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Nationalism and the Cold War: Yugoslavia, Germany, and the Cold War by Carl K. Savich Introduction Yugoslavia was a major focus of US foreign policy during the Cold War in attempts to undermine Soviet influence and power in Europe. Following World War II, from 1945 to 1948, Yugoslavia and the US were virtually at war. After the 1948 split between Yugoslavia and the USSR, US policy shifted, adopting the “wedge strategy”, an attempt to create rifts and divisions between the USSR and other Communist states. The wedge strategy entailed a US policy of “keeping Tito afloat”, supporting the Communist Tito regime in order to weaken Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and prevent Soviet gains. The wedge strategy was part of the larger US policy of “containment” against Soviet “imperialism” in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia would serve a symbolic function. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles stated that the role of Yugoslavia during the Cold War was symbolic, Yugoslavia acted as an “exhibit” to stand “as a constant reminder to the satellite regimes, serving as a pressure point both on the leaders of those regimes and on the leadership of the USSR.” US policy manipulated and exploited nationalism in order to weaken Soviet influence and increase the power of the US/NATO. As noted by Lorraine M. Lees in Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), US policy relied on the manipulation of nationalism: The wedge strategy relied on the force of nationalism, in this case Yugoslav nationalism, to disrupt the attempts at control exercised by the Soviets. US policy consisted of gradually dismantling the Soviet sphere of influence or buffer zone in Eastern Europe. Dulles declared that the US would “roll back” the Iron Curtain and “liberate” the “captive people” of Eastern Europe. The exploitation of nationalist movements was a common modus operandi or MO of US foreign policy during the Cold War in the Balkans, the Baltic, and Eastern Europe. The US supported the nationalist movements in Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary, as a means of weakening Soviet control and influence. Nationalism became a US instrument or weapon in the Cold War conflict with the USSR. US policy subverted and manipulated nationalist principles to achieve US global strategic political, economic, and military objectives. Nationalism was merely a sham. The US did not espouse “freedom”. “independence”, or “national self-determination”, but merely used these propagandistic constructs arbitrarily and capriciously based on self-interest. The exploitation, subversion, and manipulation of nationalism by the US would lead to ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and Eastern Europe following the collapse of Communism in 1991 with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The nationalist secessionist movement in Kosovo-Metojiha by the ethnic Albanian minority in Yugoslavia was funded, organized, and based in the US. Likewise, the Croatian secessionist movement was based in the US. These secessionist movements to create a Greater Albania and Greater Croatia respectively were held in check or subordinated to higher policy objectives by US policymakers of keeping Yugoslavia together as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Keeping Communist Yugoslavia together and “afloat” was crucial for both the US and USSR during the Cold War because both derived benefits by maintaining the status quo. Once the Cold War ended, the need for national cohesion was no longer needed because no longer beneficial to the US or USSR. What resulted in Yugoslavia was the disintegration of the nation through the secession of the constituent republics. Yugoslavia became expendable with the end of the Cold War. Now US policymakers turned their attention not to preserving Yugoslav unity at all cost as they had done during the Tito dictatorship, but on the contrary, to the destruction of Yugoslav unity at all costs. Germany played a central role in the Cold War. The division of Berlin and Germany into East and West was a microcosm of the wider conflict between the US and USSR. US policy manipulated and exploited German nationalism in order to polarize Germany in the Cold War. Like Yugoslavia, Germany was perceived in the context of the US-USSR Cold War conflict. Both Yugoslavia and Germany were pawns in this US relationship with the USSR. Yugoslavia and Germany were battlegrounds of the Cold War. To understand the causes of the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991-92 and the re-unification of Germany, one has to examine the role these two nations played in the Cold War.
Cold War between Yugoslavia and US The US and Yugoslavia almost went to war following World War II. Shots were fired. Yugoslavian fighter planes shot down or forced down two US C-47 transport airplanes. The first plane was forced to land near Ljubljana and the passengers and crew were detained. The second attack resulted in the loss of life of all aboard. There was a cold war between the US and Yugoslavia from 1945 until 1948 when Tito split with Stalin. The conflict emerged over the dispute over the Adriatic port city of Trieste. When Communist Yugoslavia seized Trieste in March, 1945, the US interceded with Joseph Stalin and even contemplated going to war with Yugoslavia. In May, 1945, Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito sent the so-called Fourth Army to occupy the Venezia Giulia or Julian region of northern Italy and entered Trieste, a key Italian port city on the Adriatic Sea. New Zealand troops under Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander had earlier occupied this area. There was the potential for a confrontation between Yugoslav and Allied troops. The US, however, saw Yugoslavia as acting at the behest of the Soviet Union. The Yugoslav-Italian conflict over Trieste quickly spiraled into a confrontation between