From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (review)

In this lucidly written and exhaustively researched monograph, Wilson Miscamble tackles the ever contentious issue of the origins of the Cold War. Focusing primarily on U.S. policy-making, but making excellent use of British records and recently available Soviet sources, Miscamble probes whether Harry S. Truman sharply changed American policy toward the Soviet Union from wartime cooperation to postwar confrontation. In a detailed, nuanced, and sometimes emotional analysis, the author concludes that Truman did not deliberately reverse FDR's "grand design" toward the Soviet Union—at least not until he had tried unsuccessfully for nearly two years to reach lasting agreements with Josef Stalin's Russia.

Miscamble depicts the "seasoned if unsophisticated politician" (1) who assumed the presidency in April 1945 as sincerely committed to continuing the policies of his charismatic predecessor. Nonetheless, because Roosevelt had never briefed his vice-president on the details of the Yalta Agreements or the Manhattan Project, the inexperienced Truman had to consult FDR's advisers to learn what U.S. policies were. Amid contradictory advice from advocates of firmness, such as Ambassador Averell Harriman, and from those who urged cooperation, such as former Ambassador Joseph Davies, Truman stumbled through his first months in office, sometimes trying tough tactics, including his initial "sharp" encounter with Soviet Foreign Minster Molotov, and sometimes going the extra mile in sending FDR's favorite emissary Harry Hopkins to Moscow in June to accept a Soviet-dominated regime in Poland. Even at the Potsdam Conference in July, where Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, buoyed by the successful atomic bomb test in New Mexico, pressed Stalin to accept only zonal reparations in Germany, Miscamble argues that "tactical policy making on the run" produced sphere-of-influence arrangements were very much "in sync with the broad Roosevelt approach" of cooperation (213, 215). As to that "most controversial decision" (218) to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, the author effectively refutes claims that Truman unleashed nuclear weapons primarily to intimidate the Soviets and not to end the Pacific war with the fewest American casualties. In a careful moral exegesis, Miscamble, himself a Catholic priest, posits the "least abhorrent" choices available in August 1945 and concludes that Truman had "blood on his hands, but he stopped the veritable flood of blood on all sides." (248) Despite his chapter title of "Intimidation," the author minimizes the extent to which Soviet policies hardened in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thereafter, from autumn 1945 until the end of 1946, Truman's approach to the Kremlin was marked by "indecision and even confusion" and by "floundering between collaboration and confrontation." (262) Not until the Truman Doctrine of March 1945—and then "only in a piecemeal and staggered manner" (303)—did the president and his advisers adopt a calculated Cold War strategy of containment.

Miscamble's compelling and persuasive narrative is marred only by his occasionally testy comments about "the many American academic historians" (331) who have criticized Truman's role in bringing on the Cold War. Because he so effectively underscores the contingencies, oscillations, and inadvertent outcomes that characterized U.S. policies in 1945-1947, he should be more tolerant of colleagues who have interpreted the same evidence differently.