American history and US politics

American History

Role of the United States in Europe After WWII

This essay attempts to present the role of the United States of America in the reconstruction of post World War II Europe. This report also attempts to provide information regarding the covert Cold War, the formation of NATO, and the ample economic trade opportunities sought by the Americans.

After the successful D-Day invasion of Normandy Beach, it did not take much longer for the allied forces to topple the rest of Hitler's army. The blitzkrieg was over and the world was ready to begin to disassociate the German people from Adolf Hitler's boisterous speeches, the holocaust, the charge on Moscow by the Panzers, and Rommil's quest for oil reserves in the deserts of Africa. Everyone wanted to believe that the German nation had simply been manipulated by a madman. But by the time Hitler fell, the damage had already been done.

In 1945, post World War II Europe was in both structural and economical shambles. The shell shocked Europeans had to contend with the fact that both urban and rural societal damage was extensive. Additional side effects of the war included escalating double digit inflation, a complete breakdown of the social order, high unemployment, starvation and poverty and to make matters worse a record cold winter on the way. European leaders at the time professed that all of these hardships were to be expected because a majority of the governmental infrastructure and agencies, schools, factories and homes were all either badly damaged or completely decimated. "In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe the physical loss of life, the visible destruction of cities, factories, mines, and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy." (Congressional Record, 1947)

To say the least, in 1945, post World War II Europe's was bleak at best. Europe was not alone in their economic turmoil. The world economy of 1945 and beyond was thrown completely off kilter and something had to be done immediately upon the realization of the seriousness of the situation. Europe needed a viable solution to restart the failing social and economic systems which were each on the brink of complete collapse. The United States and the Soviet Union did in fact step up to save Europe - but, each of these newly proclaimed superpower nations wanted to help Europe under their terms and in their own ways.

Through the efforts of new radical approaches such as the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, the United States offered Europe a fiscally reshaped European economic process and social order with the stipulations that aid would be forthcoming if Europe rebuilt with a foundation of the tried and true American style of diplomacy and democracy. The Soviet Union on the other hand was recruiting Eastern European nations the promise of a better world through the Communist political structure. Each of the superpowers saw the other as the antagonist who offered nothing to the Post World War II European way of life. The United States and Europe soon saw that the motivation of the former ally from Moscow would turn out to be as big if not bigger a threat to Europe and American democracy than the Nazi regime just toppled.

Hitler and World War II

World War II was a result of a nation trying to reestablish itself as dominant player in the social order coupled with the world's dire economic dilemma we now know as the Great Depression. In 1933, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) or Nazi's, were lead by Adolf Hitler to power and position in the nation of Germany. This relationship lasted until 1945.

The German people accepted the likes of Adolf Hitler and his party with open arms because they as a nation had always been a proud people. They were thoroughly embarrassed by their loss in World War I. Those feelings of dismay were escalated because the German people had historically always ruled themselves and the Post World War I Treaty of Versailles allowed, in the German mindset, for other nations to take advantage of the German people and their assets.

Hitler and his gang were obviously brilliant in the sense that they were able to extend an offer which again allowed the German people to express their opinions and rights to stop what they felt were the injustices brought on by the Treaty of Versailles. "Then some one has said: 'Since the Revolution the people have gained Rights. The people govern!' Strange! The people have now been ruling three years and no one has in practice once asked its opinion. Treaties were signed which will hold us down for centuries: and who has signed the treaties? The people? No! Governments which one fine day presented themselves as Governments. (The Adolf Hitler Historical Archives, vol. 4/12/1922)

Reconstruction Needed

When Hitler and Nazi Germany were finished and World War II was officially ended in May of 1945, Europe lay in ruins. The continents once-fertile farms were cratered and scarred by the onslaught of aerial bombs and tank tracks. Whole cities were flattened and the scenes were probably like some modern day science fiction movie full of gutted buildings.