the US and USSR. As noted by Roberto Rabel in Between East and West: Trieste, the United States and the Cold War, 1941-1954 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), Joseph Grew told Truman on May 10 that the Soviet Union had orchestrated the Yugoslav action: “Russia was undoubtedly behind Tito’s move with a view to utilize Trieste as a Russian port in the future.” Trieste and the adjoining area had a large Slavic population of Croats and Slovenes and the region had been one contested by Italy and Yugoslavia since World War I. US Ambassador to Italy Alexander C. Kirk and Undersecretary Joseph Grew advised Truman to oppose the Yugoslav moves. Truman ordered Eisenhower to make a show of military force to intimidate Tito while State Department notes were presented to Stalin and Tito. What Truman wanted was Yugoslav withdrawal from Trieste and a territorial settlement that would result from a peace conference. Stalin did not support Tito on the Trieste issue so Tito backed down and withdrew his forces and accepted the temporary demarcation lines. The US goals were to control a strategic port city, deny Soviet influence in the region, the Adriatic, the Eastern Mediterranean. US foreign policy saw the issue in broader geopolitical terms of an East-West conflict and ignored Tito’s nationalist motives for the seizure of Trieste. Tito sought to mobilize support in Croatia and Slovenia by championing the acquisition of territory for Croatia and Slovenia at the expense of Italy. Moreover, Italy as part of the Axis had invaded and occupied Yugoslav territory during World War II. The Yugoslav actions in Trieste were compensatory in nature for the wartime occupation. The State Department was more aggressive than the military which realized that the US could not push Tito’s forces out of the whole area without a major conflict that the US military was not prepared to engage in and which would threaten US-Soviet relations. There was a power vacuum in the Eastern Mediterranean following WWII. Britain had controlled this vital strategic area. But now the USSR and the nations in the region were attempting to fill this power vacuum themselves. US and British policy focused on preventing the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia from gaining dominance in this region. This is what guided US and UK policy on Trieste. US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes supported the Italian claims, like British foreign minister Ernest Bevin did, arguing for more lenient reparations from Italy, rejecting a Soviet plan for a trusteeship in former Italian colonies, and arguing that the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece. Byrnes thus advocated the Italian position on the dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy. Byrnes wanted Italy to get the Venezia Giulia and opposed Tito’s plan to annex Trieste. Military tensions were high in Venezia Giulia and Trieste. At a February 27 meeting, Truman discussed the crisis. US defense secretary James Forrestal had suggested that the US send a strong naval force to the Mediterranean to intimidate Tito. The USS Missouri, on a voyage to Istanbul to return the body of the deceased Turkish ambassador, was told to be “well escorted” and to make a military show of force in the region. Forrestal, who saw Tito as a proxy for Stalin, discounting Trieste as a self-determination issue, wanted a strong US response to Yugoslavian moves. US secretary of war Robert Patterson was fearful that the US and Britain would not be able to contain a Yugoslav assault on the region. Byrnes told Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov that the US would “never cede Trieste to Tito”. Molotov decided to propose making Trieste a free port city under UN administration. Tito did not accept the Molotov plan. In August, Yugoslavia shot down two US planes flying over Yugoslav airspace. Demobilization and naval deployment in Asia prevented the US was sending a task force to Yugoslavia. But Byrnes remained committed to oppose Yugoslav moves. The Trieste issue became important during the Italian elections in preventing a Communist victory. In the midst of the crucial Italian elections in 1948, the US, the UK, and France pledged that Trieste would be returned to Italy. On April 18, 1948, the Christian Democrats won the elections, defeating the heavily favored Communist party. Italy had the largest Communist party in a non-Communist country at that time. The Communists were poised to win the elections. The US, however, interfered in the election process to give the SD the victory. The CIA pumped money into the non-Communist parties, distributed leaflets, bought newspaper space. The US State department made films and documentaries, radio shows, broadcasts, emphasizing the fact that a Communist victory would deprive Italy of US economic aid and Marshall Plan assistance. It was akin to economic blackmail. The US government and private groups allied with the US embassy in Rome organized these efforts. Moreover, the US Justice Department announced that anyone who voted Communist in Italy would be denied entry into the US. Trieste was also part of this US campaign. Yugoslavian interests were being disregarded in favor of those of Italy. Thus, the Trieste issue was used in the US campaign against Communism. The Trieste dispute would be resolved in 1953 with Italy getting Zone A, which included Trieste, while Yugoslavia obtained Zone B, and economic compensation. Before the final settlement, there had been the threat of a war when the US and UK unilaterally transferred control of Zone A to Italy. The Yugoslav government responded by amassing troops on the border with Italy while crowds in Belgrade attacked the US Information Service. The US and UK put intense pressure on Yugoslavia to resolve the Trieste issue quickly. During the intense negotiations, the Eisenhower administration offered economic aid to Yugoslavia such as wheat and greater integration into the West if Yugoslavia renounced Trieste. Lacking diplomatic backing from the Soviet Union and economic resources, the Tito regime was forced to settle the dispute. Trieste was retained by Italy while Yugoslavia obtained Zone B.
