped American perceptions of the crisis to any great extent. The sources of information available to Washington were very varied, and some of them (correctly or not I do not know) carried more weight than anything that came out of Ankara.

POST OF DAVID KAISER:

Professor Kaiser writes that I have showed adequately that "that Stalin was engaged, at the very least, in a campaign of intimidation against Turkey in 1946, and that the American government took it very seriously." He is left with several questions, however, two of which appear in his post.

(1) Professor Kaiser writes, "it is not clear to me that the scare over Turkey really [a] gave American military planning a decisive push in any particular direction, or [b] had a lasting impact on the Cold War. In connect with point [a] Professor Kaiser notes that Steven Ross in his useful synopses of American war plans (the work is not really a full history of war planning, nor did it purport to be) shows that planning for the war with the Soviet Union began "well before the war scare." He adds that Professor Ross wrote that the JCS "did not believe that war with the Soviet Union was imminent."

My comments are as follows: Regarding point [a], the JCS ordered the preparation of a concept for an emergency war plan in October 1945. By this time reports of a possible threat to Turkey were plentiful, though what effect they had on the decision to plan for war the USSR will probably remain conjectural, thanks to the destruction of the JCS's postwar minutes. There is certainly no indication of urgency in any of the early documents on PINCHER. But if Professor Kaiser doubts that the steadily increasingly flow of reports regarding the menace to Turkey accelerated the pace of planning, he need only read the minutes of the Joint Planning Staff Minutes, General Lincoln's chronicle of EUCOM's preparations, P&O's correspondence, and quite a few of the other documents I cite. To this I would add the daily reports from Washington of the British Joint Staff Mission, which I did not read until after I had written the article. The sense of urgency in these documents is at critical dates not merely palpable, it is explicit. All I needed to see that something extraordinary was going on was the directive giving the Army Air Force's 20 days to plan for an attack on the USSR. A plan such as MAKEFAST (doesn't the name tell one something?) usually took several months, as I well know from the other book I am writing on plans. Apart from all this, I discussed these events at length with General Schuyler, and this was a real privilege. Schuyler was on the front line in Romania, and then in 1947 returned to Washington to head the Joint Strategic Plans Committee, where he was directly responsible for most of the plans that appear in Professor Ross's book. The General said to me, when I asked him when Washing really began to think of war as a real possibility, "Turkey started everything." There is also the matter of the covert operation in Romania, Both Ira Hamilton, who ran it, and Charles Hostler, the CIG's station chief in Bucharest, were explicit about the reasons for the operation.

As for the assertion that the JCS's documents from this period state that the USSR did not want war, it is true but irrelevant. The reference is to war with the West. But the possibility of a small wars with a neighbor like Turkey seemed real enough. And, as I have often stressed, such a war did not necessarily mean war with the US before President Truman's decision of August 15th, 1946. Please reread my note 10. The failure to note the importance of such phrases "a major war at this time" has led many historians astray.

As for the effect on American policy of the Soviet's seeming climb-down, one thing that I though we all agreed upon was that the outcome of the Near Eastern crises bucked up Truman and his advisers enormously. Read the documents in my note 61 (in which I give the wrong date for Kennan's famous "X" article.) And, for that matter, ready just about any American diplomatic memoir covering the period in question.

(2) Professor's Kaiser's second reservation is as follows: "the claim that information from Donald McLean deterred Stalin from the attack on Turkey. The only source for this is the memoir of Yuri Modin, McLean's Soviet controller. While the story Modin tells is very interesting, I think more information from Soviet archives will be necessary to confirm it. "

Comment: I did not state that the information from Maclean deterred "an attack." My point was that it appears to have deterred whatever it was that Stalin planned to do. As I have written, I think intimidation was the more likely objective. But obviously we shall need more evidence before we can be sure of anything.

I should add that I find Modin's claim plausible because I find his book as a whole credible -- much of it can be checked against various records. It also appears clear to me that something quite striking happened to cause Stalin to reverse course so suddenly. Rarely has there been a more dramatic, complete and rapid volte face. If Modin's story is wrong, then what else could it have been?

POST OF CURT CARDWELL:

The irrepressible Mr. Cardwell is back, this time having read my article. His major points are:

(1) " Dr. Mark comes at his subject with an assumption that is apparent throughout--Soviet interests in Turkey equaled Soviet determination to conquer, if not the world, then certainly Western Europe."

Comment: Wrong. I have been very careful, as Professor Jespersen and others have noted, not to state that the Soviet aim in Turkey was this or that. I speculate as to possible explanations for manifest actions. How did Western Europe get into the act? -- that is, why Mr. Cardwell conclude that perception of danger to Turkey was tantamount to a belief in "Soviet determination to conquer, if not the world, then certainly Western Europe." I presume the reason for this rather this rather breathtaking inferential leap is that so much military planning involved Western Europe. But let us think. If the US went to war over Turkey, how was the war to be fought? The US could not send forces to Turkey with sufficient speed and in such numbers to make any difference. All the U. S. could do, in fact, was to begin the strategic offensive, to which the USSR had no reply in 1946. American planners simply anticipated that the Soviets would, in the event of war, strike at the US where they could. And that place was in Western Europe.

This not really a "worst-case scenario." Try to imagine a war between the US and the USSR that did not involve Western Europe.

(2) "Dr. Mark has NOT shown that top-level government was convinced that a Soviet invasion of Turkey equaled Soviet goals to subvert the world to Kremlin control."

Comment: You bet. The thought never entered my mind.

(3) "What is not FULLY explored in Dr. Mark's article is why the US would have been willing to go to war to stop Soviet aggressive aims toward Turkey. If, as he says, it was to save British interests in the Middle East and, by implication, US interests there (oil and other resources), that merely adds fuel to the argument that US goals of creating an open and free international market economy, "

Comment: Setting aside the mixed metaphor, let me see if I understand this. Just because the JCS, the President, and the Secretary of State talked about the threat to Turkey exclusively in terms of the world balance of power, especially the military balance of power, "by implication" it all means nothing. As a former literature major, I have always believed that texts should be scrutinized rather than taken at face value. (This is why I have found Frank Costigliola's recent essays so interesting, if a bit over the top). But to say that texts should be discarded because you really know what was in someone's mind is to enter the trackless wastes of the Freudian ellipsis.

And what is that? Imagine a little scene. I go to a shrink, thinking that I am merely depressed because (a) my girl friend has left me; (b) I backed the car over my dog; and (c) I sold 5,000 shares of Intel at $97.00 right before it climbed to $168.00 and change. The shrink says, "Eduard, you only think that those are what's bothering you. Your real problem is that you never gratified your lust for your mother." I reply: "But I never wanted to do THAT! Mein Gott!" And the shrink says, "Yes you did, only you didn't know it." And so on.

If historical texts may be so blithely ignored at the beck and call of each new infallible intuition or "implication," we are all wasting our time. Think of the great progress of Freudian psychiatry over the last century and weep. Or, for that matter, think of the Open Door, which also explains all and nothing.

And with that, good night to all.

Eduard Mark

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 18 July 1997

>On 14 July, Eric Alterman <Tomseaver@aol.com> wrote:

>A question: Which is more amazing? Eduard Mark's attempt to win a scholarly argument by >citing sources that he is "not at liberty to discuss"

Still, Mark is probably right, no?

>....the fact that fifty-one years after the fact, and six after the disappearance of the country in >question, there is someone in authority anywhere who deems these sources too dangerous to be >discussed?

That *is* most astonishing. I have never understood the Clinton (or the Bush, or the Reagan, or the Ford, or the Carter) Administration's deference to the CIA and the NSA...

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 18 July 1997

The discussion of Eduard Mark's article has raised as a secondary issue the question of Stalin's intent in pressure maneuvers against Turkey. Although Mark has repeatedly indicated that he is avoiding speculation in this area, H-DIPLO readers want to speculate. It might be useful to revisit the "Symposium: Soviet Archives: Recent Revelations and Cold War Historiography" in the spring issue of Diplomatic History which didn't receive much discussion at the time--unless my E-Mail account was malfunctioning or I was asleep at the keyboard. The articles of Jonathan Haslam, Odd Arne Westad, Robert Tucker and Vladislav Zubok offer informed assessments that should move the discussion beyond the National Review model from the 1950s or the New Left perspective of the sixties. Haslam, for example, enhances our understanding of Soviet policy making and offers a view of ambiguity on Stalin's motivation and intent; Westad recasts the influence of ideology into a useful perspective on Soviet Cold War policy; and both Zubok and Tucker offer revolutionary-imperial paradigms with Tucker coming down harder on Stalin: "Stalin was not only a Russian imperial Communist bent on aggrandizing the Soviet empire where possible. He was likewise this century's supreme cold warrior, a man whose consuming passion in life was struggle against those marked down in his mind as enemies."