The European nations were literally broken. They could no longer produce or manufacture the necessary goods which prevented them from being able to finance their own recovery. The people who miraculously survived these harsh times literally had no shelter or means for supporting themselves. The world economy, having just recovered from the Great Depression and then a World War were more than simply disgruntled with the way things were. But it was not only the economic situation that needed reconstruction, the antidemocratic Communist philosophy was beginning to take root all throughout the battered European nations. The Russians were there in force helping the poor starving survivors that Communism could be the savior. The people both there in Europe and back here in the United States desperately needed answers other than what the old-line classical economists were offering.

United States Foreign Policy

As the European nations tried to come up with a map for recovery, the Communist movement was also devising a strategy. However, the Communist plan was to simply take over the world in a systematic fashion. In the United States, Communism was seen as the biggest post war threat. To combat the ever increasing communist movement, the United States felt that it needed to alter its existing foreign policies in order to stop the communist threat. In the United States, the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine were on the way to provide that help.

In the United States, the Secretary of State in 1947, George C. Marshall, gave a moving speech at Harvard University addressing the situation which was occurring in Europe. That speech eventually altered the nation's foreign policy forever. Since Ulysses S. Grant was president almost eighty years before World War II, the United States was adamant in its position as a non-imperialistic and non-expansionist state. The United States had no true colonies and therefore professed that Imperialism should be left for the British. However, the Secretary of State's speech in June of 1947 expanded the nation's view on what social and fiscal responsibilities the United States had adopted with their new found economic and military strength. The famous speech outlined a plan and a reason why America as a nation should help rebuild Post World War II Europe. That plan was later named the Marshall Plan.

President Harry S. Truman was thrilled to sign the bill which enacted the Marshall plan into law. "Surrounded by members of Congress and his cabinet, on April 3, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Foreign Assistance Act, the legislation establishing the Marshall Plan. His official statement said, "Few presidents have had the opportunity to sign legislation of such importance.... This measure is America's answer to the challenge facing the free world today." (Congressional Record, 1947)

Even before the Marshall Plan was conceived and enacted into law, the United States was beginning flex its economic muscle and stray from an almost isolationist foreign policy. As early as 1946 for example, when the United States offered several billion dollars in post war relief, the policy makers added the stipulation that the European nations could only receive these monetary relief funds if they united and ratified plans to best use the aid. It was unprecedented that the United States foreign policies outlined and expected Europe to work with as a single economic unit.

Also around the same time, The Truman Doctrines were beginning to shape the nation's opinion on the true foreign problem which was communism. The foreign policy adjustment precedents such as mandated relief stipulations, the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine were all desperately needed to reestablish Europe as a rebuilt system, but what occurred in addition to Europe's rebirth was that the world was truly altered forever through the United States new approach to foreign policy.

The Truman Doctrine

As early as 1945, the United States began to recognize a threat coming from Moscow. The United States felt the threat was enough to cut reconstruction funding for Russia immediately after World War II. The Truman Doctrine essentially declared that communism and any other philosophies posed by the Soviet Union were serious threats to not only Europe but the United States and eventually the entire world. The Truman Doctrine stated that communism could no longer go unchecked. The United States took on a responsibility of helping the world either obtain or maintain democratic freedoms.

The true effect of the Truman Doctrine back in the United States, however, was one that systematically altered the American way of life in an almost subliminal way. American's either took it upon them selves or they may have even have read it somewhere that they were no longer trust anyone because, one never knows for sure, a person over there could be a 'Red.' Fear infiltrated our society as the Federal government waged an all out war on Communism. Those fears started to again influence the nation's approach to foreign policy. All of a sudden, the Truman Doctrine indirectly made the Soviet Union the ultimate American enemy.

Thus, by 1947, the idea to contain communism was converted into a national philosophy that originated through the idea supported in the notions of the Truman Doctrine. Both the Soviet Union and the United States felt they had to protect themselves as the paranoia intensified and an all out clandestine war was brewing. In Europe the clandestine war between the philosophies of democracy and communism led to the eventual division between the Eastern European Communist Bloc States and the Western European democratic nations that would eventually become the NATO nations. The division was made into a physical divide when the Russians and East Germans began to isolate the city of Berlin through a fence that eventually became the foundation of the Berlin Wall. This division and the opposition of the two philosophies came full circle and the Cold War was on.