The 1948 Stalin-Tito Split US policy with regard to the USSR during the Cold War consisted of containment, preventing the USSR from acquiring influence in neighboring countries. George Kennan of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff argued for the bandwagon concept and a domino theory for Europe. Soviet/Communist expansion must be stopped everywhere around the globe because the establishment of a Communist government anywhere would allow the Soviet Union to infiltrate and fill the power vacuum in the region. Containment was war by other means, what came to be known as the Cold War. Containment was the only alternative to a Hot War, or a shooting war. Kennan, a Soviet specialist who had lived in the USSR since the early 1930s, formulated the anti-Soviet and anti-Communist policy of containment in his seminal Cold War article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”, which was published in 1947 in Foreign Affairs under the name “X”. Kennan envisioned a simplistic, Manichean global conflict between two monolithic blocs, the “free world” and the Soviet/Communist bloc. Everything was then perceived in zero-sum terms as either a gain or loss for either bloc. Economic warfare became a part of the Cold War. Economic aid was perceived as strengthening the free world and weakening the Soviet bloc by helping capitalist economies devastated by World War II and US bombing. By giving economic aid to these capitalist countries, the US policymakers felt they could prevent a an appeal by the Communist/socialist parties in those countries. This was the reasoning behind the Marshall Plan. Economic assistance was thus just another weapon in the arsenal of the superpowers during the Cold War. As Kennan explained, the Marshall Plan was meant to force the USSR either to accept US economic aid and allow their satellite countries to rely on the US or to deny them this aid thereby weakening them economically and forcing them to seek greater Western help. The Marshall Plan was a win-win option for the US. Kennan, moreover, argued for “political warfare” against the USSR/Communist states to spur the disintegration of Eastern Europe thus freeing it of the Soviet hold. He thus authorized the CIA to use covert means to achieve these results. Kennan became the liaison between the State Department and the CIA Office of Policy Coordination, a covert arm of the CIA. Kennan sought to promote rifts between Moscow and the Eastern European satellites through propaganda, aid to dissident groups, assistance to refugee groups and organizations in the “captured countries”. US policy would rely on “Balkanization” or the fragmentation of the Communist bloc based on nationalism. Nationalism would be used as a instrument to foment instability and fragmentation. Yugoslavia emerged after the war as a Communist totalitarian police state. Richard C. Patterson, the US ambassador to Yugoslavia appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, reported in 1945 that Tito had erected a “complete dictatorship” in Yugoslavia where there was “no freedom of speech or press”. Patterson saw Yugoslavia as “under almost complete Soviet control.” Patterson told President Truman that Tito was a “thorough Communist, and his economic and political philosophy is not ours.” President Truman instructed Patterson to follow a “two-fisted, tough policy with Tito.” Harold Shantz, an advisor to Patterson and charge d’affaires in Belgrade, concluded that Communist Yugoslavia was a “ruthless totalitarian police regime.” Shantz wanted the US administration to declare the Yugoslav elections of November, 1945 invalid because they were rigged and coerced. There were reports that opposition political leaders had been beaten up in the streets. Communist leader Milovan Djilas had stated that the function of the election was merely a continuation of the “national liberation struggle” meant to rubber stamp and legitimize the Communist takeover of the government. Samuel Reber, the acting chief of the State Department’s Division of Southern European Affairs, concluded that the balloting had been held “under conditions that make it difficult for us to admit that they constitute the free choice of the people” of Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the US recognized Communist Yugoslavia diplomatically. This was done because the US perceived that no useful purpose would be achieved by withholding recognition and because Yugoslavia “may be only a small part in the greater problem of American relations with Russia.” Political expediency guided US recognition as Yugoslavia was perceived as a pawn in the larger conflict with the USSR. The US recognized Communist Yugoslavia and extended conditional aid even though the new government was characterized by the US government itself as being one with “no general representation of the will of the Yugoslav people.” US policymakers understood that the Yugoslav government was a Communist, totalitarian, undemocratic police state and yet not only diplomatically recognized it but extended economic, political, and even military aid. The 1948 split between Stalin and Tito came as a complete surprise and excited Kennan and US policymakers. The US had not foreseen this break because of the simplistic Manichean US analysis but it was now determined to exploit it. US policymakers such as Kennan had not foreseen the Stalin-Tito break because of the simplistic and dogmatic positions they espoused. Kennan saw Communist Yugoslavia as one of the USSR’s “newly won areas”, seeing it in terms of Soviet “imperialism”, a new addition to the global Communist monolith controlled from Moscow and the Kremlin. Kennan was blinded by his myopic and rigidly dogmatic view of Soviet Communism as an ideologically driven global monolithic