Mark's article offers U.S. and other views on Stalin's various demarches on Turkey but doesn't include Soviet sources or views. The editors of H-DIPLO should consider bringing the Cold War International History Project "Bulletin" into this new discussion format on H-DIPLO. Each issue--that is getting thicker and thicker--offers a variety of assessments of new documents that could be grouped into a discussion and related to other case studies such as Mark's and larger models on Soviet objectives and contributions to the Cold War.

Thomas R. Maddux, CSU Northridge

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 18 July 1997

As I read several weeks of H-DIPLO messages yesterday I noted that several people noted that I had not responded to Ed Mark's article. In fact, I had been away for about ten days. Moreover, I have been in the process of assuming a new job at UVa and have been busy preparing for new responsibilities. But since writers have wondered what my reaction was to the article, I thought I would briefly outline why I am unconvinced by the evidence put forth by Ed Mark.

Let me begin by saying that Mark is to be congratulated for presenting so much new material and for writing such a provocative article. The challenge is to interpret that new evidence correctly, assess its proper meaning, and place it in proper context. Initially, I thought Mark's evidence was very powerful. In fact, he prompted me to get out my old note cards and yellow xeroxed pages. As I reviewed my "old" evidence and reread the article even more carefully, I became rather dubious about the overall thrust of the argument.

It seems to me that Mark is trying to make two points about the alleged "war" crisis. The less important point is that Stalin was preparing for or thinking seriously about war. This is less important only because Mark does not focus much attention on this part of the equation and because the evidence still remains scanty. But readers should note Mark's own conclusion (p. 413): "The available records of the Soviet foreign ministry reveal no preparation for war with Turkey." True, there are materials we still have not seen, and the final assessment must wait until we have further access to all the documents. But for the present, according to Mark's own findings, the "available records" reveal no war plans to attack Turkey. We can draw all sorts of inferences and focus on different impressions, but the records, or at least those that we have from the foreign ministry, apparently don't suggest that the military threat was real or imminent.

The other more important point that Mark focuses on relates to U.S. beliefs regarding the seriousness of the threat. Mark claims that American officials really believed that an attack was impending. Although he focuses on lots of new material, I am not persuaded by his evidence. Since there is no time to focus on the entirety of the article, let me turn by attention to July, August, and September of 1946, the climax of the crisis. Mark covers this period on pages 398-403.

On p. 399, he writes that "Policymaking circles in Washington, on edge from months of ceaseless reports and rumors about soviet intentions, fell into a mood of crisis." He does not mention that in March 1946, before Kennan left Moscow, Kennan wrote: "I find it hard to conceive that Sov Govt could be planning overt Sov aggression against Turkey at this juncture." (Elsey Papers, Box 63). Kennan's successor Elbridge Durbrow wrote on August 5th: "We seriously doubt that Kremlin, unless it suffers radical lapse of political sagacity and caution, is planning attack on Turkey." (RG 59, 761.67/8-546). When the two highest ranking foreign service officers doubted that aggression was impending, I wonder if it is precisely accurate to say that the reports of impending attack were "ceaseless."

Nor did all the military intelligence officers and the chiefs of staff think that an attack was impending. In fact, JCS 1641/4, written in April 1946, constituted the "Political Estimate of Soviet Policy for Use in Connection with Military Studies." This political estimate stemmed directly from Kennan's Long telegram, and, if I recall correctly, was worked out by Admiral Sherman, General Deane, and Chip Bohlen. JCS 1641/4 stated: "There is no evidence that the Soviet Union desires a major war at this time. On the contrary, there are many indications that it needs and wishes a period of reconstruction and development." The military officers working on the plans regarding Turkey did not expect war. In a memorandum to the Plans & Operations division, dated 24 June 1946, Colonel R. F. Ennis relayed the "latest information regarding most probable action on the part of the Soviets." The Soviets, he stressed, had the capability to overrun Europe. "However, it is believed that the over-all Soviet plans to avoid a major war at this time or in the near future remain unchanged." (RG 165, ABC 336 Russia (22 August 1943), Sec 1-C). In JIS 253/1, dated July 26, 1946, Lt. Colonel Bellonby noted that the Soviets had the ability to invade Turkey. "However, it is not believed that she will press demands on Turkey to the point of open hostilities but that she will continue to fight a war of nerves to obtain a friendly Turkish Government." War plan "Griddle" did not assume an immediate Soviet attack on Turkey.

Mark tells us that the British viewed the situation with "mounting alarm." (p. 403) The British did get more worried in late September, but I have not seen any information that they expected an actual military attack on Turkey. In fact, readers might note that Mark did not cite the key British intelligence paper on "Russia's Strategic Interests and Intentions in the Middle East." This paper was forwarded to Washington and frequently updated. Its conclusions, revised 22 August 1946, stated: "Nevertheless, the continued withdrawal of Russian troops from Bulgaria and the agreement of the Soviet Government to the cession of the Dodecanese to Greece, indicate that they do not contemplate an early attack on Turkey and intend for the present to pursue their objective by gradual means." (RG 165, ABC 336 Russia (22 August 1943), 1-C).

On pages 399-400, Mark focuses on the key discussions by high level officials in the Truman administration regarding the Soviet diplomatic note that ostensibly precipitated the crisis. Readers should be aware that he does not focus any attention on diplomatic reports from Ankara at the time of the note. Summarizing the diplomatic communications for Loy Henderson, the director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, one State Department officer stressed "Ankara 844 of August 8th indicates that the Turks are not particularly alarmed by the Russian note of August 7th." Two days later, Ambassador Wilson reported that Foreign Minister "Saka gave impressions of man who had expected worst, somewhat relieved Soviet note." It was a "less formidable blow than expected." Feridun Cemal Erkin, the Secretary General of the Foreign Office, also "did not seem overly concerned, but probably taking matter more seriously." (FRUS, 1946, 7: 835)

On pages 401-403, Mark stresses many ominous reports. In fact, the raw intelligence that he dwells upon found its way into the summaries going to president Truman from the office of the director of the central intelligence. Mark notes the Hoyt Vandenberg to Truman memo of 24 August 1946, but its concluding paragraph is not fully elucidated. Vandenberg said that the possibility of direct Soviet military action could not be disregarded. However, "In weighing the various elements in this complex situation the most plausible conclusion would appear to be that, until there is some specific evidence that the Soviets are making the necessary military preparations and dispositions for offensive operations, the recent disturbing elements can be interpreted as constituting no more than an intensive war of nerves." (Truman Papers, PSF, Box 249).

Mark goes on to write on p. 402, "What had been in August a steady trickle of reports about Soviet military preparations in the Balkans became in mid-September a torrent." Mark notes all sorts of ominous signs. Many of these were described in a memo to the president on September 18th. I don't think that Mark focuses on this document, but readers would find it very interesting. The memo mentions evidence regarding Soviet plans for sabotage and strikes. It refers to an order by Stalin to discontinue Soviet demobilization. It refers to the concentration of Albanian, Yugoslav, and Bulgarian troops on the Greek frontier. It alludes to rumors that the Soviets might intend to seize Istanbul by force on the night of 18-19 September. In other words, the memo refers to many of the sorts of things that Mark found in his raw intelligence files. But then the memo discounts the significance of each of these signs. "The fact that the strikes and disorders have not yet occurred would indicate that the action referred to is at least not imminent." As for reports about Soviet demobilization, "It has long been anticipated that Soviet demobilization would be discontinued on the completion of its third stage about 1 September. The only disturbing aspect of the report is the reference to the recall of men in process of demobilization. The report is from an unsure source; it is possible that the alarmist element was introduced in its transmission. In any event, the report in itself is an indication of preparedness rather than of imminent aggression." As for the concentration of Albanian, Yugoslav, and Bulgarian troops, the memo to the president said that "they are not on such a scale as to indicate imminent overt aggression. There are indications that the Albanian dispositions, in particular, are defensive in character." As for Soviet intentions to seize Istanbul, the report "is from an extremely indirect and doubtful source. It is unsupported by any evidence of necessary preparation for such an attack, and it is probably another item in the war of nerves on Turkey." As for the conclusion, it was possible that local elements under Soviet control might try to take advantage of local situations. But the report to the president stressed: "On general grounds it is considered unlikely that the Soviet Union would resort to overt military aggression in the near future."