The Marshall Plan

Although the Secretary of State's speech was highly regarded, the Marshall plan did not instantly receive the blessings of the nation's leaders or the average citizens. Unlike today's one world global alignment philosophy, the United States in the late 1940's Post World War II Europe initially as someone else's problem, not ours. Opponents of the Marshall plan concluded that the overall cost of such a massive recovery initiative would completely wipe out the United State's domestic economy or possibly even pull the nation into the same economic woes being felt in Europe. The idea that the Marshall plan was also proposing to offer financial aid to the Soviet Union and the new Eastern Block nation's was a poor selling point for the newly Truman Doctrine-ized United States.

Eventually the plan was approved by Congress and signed by Harry S. Truman into law because the effects of the Post World War II economy were beginning to show them self in economic trade conditions. The supporters of the Marshall Plan had always felt that delaying financial support to Europe would only escalate the communist expansion and hurt the United States more economically. Ironically when the Truman Doctrine proved to be accurate by the media's coverage of a Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia and the many other expansionist related stories, the nation and law makers saw it fit to concur with the Marshall Plan supporters and the Plan became law in April of 1948.

Allies and NATO

The Post World War II observations by the allied nations regarding the Soviet Union's then supposed intentions to spread the communist philosophy on a global scale worried the allied nations including the United States enough to warrant new binding negotiations and alliances. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was drafted and then formalized to discourage potential attacks by the Soviet Union on the non-Communist nations of Western Europe. The communist threat from the Soviet Union eventually led to the Cold War with the United States. The reasoning behind NATO was to establish a deterrent for Communist aggression and also to help maintain the peace amongst the former enemies of Western Europe. Countries like Italy and Germany had made many enemies throughout the war and memories were short. The concept of NATO was that each member nation was bound to treat an attack on any other member of NATO as an assault on itself. Of course, both economically and militarily, the United States was the most powerful member due to its vast financial resources and its nuclear weapons.

Not to be out done, the later in the 1950's, the Soviet Union amassed its own allies from the Communist nations of Eastern Europe to form their own military alliance called the Warsaw Pact with the sole mission of opposing the NATO nations.

The NATO nations seem to have successfully gambled that the Soviet Union would not attack Western Europe because of the perceived threat that any advancement would trigger a counter strike from the United States. NATO's deterrence policy survived all the way thorough the Cold War but there was a number of occasions where full nuclear strikes were barely averted.

The Cold War

It is strange to think that at the end of World War II, the United States and Soviet Union were strong allies fighting side by sides against Hitler's German armies. So when did things turn as bad as all that so quickly? Both the United States and the Soviet Union blamed the other side for the Cold War. The Russian spin on the situation suggested that the clandestine information and psychological positioning war occurred because of the actions of then President Truman. The Russian's felt that the Truman administration slighted them when they administratively halted the Lend-Lease economic aid package that the Soviets desperately needed for their own post war reconstruction. It was said that then dictator Joseph Stalin took personal offense to the United States' stating that Russia was no longer at war and therefore no longer was no longer entitled to receive fiscal aid from America.

But in the United States, the spin of what started the Cold War was the steady and unrelenting Communist expansionism which began first Germany and eventually progressed over the entire European continent. The Americans observed that the Soviet Communist state had no intention of stopping the spread of the communist way of life in Europe. The true reasons for the Cold War were most likely a combination of both nations' truths and fears. Neither nation can be considered guiltier than the other nor should they be seen as more innocent.

The Cold War can be looked at from many angels. First, both the Soviets and the United States used blatant manipulation of foreign sovereign states to further their own needs under the guise of either democracy or communism. At the time the Cold War was in full swing, third world nations leaders fought and scrapped to get on the right team so as to receive the socio economic equality of the superpowers. Communism promoted the idea that yes, Cuba, you are an equal with our mother Russia. Democracy could promote the idea that if you sell us your natural resources you to can be as rich as the United States. Both systems passed these myths.

