THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING OF CLASS WAR --- Episode 9

 THERE WERE HEATED REACTIONS TO CHURCHILL'S 
 IRON CURTAIN SPEECH IN 1946 IN FULTON, 
 MISSOURI 

   Led by members of the Roosevelt family, New Deal progressives condemned Churchill and beseeched Truman to change course before it was too late . Speaking publicly, Eleanor Roosevelt deplored Churchill's inflammatory remarks. James Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor's oldest son, did likewise at a meeting of the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions.  

Following Churchill's speech, U.S.---Soviet relations deteriorated rapidly. At the United Nations, the United States pressed for a confrontation over Iran, despite the Soviet Union's agreement to withdraw its troops. When Soviet troops stayed beyond the March 2 deadline for their removal, Truman threatened war.  He wrote, "If the Russians were to control Iran's oil, either directly or indirectly, the raw material balance of the world would undergo serious damage and it would be a serious loss for the economy of the western world." Forrestal afterward noted that "whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe." Truman decided to send a clear message that the United States --- not the Soviet Union --- would sit on that valve. 

Former Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler, the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, made it clear that the issue involved was oil, not democracy. "Iran is whollya question of oil," he explained. "Large commitments have been proposed and made to Great Britain. A way ought to be found for Russia to have a share of the oil without carrying on a political military disturbance." Some found that suggestion quite plausible. In an editorial on the crisis, the Washington Post suggested that "Russia may have legitimate claims to make on Iran. On the oil situation, for instance, we have repeatedly argued that a joint plan for the exploitation of the oil resources of the Middle East is definitely in order." 

Claude Pepper got a closer look at the unfolding crisis in his tour of the Middle East, which included an interview with Stalin. After returning to the United States, Pepper addressed the Senate, exonerating the Soviet Union and condemning British imperial overreach. "It comes with ill disgrace from a certain world power whose people are stationed in every nation from Egypt to Singapore to make a world conflagration out of the movement of troops a few miles into some neighboring teritory to resist an oil monopoly which they enjoy." "If American foreign policy is made the scapegoat for such imperialism, it is more stupid than I thought is possible for it to be." The Washington Post reported that after Pepper finished, several senators and House members walked over to shake his hand. 

Pressured by the United States and Great Britain, Soviet forces withdrew from Iran. Truman later told Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson that he had summoned Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko to the White House and informed him that if Soviet troops weren't out in forty-eight hours, "We're going to drop it on you." They were out, he claimed, in twenty-four hours. Although the real story behind the Soviet withdrawal is much more complicated, Truman drew the lesson that that when confronted with superior force, the Soviets would back down. The United States decided to press its advantage. In May, it halted reparations shipments from western Germany that the Soviets desperately needed. In July, it decided to keep troops in South Korea and the following month to maintain a naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean. 

While Truman was making atomic threats, the public quaked at the prospect of atomic war.  In early 1946, Ladies' Home Journal instructed readers, "Over and above all else you do, the thought you should wake up to, go to sleep with and carry with you all day" is prevention of nuclear war. Henry Wallace agreed and pushed Truman to pursue international control of atomic weapons more aggressively. In January 1946, Truman appointed Acheson, who had voiced similar concerns, to head a committee to tackle the problem. Acheson named Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA] Administrator David Lilienthal to chair a board of scientific advisors. Acheson confided to Lilienthal that Truman and Byrnes had neither "the facts nor an understanding of what was involved in the atomic energy issue, the most serious cloud hanging over the world." Commitments had been made, and, with Byrnes then in London, new ones were being made" without a knowledge of what the hell it is all about --- literally ! "  Acheson bemoaned the fact that "the War Department, and really one man in the War Department, Leslie Groves, has, by the power of veto on the ground of 'military security,' really been determining and almost running foreign policy." 

The resulting Acheson--Lilienthal report, which the hardheaded Acheson described as "a brilliant and profound document," was largely the work of Oppenheimer. Under the plan, an international Atomic Development Authority would oversee the mining, refining, and utilization of all the world's atomic raw materials, denaturing all fissionable material and making it available for peaceful . National activity in these "dangerous" areas would be outlawed. The plan intentionally minimized the need for on-site inspections to increase the chances the Sviet Union would accept it. 

   MORE TO COME