Mark suggests that high level officials actually expected the possibility of aggression. But I don't think he cites the letter from Truman to Jno. N. Garner on September 21st, when the war crisis, according to Mark, was still ominous. Truman wrote: "There is too much loose talk about the Russian situation. We are not going to have any shooting trouble with them but they are tough bargainers and always ask for the whole earth, expecting maybe to get an acre. The situation, I think is cleared up since yesterday and from now on we will have smoother sailing. I am sure that I will."

For readers who might want to get a "feel" about whether a war crisis existed in August and September 1946, but who don't have access to all these archival sources, I suggest you go to your library and consult volume 8 of the published papers of General Eisenhower. He was then chief of staff of the army. Skim thru pages 1231-1316 covering this period of time. You will see, as Mark notes, that there was real planning for war going on, but I doubt if any reader will get a feeling that Eisenhower really expected war to occur. Note that on September 19th (p. 1308), he wrote, "I believe that no government wants a war--at least in the measurable future. The danger is that somewhere along the line a spark might set off an explosion that would get out of control." Because a war could occur by miscalculation, planning for war had to be done. But there is little evidence that in August and September 1946 Eisenhower expected premeditated and overt Soviet military aggression.

What does all of this mean? I think it means that Mark should be applauded for uncovering lots of interesting material. But before there is any rush to strikingly new conclusions that new evidence needs to be put in perspective. While considering the new, historians need to take cognizance of the old and make judgments about the meaning and significance of the new. While focusing on the raw intelligence, historians need to remember that there was lots of it flowing into Washington. Care needs to be taken in terms of assessing how this intelligence was presented to top officials and how they interpreted it. My point in presenting this material is not to say that Mark is wrong. My point is to explain why notwithstanding his presentation of the new material, I do not find it very persuasive.

My view remains that the August 1946 crisis was a diplomatic crisis with strategic implications. American officials did not expect a Soviet attack. They feared that the Turks might bow to Soviet diplomatic pressure. They wanted to shore up the Turks' desire to resist Soviet diplomatic "intimidation." They did not want Turkey to slip into a Soviet sphere of influence. They regarded Turkey as critical to U.S. strategic purposes should a war erupt. War plan "Griddle" argued that "every practicable measure should be undertaken to permit the utilization of Turkey as a base for Allied operations in the event of war with the USSR."

Most of what Mark reports about U.S. war planning I wrote about long ago both in Preponderance of Power (pp. 106-40) and in my JAH article (March 1985) on Turkey. The issue that separates us relates to the motivations behind U.S. policies. He argues that U.S. officials expected war. I argued that they did not expect war, but, as prudent men, sought to use the diplomatic "crisis," as a means to bolster Turkish determination and to enhance long-term U.S. strategic capabilities. Mark adds much new evidence, but I still feel I got the story mostly right.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 21 July 1997

Thomas Maddux's suggestion for bringing the CWIHP "Bulletin" into the discussion on "The War Scare of 1946" and other Cold War posts would be very welcome to those of us who suffer from the tyrannies of distance and resource drought. May I also repeat my suggestion to bring in a British perspective such as Donald Cameron Watt's, particularly as many interesting points about Stalin's motives are now being raised. I note that one point which has been made but has not yet been followed up was that Stalin might have hoped to drive a wedge between the US and the more bellicose (Bevin) but exposed and uncertain British. If Montgomery is to be believed Attlee was only persuaded against British withdrawal from the Middle East by the Chiefs of Staffs' threat to resign en masse in January 1947 (not by the strong opposition of Bevin & the Foreign Office) so perhaps it is not stretching too long a bow to speculate on whether Stalin was seeking to split not only the US & UK but also the British Labour Party (on whose differences he would have had reliable intelligence). I concede Montgomery's claim has been contested & on this he may not be infallible (he once observed 'as God said, and I think rightly').

Garry Woodard

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 21 July 1997

I have been reading with much interest most (not all) of the recent posts on Dr Mark's article. If I may be permitted, might I mention that at the beginning of this year I published a book entitled: "Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945-1954" (Frank Cass). I was privileged to have received from Dr Mark an advance copy of his article, which I found very useful, and duly credited in my footnotes.

I will try to confine myself to two comments, one more specific, and one more general.

1. Viz the strategic importance of Turkey:

It may be, as Ed Mark notes with hindsight, that the Soviets were only intending to see how much they could get away with in Turkey - but were those in charge of American (AND British) policy and strategy at the time supposed to have known that? And logically speaking, if the Soviets HAD secured bases at the Dardanelles, could anyone, then or now, guarantee that they would have sufficed stopped there?

At the time (in REAL time), Western planners figured that once the Soviets were at the Straits, and thence into the Mediterranean, then Suez, Egypt, and the whole Middle East would in effect be lost to the Western alliance.

And here, by extension, a necessary word about the central pillar of Western strategy, in the event of a wider conflict. (It was NOT thought that the Soviets would be ready for war for at least a decade after 1945, but it was feared that war might easily occur, through miscalculation of the other side's intentions or determination, or by matters simply "getting out of hand" - how many wars have in fact begun thus??)

The basic fact of life facing Western planners was the Soviet bloc's overwhelming conventional preponderance on the ground, in troops and tanks. The only hope for Western survival in a war with the Soviet bloc was believed to be the strategic air offensive, only partially atomic, to be carried out against strategic targets - NOT troop concentrations as suggested by Diane Clemens, but against the Soviets' oil, and oil refining resources.

It was fully expected that the Soviets, in a war, would take all of Western Europe (but NOT the British Isles) within one month, and reach Suez within four months. Yes, allied planners, to the best of their ability, DID compile detailed estimations of which combinations (divisions, planes, etc.) would be used against each front, and in each sector, and what gains would be made by them, month by month.

No aerial bombings could have stopped millions of men, in tanks, troop carriers and trucks, from pouring into Western Europe, or even across the more difficult (few metalled roads or railways) terrain of the Middle East. But it was hoped that the Soviet war machine would eventually be brought to a halt when its oil supplies ran out.

And here we come back to Turkey, and by extension, to England. The main war-horse of USAAF, and of SAC until the early 1950s was the B-29, with a fully-loaded round-trip range of some 3200 miles (an improved version, the B-50, had an improved range of around 4000 miles). The B-36, also a propeller-driven plane, had a much longer range, of some 8000 miles, and became operational in 1949; but proved to be very vulnerable in Korea. The B-29 gave way to the B-36 as SAC's main war plane only in 1953. The jet-propelled B-52 long-range bomber did not take over until the mid-1950s.

Given this basic fact of life - that American bombers could not reach Soviet targets from the American mainland, the strategic air offensive absolutely depended on British air bases - in England, and at the Suez Base in Egypt.

Thus, in an early version of the domino theory, it was reasoned that if Turkey fell under Soviet influence, the British position in the Middle East would be lost too, and the West would have lost one of the central pillars of its global strategy. And was it not legitimate to learn the lesson of history about the consequences of allowing any single power to dominate the European continent?

It should also be noted, indeed stressed, that Western Intelligence was convinced that the Soviets understood all the above very well - indeed, this was why the Soviets were expected to make a simultaneous thrust toward Suez, together with their main attack against Western Europe. So the strategic air strike should be seen, and indeed was regarded at the time by Western statesmen (fully privy to strategic planning), not only as a strategy for winning a potential conflict, but ALSO as a DETERRENT to the Soviets.

2. On the question of the reality of it all: or alleged responsibility for "warmongering", even if at low temperatures...

It is all too easy for armchair revisionist historians today, especially those who wrote during, or under the impression of Vietnam (or our own Lebanese war of 1982, here in Israel), to ascribe motives, or exaggerated stereotypes to those men who had, at the very least, a set of very tough problems on their hands after World War Two.