The Soviets in a sense had an unfair advantage of the United States because communism as a system is far less complicated explain and teach then democracy and capitalism. Yet, both systems during the Cold War were guilty of manipulating the countries throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa in the battle to control the world. And, Cold War was and continues affect areas that seem as though they should never have been affected by the Cold War. But nations like India, Pakistan, China, Latin America, Cuba, Korea, and Angola to name a few have all been victims of the superpower's clandestine war.

Luckily for the world, the official end to the Cold War came on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was physically demolished. Technically, the United States, through the Reagan administration, outlasted the Soviet Union and therefore can be considered to have won the Cold War. "For it was President Reagan who on June 12, 1987, cried out for all the oppressed peoples of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And down it came." (Beichman) Ronald Reagan's accomplishment is nothing less than one of the greatest milestones in our civilization's history yet it may never be appreciated for what it truly was. Like Abraham Lincoln who supported a civil conflict that he was actually against, Ronald Reagan took down the know antagonist and removed those glory days where both the Soviet Union and the United States were on constant alert in fear of the eventual first strike warfare where either nation could release multi-head nuclear missiles and end life as we know it.

The fall of the Soviet Union has opened the eyes of the rest of the world. The consensus seems to be that democracy is a humane approach for governing nations. Like the fall of Hitler, the Soviet demise left the world thankful that they did not have firsthand knowledge of what it would have been like if the other player had won. Democracy and free market economies are being tried by the remaining communist powers such as China. The Cold War has shown that allowing free markets, capitalism and entrepreneurship through the democratic philosophy is a better system for the world's nations.

Democracy

The winning of the Cold War and the status as the lone superpower gives the United States an opportunity to spread democracy to the rest of the world. By far, the United States has demonstrated the most successful application of the democratic system of government in the history of mankind. Prior to the United States' example of the democracy process, democracy was not considered a good solution for governing large populations.

Throughout history there are examples of inherent defects in the democratic process that have been manipulated by individuals trying to control a nation or group. Consider the fact that the tyrant Adolf Hitler himself needed to manipulate the democratic process in Germany in the 1930's. Hitler understood that he needed true acceptance by the German people so they had to vote him into office. There is only a slight difference between Hitler's fascist dictatorship and the successful example of the United States democratic process. As the first president, George Washington decided to end his reign by stepping down from the office of President when his term was complete. Washington could have just as easily decided to announce himself as the new dictator or king of our then struggling nation. Had that been the case, like the idea of 1940 Germany, the democratic process could have failed miserably.

The Ancient Greeks formed democracies because they expected active citizens in the political decision making objectives of the people. After the Greeks, class systems discriminated because there was little social or political equality for the poor. That class system is what eventually fueled the fire for the creation of communism. But in the United State's, a true definition of democracy can be read in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

In the United States, democracy is a form of institutionalized freedom which entails a constitutional government, human rights, and equality through the legal system. In a true democracy, the system is supported by a combination of government that has many and varied institutions, political parties, organizations, and associations. In other words, a democracy should demonstrate diversity, even pluralism. In the United States version of democracy, the democratic society is completely independent of the government for its existence, legitimacy, and authority.

Economical system of a democratic government (Capitalism)

The United States had a real advantage over the cash strapped Soviet Union when it came to rebuilding the Post World War II European nations. Economics was the key. The cash and resource rich United States took advantage of the economic strength and the Soviet Unions economic weaknesses. Money could be said to be the true indicator of the success of any nation.

It is most likely that there may not even have been a World War II or an Adolf Hitler problem if the economic issues suffered from the world's Great Depression and the post World War I fiscal atrocities had not demoralized the German people. Many of the speeches that brought Hitler to power focused on the immense economic misfortunes of Germany. A political nation or a governmental system that is poor is usually considered a bad political system.