Truman Doctrine Dbq

After World War II, Western Europe was an incredibly tense and economically destroyed part of the world. A key quote that was reported to have been used by Lenin was “Who has Germany, has Europe” (Best et al. 2008, p216) Initially, before the Cold War started, the two key super powers, the United States alongside their Western allies, such as Britain for example, and the USSR divided Germany into two separate states, East and West Germany (Calvocoressi, 2001) and as Calvocoressi (2001) mentions, there were disagreements and concerns from both sides over the structure of Germany. In terms of America’s leadership of the West in the first three decades of the Cold War, the achievements that they had were with the institutions that were formed, and economic policies based on Western values, which will be covered in this essay. These are

the Truman Doctrine and the containment in Europe, the Marshall Plan, and institutions such as NATO, which will be covered in relevant order. After this, there will be criticisms of America’s leadership, to get a broad view on both sides of the picture.

For the first achievement that America had whilst under leadership of the West, in the events leading up to Truman’s speech to Congress, which inevitably brought forward the Truman Plan, in February 1947, Britain notified the United States, that they were unable to provide any further financial support to the governments of Greece and Turkey. This was because the British had their own problems and debts to deal with, after World War Two. The problem was with Turkey, the Soviets wanted to expand their control and they did this by Stalin justifying in the conferences that happened in Yalta and Potsdam, that the security of the USSR would be predominantly better if they had control of Turkey, and the Straits of the Dardanelles (Merrill, 2006,p.31). During these conferences, because negotiations failed, Stalin decided to place troops near the border of Turkey, and created an extent of panic and because of such Turkey turned to Washington to help them.
On the other hand, with Greece, they went through a period of having civil war and cases where politicians weren’t running the country properly, and as of such, their economic downfall took a serious turn, because of Nazi Germany withdrawing from the country in 1944. The problem with this though, when Britain tried to change the Greek government so that it would actually improve the situation that they were in, this is where Greek communism took hold, and rebelled against the government, eventually causing a bigger civil war. This led to Greek rebels receiving help from the communist countries that were next to Greece, these being what was formerly Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. (Merrill, 2006, p.31)

Because of this, and the situation that was arising, Truman addressed congress in what was to be the biggest speech to be given to Congress.

It lasted 18 minutes, and as Merrill (Merrill, 2006,p.1) mentions in the abstract of the article, with a short quote, Truman pledged to the United States that they would “assist free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” (Merrill,2006, p.1). And thus, the Truman Doctrine was created. This did two things; one was that it gave aid to Greece and Turkey in the form of military and economic help, as Truman had requested to give $400 million for the two countries. What this also did was that it created a containment of communism within Europe, even though they initially didn’t make it out for this to be the case, and tried to make sure that the communism didn’t spread within the West, and this showed that the US didn’t want the Soviets to expand their influence in Europe. This was a massive change in US foreign policy, and it later defined their Cold War policies, and the concerns of what would have happened if communism had expanded. (Merrill,

2006).

During this time, another achievement of America’s leadership of the West came to light, and thus began the rise of the Marshall Plan, and this would be created to provide economic relief for Europe.