Any good historian will understand what it means to enter the "mindset" of the officials involved, after months, and sometimes years of reading their memoranda and unofficial minutes, i.e. their thoughts. I would recommend it to some of the Revisionists, to take off a few months to read the primary sources in the archives.

If even today, no one is yet sure, or has any good idea of what Joe Stalin was up to, how on earth could the men in charge then be expected to have had an idea in the late 1940s? What were they to make of Stalin's rhetoric, let alone of his actions (mostly along the Northern Tier of the Near and Middle East in the 1940s - not only Turkey, but stoking up the Greek Civil War, and refusing to pull out of Northern Iran; not to mention overthrowing the legitimate regime in Czechoslovakia and halting Western traffic to Berlin, in that traumatic Spring of 1948). Were Western Planners and statesman supposed to have taken it all stoically, and not prepared for the worst-case scenario?

To tell the truth, I am glad that some of today's Revisionist historians were not in charge of our fate in the late 1940s, though I hardly believe that they would have then reached the same conclusions as they do now from their ivory towers, had they been burdened with the weight of real responsibility.

Prof Michael J. Cohen, General History, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 52100.

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 22 July 1997

************************** Moderator's Note ********************************

We have waived our usual length requirement so that Eduard Mark could make a full response to Melvyn Leffler's comment on his article, "The War Scare of 1946 and Its Consequences."

We urge those who want to participate in this discussion to keep your messages to a maximum of 10K. We appreciate your cooperation.

****************************************************************************

Dear Colleagues:

This post will in its entirety be devoted to Professor Leffler's long response to my article. I apologize for its length. But as Professor's post was long, so must my refutation be.

PROLEGOMENON:

As I have done with previous posts, I shall consider Professor Leffler's post point by point. Before so doing, I must make a general observation about Professor Leffler's method of disputation. I refer to his resort to the rhetorical devise of the straw man.

The are, to be exact, two straw men in Professor Leffler's post. One is a rather scrawny thing of no great significance. The other, however, is very big, a Grendel among straw men.

(1) The small straw man: "Mark" states (or strongly implies) that Stalin was going to invade Turkey.

Careful readers of my article and of my posts in this string will have noted, however, that my position is more nuanced: I have throughout insisted that our knowledge of the inner workings of Soviet policy in this period is very limited, and that one can only speculate about Stalin's objectives. I consider that Stalin may have contemplated an invasion of Turkey BEFORE he learned that such an action would lead to conflict with the United States. In my reply to Professor Clemens I speculated how a limited invasion might have proceeded, and what ends it might have served. But I have also repeatedly stated that I hold that intimidation was more probably the dictator's objective.

(2) The BIG straw man: "Mark" states that Washington was convinced that the Soviets would invade Turkey.

It is particularly important to note the extensive use that Professor Leffler makes of this straw man: it is the false benchmark against which he would have readers measure the credibility of my article.

Attributing to me the position that American officials flatly expected a Soviet invasion of Turkey. He would have any evidence that Washington was less than certain that there would be an attack stand in refutation of my article. Professor Leffler points to documents that demonstrate that officials were concerned about Turkey's being intimidated into submission by the USSR and exults, "Ah Hah! You see Mark is wrong. Washington saw intimidation, but expected no invasion." More of this anon.

For the moment I shall disregard the fact that in "Preponderance of Power" Professor Leffler does not even allow that Washington was concerned about intimidation. On the contrary, he alleges that the whole crisis was fraudulently "contrived" for the ulterior purpose of converting Turkey into a military outpost of the United States. (p 124.)

The position that I attribute to American officials is a concern that Turkey MIGHT be invaded, particularly if the United States did not vigorously oppose Soviet intimidation of the Turks. American officials suspected what Soviet documents have subsequently shown to be true: that the Kremlin supposed it had a free hand in Turkey as regards the United States. After 15 August 1946 the Truman Administrative successfully disabused the Soviets of that illusion.

As for the danger of war, my position is not that American officials were certain that war was approaching, but that it MIGHT be, particularly if the USSR was not given to understand that Turkey was a vital American interest. This was the major point of the document that President Truman approved on 15 August 1946. (P. 383) I nowhere state that any official thought that the Soviets wanted war with the Untied States. Professor Leffler, both in his book and his post, confuses the issue by implicitly assuming that the United States had before 15 August 1946 the commitment to Turkey that it had subsequent to that date. (See Truman's remark of December 1945 on page 389.) Readers of my article will recall that I use Admiral Sherman's comments of June 12, 1946 to demonstrate the relative complexity of the American position on the likelihood: The Soviets probably did not want war with the West, Sherman said, "but the situation is completely explosive. It wouldn't take much to start a big show." (397)

DISCUSSION:

I. THE QUESTION OF WHETHER STALIN WAS PREPARING TO INVADE TURKEY:

PROFESSOR LEFFLER WRITES: "It seems to me that Mark is trying to make two points about the alleged "war" crisis. The less important point is that Stalin was preparing for or thinking seriously about war. This is less important only because Mark does not focus much attention on this part of the equation and because the evidence still remains scanty. But readers should note Mark's own conclusion (p. 413): "The available records of the Soviet foreign ministry reveal no preparation for war with Turkey." True, there are materials we still have not seen, and the final assessment must wait until we have further access to all the documents. But for the present, according to Mark's own findings, the "available records" reveal no war plans to attack Turkey. We can draw all sorts of inferences and focus on different impressions, but the records, or at least those that we have from the foreign ministry, apparently don't suggest that the military threat was real or imminent."

RESPONSE:

WHAT I WROTE: As I have stated repeatedly in this forum, I see two plausible explanations for Soviet military dispositions, the reports the United States received about discussions between the USSR and its satellites, and other evidence that pointed to a serious threat to Turkey -- invasion or intimidation. I am agnostic as to which explanation is the more likely. As I observed (p. 413), the evidence to decide between these two possibilities is lacking. Professor Leffler ignores the complexity of my position and imputes to me only the most seemingly extreme part of it, knowing that this is the part that most readers will hardest credit to credit. (I am afraid the American historical community is not prepared for the idea that poor, barefoot Joe Stalin would attack anybody.) Nowhere does my critic so much as hint that I have held intimidation to be an equally plausible explanation. This method of argument is quite common under the great white dome of iniquity a few blocks from where I write. But scholars ought to adhere to higher standard of argument than politicians.

II. DID WASHINGTON PERCEIVE A DANGER OF WAR OR NOT?

A. OF THE GENERAL ISSUE PROFESSOR LEFFLER WRITES: "The other more important point that Mark focuses on relates to U.S. beliefs regarding the seriousness of the threat. Mark claims that American officials really believed that an attack was impending. Although he focuses on lots of new material, I am not persuaded by his evidence. Since there is no time to focus on the entirety of the article, let me turn by attention to only, August, and September of 1946, the climax of the crisis."

GENERAL COMMENT: The difference between us in this connection is stark. I believe that Washington feared the danger of war through Soviet miscalculation. Professor Leffler states that Washington saw no danger of war at all. Even with this stark contrast of position, he caricatures my position. I did not write that Washington believed "an attack was impending." I use the documents to show that there was concern an attack MIGHT be impending. I submit that to see that this was so one need only read the famous report of the State-Navy-War Coordinating Committee give to President Truman on 15 August 1945 (p. 383) or Dean Acheson's remarks of the day before during the meeting which the report was written. (399-400) Both mention explicitly the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Turkey. (Professor Leffler mentions neither document in his post.)

But let us move on to consider the evidence Professor Leffler cites in his attempt to deny that Washington perceived some danger of war over Turkey.

B. THE REASONS WHY PROFESSOR LEFFLER BELIEVES WASHINGTON WAS NOT GREATLY CONCERNED ABOUT WAR OVER TURKEY

1. STATEMENT OF GEORGE KENNAN: Having stated that he wishes to limit himself August and September, Professor Leffler dredges up a quote of Kennan's from March 1946: (Mark) "does not mention that in March 1946, before Kennan left Moscow, Kennan wrote: "I find it hard to conceive that Sov Govt could be planning overt Sov aggression against Turkey at this juncture."

COMMENT: But after Kennan returned to Washington he became less certain. The Conference that the Plans of Operation Division of the War Department held on June 20, 1946 to consider the likelihood of war. At the Conference Kennan stated that he thought the Soviets would not start a war unless they "underestimated American strength and patience." adding that he had come to believe that it was "quite possible" that they had. (pp 397-398)

Why does Professor Leffler suppose there was such a conference if there was no concern in Washington over the danger of war? And why, moreover, did the President meet with Secretary Byrnes and the Joint Chiefs on June 12 to discuss the possibility of war? What is most significant about these meetings is they were held at all.

2. STATEMENT OF ELBRIDGE DURBROW: Professor Leffler notes that on August 5 Elbridge Durbrow wrote, ""We seriously doubt that Kremlin, unless it suffers radical lapse of political sagacity and caution, is planning attack on Turkey."

COMMENT: American officials did not reason from the premise that the USSR wanted war. On the contrary, reason told them Moscow could not want war, as Acheson observed on August 14 -- right before he spoke of the danger of war. (399-400) Officials feared the danger of war only because the information they were receiving indicated that the USSR might invade Turkey, or at least create a dangerous situation with its program of intimidation. Durbrow's statement contradicts none of that, for the question was not what "political sagacity" might dictate but how much sagacity the often-bungling tyrant had.

It should be noted, however, that Durbrow may have been less concerned than officials in Washington because he had less information than they. As a rule, the SSU sent one mimeographed copy of its intelligence reports to the State Department's Office of Foreign Activity Correlation. Officers interested in the reports read them in that Office. As far as I have been able to establish, there was no regular distribution to the Embassy in Moscow. Signals intelligence -- a big business even at this time -- was not disseminated to the Moscow Embassy. (It appears, in fact, that no more than three or four persons in State had access to special intelligence.)

3. JCS 1641/4 ETC: "Nor did all the military intelligence officers and the chiefs of staff think that an attack was impending. In fact, JCS 1641/4, written in April 1946, constituted the "Political Estimate of Soviet Policy for Use in Connection with Military Studies." This political estimate stemmed directly from Kennan's Long telegram, and, if I recall correctly, was worked out by Admiral Sherman, General Deane, and Chip Bohlen. JCS 1641/4 stated: "There is no evidence that the Soviet Union desires a major war at this time. On the contrary, there are many indications that it needs and wishes a period of reconstruction and development." The military officers working on the plans regarding Turkey did not expect war. In a memorandum to the Plans & Operations division, dated 24 June 1946, Colonel R. F. Ennis relayed the "latest information regarding most probable action on the part of the Soviets." The Soviets, he stressed, had the capability to overrun Europe. "However, it is believed that the over-all Soviet plans to avoid a major war at this time or in the near future remain unchanged."

COMMENT: The document that became JCS 1641/4 was in fact written by H. Freeman Matthews, though it acknowledges Kennan's Long Telegram as the most probable explanation of Soviet policy. The State-Navy-War Coordinating Committee approved it to give political guidance to military planners, and it was circulated for informational purposes by the Joint Secretariat as JCS 1641/4. The important point is the phrase "major war." I dealt with this in notes 9 and, especially 10 (387) A "major war" meant war with the US and/or the UK. But since the UK could not come to Turkey's defense, and (before 15 August 1946) there was no reason to suppose that the US would (see Truman's remarks on p. 389) the questions whether the USSR wanted a "major war" and whether it would attack Turkey were before 15 August 1946 separate issues. The failure to realize this has caused no end of confusion. It still confuses Professor Leffler.

These remarks also pertain to the quote from Colonel Ennis who, moreover, wrote at a time when fears for Turkey had abated somewhat. (398)

Let me briefly digress briefly. As a bureaucrat of some considerable experience, I have noted that in his work he often used heavily coordinated documents like JCS 1641/4 to illustrate how officials felt on the day on which the last signature was added and the document acquired an official date of record. This, generally speaking, is not realistic. Anyone with any experience of government knows that documents that require inter-agency coordination usually move from office to office at the stately pace of Greenland's glaciers as they seek the sea. By the time such documents have been coordinated, they have often acquired a somewhat historical character. And yet they are unlikely to be modified significantly, for fear that updating would require that the whole interminable process of coordination be started all over.

4. BRITISH RESPONSE: "Mark tells us that the British viewed the situation with "mounting alarm." (p. 403) The British did get more worried in late September, but I have not seen any information that they expected an actual military attack on Turkey. In fact, readers might note that Mark did not cite the key British intelligence paper on "Russia's Strategic Interests and Intentions in the Middle East." This paper was forwarded to Washington and frequently updated. Its conclusions, revised 22 August 1946, stated: "Nevertheless, the continued withdrawal of Russian troops from Bulgaria and the agreement of the Soviet Government to the cession of the Dodecanese to Greece, indicate that they do not contemplate an early attack on Turkey and intend for the present to pursue their objective by gradual means." (RG 165, ABC 336 Russia (22 August 1943), 1-C).

COMMENT: Professor Leffler states that he has seen do documents indicating British concern that there might be a Soviet attack on Turkey. He cites one British study revised on 22 August 1946. May I suggest that he read my synopsis of the document prepared by the Joint Intelligence Subcommittee -- the senior British intelligence body -- on 6 September 1946, "The General Military Situation in Europe with Particular Reference to a Possible Threat to Turkey" (403 and n.44) How much more explicit can a document be?

5. TURKISH RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS: "On pages 399-400, Mark focuses on the key discussions by high level officials in the Truman administration regarding the Soviet diplomatic note that ostensibly precipitated the crisis. Readers should be aware that he does not focus any attention on diplomatic reports from Ankara at the time of the note. Summarizing the diplomatic communications for Loy Henderson, the director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, one State Department officer stressed "Ankara 844 of August 8th indicates that the Turks are not particularly alarmed by the Russian note of August 7th." Two days later, Ambassador Wilson reported that Foreign Minister "Saka gave impressions of man who had expected worst, somewhat relieved Soviet note." It was a "less formidable blow than expected." Feridun Cemal Erkin, the Secretary General of the Foreign Office, also "did not seem overly concerned, but probably taking matter more seriously." (FRUS, 1946, 7: 835)

COMMENT: Apples and oranges. The Turkish assessment of the situation is not an issue here. American concerns stemmed from intelligence reports that were not shared with the Turks, nor did the Turks have much intelligence to offer the United States other than order-of-battle assessments of the Soviet forces, which both MID and the SSU regarded as inaccurate. The Turks simply lacked the technical resources that the US and the UK disposed. (Unclassified hint from the PRO: the British at this time maintained their largest signals intelligence station at Istanbul)

6. VANDENBERG'S REPORT OF 24 AUGUST 1946: "In fact, the raw intelligence that he dwells upon found its way into the summaries going to president Truman from the office of the director of the central intelligence. Mark notes the Hoyt Vandenberg to Truman memo of 24 August 1946, but its concluding paragraph is not fully elucidated. Vandenberg said that the possibility of direct Soviet military action could not be disregarded. However, "In weighing the various elements in this complex situation the most plausible conclusion would appear to be that, until there is some specific evidence that the Soviets are making the necessary military preparations and dispositions for offensive operations, the recent disturbing elements can be interpreted as constituting no more than an intensive war of nerves." (Truman Papers, PSF, Box 249).

COMMENT: Two points are relevant here: (1) That Vandenberg's conclusion that the Soviets were waging a "war of nerves" is in no wise incompatible with my findings. As I have explained, the "war of nerves" and what it might entail was, in the American view, the chief source of danger of war as long as the Kremlin did not realize the importance that the United States attached to Turkey. (2) The second point, of course, is that Vandenberg's paper was soon overtaken by events. (402)

7. UNSOURCED MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT OF 18 SEPTEMBER 1946: "Mark notes all sorts of ominous signs. Many of these were described in a memo to the president on September 18th. I don't think that Mark focuses on this document, but readers would find it very interesting. The memo mentions evidence regarding Soviet plans for sabotage and strikes. It refers to an order by Stalin to discontinue Soviet demobilization. It refers to the concentration of Albanian, Yugoslav, and Bulgarian troops on the Greek frontier. It alludes to rumors that the Soviets might intend to seize Istanbul by force on the night of 18-19 September. In other words, the memo refers to many of the sorts of things that Mark found in his raw intelligence files. But then the memo discounts the significance of each of these signs." and concludes "'On general grounds it is considered unlikely that the Soviet Union would resort to overt military aggression in the near future.'"

COMMENT: Three comments are in order regarding this document, which I have not seen and for which Professor Leffler provides no citation: (1) It does not, in fact deal with the most threatening overt manifestations of the Soviet "war of nerves" -- i.e., Soviet (not satellite) troops on the Turkish frontier and the stockpiling of supplies in Bulgaria; (2) Since Stalin rather shamelessly backed down on 24 September 1946, thereby ending the acute phase of the Turkish imbroglio, the report of 18 September 1946 arrived too late to have much influence on the crisis, even if it had any influence (which Professor Leffler does not demonstrate); and (3) the paper's conclusion that an invasion was possible but not likely was merely conventional. It seems telling only because of Professor Leffler's second straw man -- that I would have Truman and his advisers wetting their pants in fear that a Soviet invasion was certainly in the offing.

I should, by the way, be most obliged if Professor Leffler would post the citation for the document of 18 September 1946.

8. PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S LETTER OF 21 SEPTEMBER 1946: "Mark suggests that high level officials actually expected the possibility of aggression. But I don't think he cites the letter from Truman to John. N. Garner on September 21st, when the war crisis, according to Mark, was still ominous.

Truman wrote: "There is too much loose talk about the Russian situation. We are not going to have any shooting trouble with them but they are tough bargainers and always ask for the whole earth, expecting maybe to get an acre. The situation, I think is cleared up since yesterday and from now on we will have smoother sailing. I am sure that I will."

COMMENT: Let us ask ourselves what happened on the date Truman references, September 20. On that day he fired Secretary Henry A. Wallace, who had a wide following in the Democratic Party and who repeatedly charged that the policies of the Truman Administration were leading to war. Truman's letter is not an objective assessment of the international situation -- it is an attempt to deal with serious dissention in his party, some of which Garner had communicated to him. What Truman really meant was that the UNITED STATES was not going to start a war, pace poor deluded Henry. This document is not serious evidence for the present debate.

At various times Truman spoke openly to his inner circle of his fears of a Soviet invasion of Turkey (389). He was, however, most wary of public opinion, for he knew there was as yet little support for a "hard line." Thus he once minimized the danger of war at a press conference and then turned right around to tell W. Averell Harriman that he expected war.(note 8)

9. GENERAL EISENHOWER'S CORRESPONDENCE: "For readers who might want to get a "feel" about whether a war crisis existed in August and September 1946, but who don't have access to all these archival sources, I suggest you go to your library and consult volume 8 of the published papers of General Eisenhower. He was then chief of staff of the army. Skim thru pages 1231-1316 covering this period of time. You will see, as Mark notes, that there was real planning for war going on, but I doubt if any reader will get a feeling that Eisenhower really expected war to occur. Note that on September 19th (p.1308), he wrote, "I believe that no government wants a war--at least in the measurable future. The danger is that somewhere along the line a spark might set off an explosion that would get out of control." Because a war could occur by miscalculation, planning for war had to be done. But there is little evidence that in August and September 1946 Eisenhower expected premeditated and overt Soviet military aggression."

COMMENT: This seems a telling point at first blush. But just who was Eisenhower's correspondent? Truman? Not quite. He was one Kenneth Arthur Noel Anderson, an obscure writer who had written to ask permission to quote something that Eisenhower had written in a book that he (Anderson) wanted to write about the North African Campaign.

What I wrote above about the extreme caution of the Administration in dealing with a public of uncertain temper applies in connection with this document as well. One should remember that the papers were at this time full of speculation about war with Russia, and the last thing that Truman and his advisers wanted was a hysterical outburst that might limit their options. Isolationist Republicans, in fact, were waiting for just such an opportunity.

Having gone through Eisenhower's papers for this period, I should say that it is impossible to say with any certainty how the general rated the chances of a Soviet invasion of Turkey. But one thing is certain. Within a week of the letter to Anderson he was in London where he and the British Chiefs of Staff Committee decided the strategy for a possible war with the USSR.

Professor Leffler writes that for a "feel" of the time one should look at Volume 8 of the Eisenhower Papers. Readers would be better advised to consult Volume 7, especially the memo of 29 June 1946 to Admiral Nimitz. The excellent and lengthy notes for this document trace in detail Eisenhower's highly secret and continuous involvement throughout the summer of 1946 with strategic deliberations relating to war with the USSR.

C. SUMMARY OF SECTION II: Professor Leffler writes, "American officials did not expect a Soviet attack. They feared that the Turks might bow to Soviet diplomatic pressure."

I should summarize the situation as follows: "American officials did not think that a Soviet attack was probable, but they greatly feared that Soviet miscalculation of the American position might lead to war. They also feared that the Turks might bow to Soviet diplomatic pressure and various forms of military intimation."

I invite readers to read the document that President Truman and his leading advisers had approved as national policy on 15 August 1946 -- the paper whose recommendations they resolved to follow "to the end" (a phrase not normally used casually in such contexts). I summarize the document on the first page of my article. It is printed in full in FRUS, 1946, 7: 840-42 Then, dear readers, decide for yourselves whose summary best accords with that document, or with Acheson's comments of the day before. (399-400)

Speaking of Acheson, let me conclude this section on Washington's view of the crisis by quoting a summary of the events of 1946 that Acheson wrote in 1949 -- a document I cited but from which I did not quote:

"In 1946 the Soviet demands on the Turkish Straits were made. The Department and the President took such a serious view of these demands that for a large part of a week it was necessary for me, as Acting Secretary of State, to devote almost all my time to the consideration of this problem. Under the instructions of the President, daily meetings were held with the Secretaries of War and the Navy and with the Army, Navy, and Air Force Chiefs of Staff. The conclusion was reached that the real purpose of the Soviet demands was the domination of Turkey and that is would be contrary to the vital interests of the U. S. As a result a strong position was taken by the U. S. Government in support of Turkish independence with the full knowledge of the possible consequences. The President considered this the most important decision he had made subsequent to the bombing of Hiroshima." (FRUS, 1949, 6:1649)

III. THE RELATION OF PROFESSOR'S LEFFLER'S POST TO HIS "PREPONDERANCE OF POWER."

To the surprise of no one, I am sure, Professor Leffler concludes his post by saying, "I still fell I got the story mostly right."

Well, as Al Smith used to say, "Let's book at the record." Professor Leffler now writes, as we have seen, that Washington, while not expecting an invasion, "feared that the Turks might bow to Soviet diplomatic pressure." This is still short of the full truth. But it is much closer than what he wrote a decade ago in "Preponderance of Power" in which he averred that the whole crisis had been "contrived" and that "the Soviets had done little more than send a diplomatic note." The real danger to American interests in the Near East stemmed from the recession of British power and the concomitant instability that threatened exploitation of the region's oil and use of its airfields.

It now appears that the Soviets were something more than innocent bystanders. I should be well content to believe that my article played some role in what is self-evidently the not-insignificant change in Professor Leffler's position. But I am not so naive as to believe that I shall ever have explicit acknowledgment of that fact, if fact it be.

Eduard Mark

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 22 July 1997

I am currently processing dozens of emails from this site and have not read all the debate. However the remarks of Garry Woodard attracted my attention re the end of 1946. I have done a fair amount of research in this area (The Impossible Peace: Britain, the division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, Oxford, 1990/1993). I think that Woodard is a little fanciful to suggest that Stalin was deliberately splitting the Cabinet away from the Labour party. I have seen no evidence to suggest that, and indeed the Montgom. remarks and the supporting evidence of the change of heart by Attlee at the end of the year, suggests a change based upon exactly what Mont suggests. Attlee was always softer on hard defence than Bevin, realising the potential of atomic warfare to change the nature of warfare, and the resulting inability to defence the Middle East. What is more interesting is that Bevin really listens to the top brass in the military and uses them in his defence of an 'upfront' defence policy. Not quite so much his own man as one is conventionally led to believe. I am not sure that Stalin had such good 'spies' into the Labour Party, where is the evidence. The issues were not that clear especially re the implications of what a bipolar world might mean in terms of spheres - so-called - of influence. But splitting the US and UK is very probably true. Conceptually a harder point for transatlantic colleagues to grasp, but the early cold war was not just an American-Soviet affair, and the Soviets knew this.-

Anne Deighton

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 24 July 1997

I have read the Leffler-Mark exchange with great interest (apologies for last names only). I have one comment, which relates in part to my previous post.

Prof. Mark's rejoinder, it seems to me, can be interpreted to suggest that the actual local military balance was not a factor in the 1946 crisis at all. It seems to be saying that the whole crisis was perceived as--and probably was--simply a question of communication: that Stalin simply had to realize that the United States was willing to risk war. (I think even he agrees that that's a kind of worst-case conclusion, since he acknowledges that there is no proof that Stalin seriously intended war with Turkey in any event.)

This would suggest to me, once again, that the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945 had no attractive military options if it came to war between them, and that they both knew this, although the knowledge was sometimes unconscious. Thus, they had to delimit their vital interests and carry on their competition politically, through proxies, and very occasionally through limited war. While not claiming to speak authoritatively, I remain skeptical that the details of the military balance or war plans at any point in the Cold War fundamentally changed this situation.

It may be that future historians will also conclude that ideology was too important to both the United States and the Soviet Union for them to officially acknowledge this situation and deal with each other as traditional great powers. If so, they may conclude that both sides did the best they could. I am beginning to think, however, that it will be a long time before such a position could command much support in the academy. We shall see!

David Kaiser

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 25 July 1997

On 22 July, Eduard Mark <75717.2660@compuserve.com> wrote:

>(I am afraid the American historical community is not prepared for the idea that poor, barefoot >Joe Stalin would attack anybody.)

Well, just after the revolution he attacked the Poles around Lvov (when he was supposed to be supporting Tukhachevsky's attack on Warsaw). He attacked the Finns. Neither of those turned out well at all...

It's possible that the lesson he drew from those two events was that offensive war was a no-no. Starve millions to death--yes. Send NKVD agents to kill people with icepicks--yes. Shoot and bury captives by the gross--yes. Send people to Siberia--yes. Exterminate the Polish intelligentsia in regions to be Sovietized--yes. Kill every other close associate of Lenin within reach--yes. Kill every party official who was not attached to someone in Stalin's faction--yes. You get the picture.

But--somewhat oddly for a paranoid psychopath of such unhuman magnitude--aggressive military operations do not appear to have been on Stalin's regular menu of options.

The point on the other side is that he allowed Kim Il Sung to attack South Korea...

Brad De Long

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 21 August 1997

I have been out of town and therefore this would explain my belated comments on the War Scare. I generally agree with the comments of Prof. Clemens and Cardwell but I also would like to add a few points which have been overlooked.

Prof. Mark mentioned the need for some background information to the Turkish problem. That is correct, but he only devotes one sentence and to a relatively minor matter, that is the treaty of 1925 between the Soviet Union and Turkey. For a better understanding of the situation let us go back to 1918 when Germany imposed the Brest Litovsk treaty on a weakened Russia. A provision of this treaty was that the weakened (this is repeated for a reason) Soviets would have to cede Kars and Ardahan to Turkey as a reward to Turkey for participating in the war on the side of Germany. Although the Versailles Peace Treaty nullified the Brest Litovsk Treaty this section of the Versailles treaty was never carried out for obvious reasons. Stalin in 1945 asking for the return of Kars and Ardahan would make him no less a Russian patriot then the Allied Powers who signed the Versailles treaty. But that is not all, on May 14, l919 Woodrow Wilson agreed to accept a mandate over Armenia and Constantinople AND the Dardenelle Straits. This mandate was so encompassing that it not only included Kars and Ardahan into Armenia but also would give Armenia an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea to the town of Tribizond. Further this would eliminate Turkey from any possessions on the European mainland. Also as I have stated it would give the U.S. complete control of the Straits, right on the door steps of Russia. When one compares the demands of Stalin in 1945 with what Woodrow Wilson accepted in 1919 one would have to conclude that Stalin was a piker. Why were Stalin's proposals so outrageous that Truman was willing to go to war? Something, by the way, a slight matter, he never told this to the American people. On August 15, Acheson and Truman agreed that the U. S. would go to war over the Dardanelle Straits but in Acheson's discussion with Clark-Kerr, on August 20, he weasled out of the flat out position that he and Truman took on August 15. As early as October 16, 1946 the State Department, as well as on November 8, Acheson advocated shipping arms to Turkey but only through the British, why so devious?

It is interesting that in the entire article by Prof. Mark there is no word at all as to what were the Turks doing this time of the "War Scare". Well for one they had an army of over a million men on the border with the Russians. Even during the war, why? Well the Soviets claimed that it was going to be used against them if Hitler's army succeeded in the Battle of Stalingrad. Turkey did very well in the war by supplying Germany with much needed raw materials. Is it any wonder that the Soviets might of had a jaundiced view of Turkey ?

In any case to wind up, it seems that the Truman Administration was always afflicted with "war scares". Further the conclusion to be drawn from Prof. Mark's article is that the American people at their peril trust Washington, the State Department, and the Military, for major decisions on foreign policy as future events were to prove.

Ephraim Schulman

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 23 August 1997

Professor Ephraim Schulman's response on "The War Scare of 1946" raises some interesting questions and observations that don't provide sufficient explanation. For example, did Russia before WWI take Kars and Ardahan away from Turkey; did the 1925 treaty specifically address the Kars and Ardahan situation; what happened to Wilson's mandate agreement--I assume it went into the same trash can as the Versailles treaty? Professor Schulman also asserts a presence of one million Turkish forces on the Soviet border. Was this a buildup related to the Soviet demands or did Turkey normally keep a substantial force in that area?

Professor Schulman also ignores Professor Mark's effort to place the impact of the Soviet-Turkish conflict in a larger context. By the summer and fall of 1946 the deterioration in Soviet-U.S. relations had gained momentum from a number of interactions, clashes and disagreements coming out of the Yalta agreements and postwar settlements. A crisis over Kars and Ardahan, etc. may seem unjustified or symptomatic of a "war scare" syndrome to Professor Schulman if he doesn't consider in the context of the overall deteriorating relationship that so many historians have affirmed in the twenty five years since John Gaddis' *The United States and the Origins of the Cold War*.

Tom Maddux, CSU Northridge

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 24 August 1997

Dear Colleagues:

I had thought that something was missing from this thread, and no sooner had I booted up Thursday evening than I found what it was -- Ephraim Schulman had not risen to the defense of poor, misunderstood Joe Stalin.

Let us pause to savor the irony. Even Molotov -- that's V. M. Molotov, folks, Stalin's foreign minister -- told Feliks Chuyev several times that Joe overreached badly in the case of Turkey, mainly because he had a swollen head. Moreover, right after Joe been pumped full of formaldehyde and laid to rest in Red Square along side the first homicidal sociopath to inflict himself upon the long-suffering people of Russia after 1917, his successors repudiated all claims to Turkish territory and virtually apologized for the unpleasantness of 1946. But Mr. Schulman will have not of this revisionist nonsense. He knows that Joe was right -- Joe was always right. Well, let's take a look.

Mr. Schulman's post may be reduced to four propositions, or rather outbursts:

I. JOE DIDN'T ASK FOR SO MUCH!

"Prof. Mark mentioned the need for some background information to the Turkish problem. That is correct, but he only devotes one sentence and to a relatively minor matter, that is the treaty of 1925 between the Soviet Union and Turkey. For a better understanding of the situation let us go back to 1918 when Germany imposed the Brest Litovsk treaty on a weakened Russia. A provision of this treaty was that the weakened (this is repeated for a reason) Soviets would have to cede Kars and Ardahan to Turkey as a reward to Turkey for participating in the war on the side of Germany. Although the Versailles Peace Treaty nullified the Brest Litovsk Treaty this section of the Versailles treaty was never carried out for obvious reasons. Stalin in 1945 asking for the RETURN [emphasis added -- E.M.] of Kars and Ardahan would make him no less a Russian patriot then the Allied Powers who signed the Versailles treaty."

COMMENT: Mr. Schulman seems not to know -- or perhaps he chooses to ignore -- a number of relevant facts. Turkey lost the city of Kars to Russia by the treaty of San Stefano (March 1878), which decision the Conference of Berlin confirmed the following summer. This loss was of course a consequence of Turkey's military defeat by Russia and Romania in 1877. The provinces of Kars and Ardahan, however, were never a part of the Russian Empire.

The Soviet Union voluntarily the city of Kars to Turkey by the Soviet-Turkish Treaty of 16 March 1921. (Turkey, in the throes of revolution and under attack from Greece was hardly in a position to force the retrocession. The Soviets, in fact, sent supplies to help the Turks in their war with Greece.) It is interesting to note the chief Soviet negotiator was Joe Himself, who apologized to Turkey for the tsarist seizure of the city of Kars, which he described as yet another odious example of imperialism. Much in contrast to Bessarabia, the loss of which the USSR publicly protested throughout the 1930s, not a peep was heard from Moscow about Kars or Ardahan throughout the inter-war period. Molotov's demand of June 1945 was therefore truly a bolt from the blue.

The Versailles Treaty dealt with Germany, not Turkey, which was supposed to incur territorial losses and other humiliations as a consequence of the Treaty of Sevres (August 1920). The success of Mustafa Kemal, however, assured that this treaty was only partially implemented.

Mr. Schulman is, accordingly, quite incorrect in his implication that Kars and Ardahan were torn from the bleeding body of Russia, and that Stalin had to regain them to prove himself a "Russian nationalist." Moscow relinquished the city of Kars spoils in an enlightened attempt to attain the good will of Turkey. The provinces that Molotov demanded in 1945 had never been Moscow's to return. The generosity Moscow showed to Turkey in 1921 was of a piece with the irenic policy the Soviets pursued toward their neighbors in the 1920s. Had they been as wise after World War II we should all have grown up in a very different world.

II. BUT WOODROW WILSON WAS A REAL IMPERIALIST!:

"But that is not all, on May 14, l919 Woodrow Wilson agreed to accept a mandate over Armenia and Constantinople AND the Dardenelle Straits. This mandate was so encompassing that it not only included Kars and Ardahan into Armenia but also would give Armenia an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea to the town of Tribizond. Further this would eliminate Turkey from any possessions on the European mainland. Also as I have stated it would give the U.S. complete control of the Straits, right on the door steps of Russia. When one compares the demands of Stalin in 1945 with what Woodrow Wilson accepted in 1919 one would have to conclude that Stalin was a piker."

COMMENT: This is sheer fantasy. The United States neither asked for nor received mandates after World War I. The only parts of the former Turkish Empire to become mandates were Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq (under Britain) and Syria and Lebanon (under France).

President Wilson agreed that the United States would participate in a High Commission for Turkey that was to oversee the actions of the Turkish government in that portion of the Turkish Empire that remained outside of the mandate system. The High Commission so established resembled the Allied Control Commissions of World War II rather than a mandate. The Commission was established by the Treaty of Sevres, and took its place in Istanbul. But the whole exercise was nugatory because the Kemalists rejected the Treaty of Sevres and, following their victories over the Greeks, and others forced the Allies to sign the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) by which they gave up the right to intervene in internal Turkish affairs.

II. HARRY TRUMAN, THE DEVIOUS PICK-A-FIGHT-FOR-NOTHING SOREHEAD!

"Why were Stalin's proposals so outrageous that Truman was willing to go to war? Something, by the way, a slight matter, he never told this to the American people. On August 15, Acheson and Truman agreed that the U. S. would go to war over the Dardanelle Straits but in Acheson's discussion with Clark-Kerr, on August 20, he weasled out of the flat out position that he and Truman took on August 15. As early as October 16, 1946 the State Department, as well as on November 8, Acheson advocated shipping arms to Turkey but only through the British, why so devious?"

COMMENT: As I explained at some length in my article, the Truman Administration interested itself in Turkey because it feared that if it did not there would sooner or later be a war between Britain and the USSR which would leave the latter state master of Eurasia to the detriment of the United States.

The Administration was certainly secretive and somewhat devious because it knew that it lacked support for its policy of confrontation.

III. TURKEY WAS HITLER's NASTY PROTEGE!

"It is interesting that in the entire article by Prof. Mark there is no word at all as to what were the Turks doing this time of the "War Scare". Well for one they had an army of over a million men on the border with the Russians. Even during the war, why? Well the Soviets claimed that it was going to be used against them if Hitler's army succeeded in the Battle of Stalingrad. Turkey did very well in the war by supplying Germany with much needed raw materials. Is it any wonder that the Soviets might of had a jaundiced view of Turkey?"

COMMENT: I refer readers to the discussion of Turkish neutrality in Bruce Kunhiholm's "The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East." Turkey adhered scrupulously to the legal requirements of neutrality. It traded with Germany, yes, but also with the Allies. This is a right of neutral states. (Readers will recall that this right had something to do with our entry into World War I.)

The intelligence reports in the "Osobaya Papka Stalina" in the State Archive of the Russian Federation show that the Soviet intelligence services ransacked German records in the summer of 1945 in an attempt to find something to pin on the Turks. All they could find were the few trivial and questionable episodes the Soviet Foreign Ministry cited in the diplomatic notes of 1945-1946.

Neither these notes nor the intelligence reports to Stalin contain any reference to Turkey's preparing to enter the war on Germany's side, which the Turks never considered doing. (Again, see Kuniholm. The only question on Ankara's collective mind was whether it should enter the war on the Allied sided and, is so, when.)

IV. THIS TURKEY BUSINESS WAS ANOTHER ONE OF CRAZY OLD HARRY'S PHONY WAR SCARES -- THE SOB!

"In any case to wind up, it seems that the Truman Administration was always afflicted with "war scares". Further the conclusion to be drawn from Prof. Mark's article is that the American people at their peril trust Washington, the State Department, and the Military, for major decisions on foreign policy as future events were to prove."

COMMENT: The Truman Administration was "always afflicted with æwar scares.'" Really? There was, as I have argued, a war scare in 1946 and we all know that there was another in 1948. Two brief was scares in seven years hardly constitutes chronic affliction.

The thought in this outburst, of course, is that the Truman Administration manufactured the war scare of 1946 to shape domestic opinion. But there is a problem here, apart from the fact that there was an abundance of information pointing to Soviet action against Turkey. The problem is this: as Mr. Schulman notes, the Administration kept the confrontation over Turkey largely secret. Whom was it trying to scare -- itself?

I shall deal in a future article with the war scare of 1948. For now, let me refer readers to the two-part article by William R. Harris entitled "March Crisis, 1948" that appeared in the CIA's in-house historical magazine "Studies in Intelligence" in the issues for fall 1966 and spring 1967. The articles have been declassified and are available in the National Archives. Their treatment of the war scare is incomplete because Mr. Harris, a civilian contractor for the Department of Defense, had access only to low-level intelligence. They are nonetheless vastly informative and represent the only writings on the war scare of 1948 worth reading. Everything else is ill-informed fantasy.

ENVOI: For almost two months now I have responded at great length to comments on my article, even though I have found it troubling that the other articles in the Summer issue of "Diplomatic History," all of them excellent, have passed almost unremarked. I shall be quite content to continue to respond as long as readers may wish to post comments. But I really must insist that contributors get the basic facts straight, however much their interpretation of them may diverge from mine. I am not here to teach International Relations 101. Commentators should at a minimum have read not only my article but Bruce Kuniholm's magisterial work.

I have had the occasion to note that the editors of this forum periodically intervene in the interest of civility. I wonder if they should not also concern themselves with elementary fact-checking -- not, of course, to be censors but merely to ask contributors if they are really certain of facts that appear implausible. They might ask, for example, "Do you really mean that World War II began with Switzerland's occupation of Papua-New Guinea? Or "Do you really believe that space aliens were secret signatories to the treaty forged at the San Francisco Conference, where they were represented by Harold Stassen?"

Eduard Mark, Department of the Air Force

Re: "The War Scare of 1946"

Date: 25 August 1997

Re: Clarification on Wilson's Armenia Mandate

The clarification refers to that section of my previous posting with regards to the proposed mandate that President Wilson accepted over Armenia. The mandate would give Armenia an outlet to the BLACK Sea of the port of Trebizond and an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea to the Celician region in Southern Turkey. This would represent such a great swath of territory that Turkey might be justified in complaining that would result in dismantling Turkey as a nation. So again, Stalin's demand to reincorporate Kars and Ardahan would be minuscule compared to the appetite of Wilson.

Ephraim Schulman