movement. In fact, the Soviet Union was guided by geopolitical considerations just like the US was. The US rushed to fill the power vacuum created by the split between Yugoslavia and the USSR. Averell Harriman, the head of the Economic Cooperative Administration (ECA) in Europe and US Army Undersecretary William Draper now contacted Tito to provide US aid and to offer US military support. The US supported Tito to weaken the Soviet influence in the Balkans region. Kennan argued that the Yugoslav-Soviet split of 1948 had shattered the monolithic cohesion of the Soviet Empire: A new factor of fundamental and profound significance has been introduced into the world communist movement …The possibility of defection from Moscow, which has heretofore been unthinkable for foreign communist leaders, will from now on be present in one form or another in the mind of every one of them. This rift in the Communist bloc created a dilemma for US foreign policy. Should the capitalist US as the leader of the anti-Communist “free world” support a totalitarian Communist state? Tito was the leader of a totalitarian Communist state that prevented the US and Western capitalist countries from access to the Yugoslav market. Tito opposed market capitalism and would not allow Western countries access to trade on the Danube. To support Tito too firmly would alienate Tito to his Communist/socialist constituents who would see him as a puppet/pawn/or stooge of the US. Tito would also be discredited internationally as dependent on the great powers. The US adopted a cautious wait-and-see approach. George Marshall thus pursued a cautious policy of allowing Tito to call the shots. The US would respond to Tito’s moves but not initiate them. Aid would be dependent on Tito’s desire to conform Yugoslav foreign policy to meet US demands. The US did not want the Tito government to assist the Communist insurgents/faction in the Greek civil war. US policymakers thus watched to see to what extent Tito was supporting the Greek Communist guerrillas as a litmus test of subservience to US demands. The US provided Tito with minimal assistance, merely to buoy him up. The US policy, however, was not to “embrace” independent Communist governments wholeheartedly because they rejected free market capitalism. It was economically counter-productive to help socialist economies prosper and thrive because they were in competition with capitalist economies. In such circumstances, assistance would amount to helping your competitor drive you out of business. But in the Cold War struggle, Yugoslavia would be used as a pawn in the game between the superpowers. The US goal was to prevent Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. But Eastern Europe was seen as a Soviet sphere of influence. This goal was not a vital national security interest of the US however because this area was already relegated to Soviet influence and control. So the US would not risk war over Yugoslavia or Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union likewise placed its own interests over those of Yugoslavia and the other Communist bloc countries. This was demonstrated in the Trieste crisis where Stalin abandoned the Yugoslav claim. After the start of the Korean War in 1950, the Truman Administration established a “cooperative military relationship with Tito.” Korea created panic within US ranks in Germany and in the Balkans. The US feared that the Soviets would attack West Germany or invade Yugoslavia either directly or through the neighboring Communist countries such as Bulgaria or Romania or Hungary. The US thus sought to shore up the Tito regime. Yugoslavia was devastated economically at this time. A severe drought had destroyed crops, led to severe economic travail, and a depletion of the Yugoslav foreign exchange reserves. This domestic collapse threatened the stability of the Tito regime. The US sought to bolster the Tito regime as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. The US wanted to get Yugoslav factories operating again, making food available, allowing Tito to purchase raw materials, supplies and goods, and thus prevent civil domestic unrest that would enable the USSR to take advantage of the situation. The Cold War made for strange bedfellows. By supporting the Tito regime, the US was supporting Communism/Socialism/totalitarianism. Tito was a Communist. The US opposed Communism ideologically. But geopolitical and military strategic considerations induced the US to support Tito and to ensure the viability of his totalitarian/Communist dictatorship. The rationale was: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. This MO or rationale would guide US foreign policy throughout the Cold War because it was a zero-sum game. Tito was resisting Moscow, and the US wanted to do everything to encourage and support that resistance. Dean Acheson and Marshall were committed to preserving Yugoslavia. In December, 1950, the US Congress provided emergency relief funds for Yugoslavia following Acheson’s and Marshall’s recommendations. The US sought to encourage “nationalist eruptions” within the Communist movement which would undermine cohesion and Soviet control of the bloc. Moreover, the US feared that the collapse of the Tito regime would encourage Greece and Italy to seek greater cooperation with the Soviet Union to avoid a similar disaster. The US also counted on Tito’s 30 divisions as useful cannon fodder if there was a war in Europe in absorbing the Soviet assault. The US and Yugoslavia reached agreements on military cooperation and assistance. In June, 1951, the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav army, General Koca Popovic, came to Washington and signed an agreement that provided for the shipment of US arms to Communist Yugoslavia. In August, a second round of negotiations discussed strategic and operational issues which resulted in a “military assistance agreement” being signed in November. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been urging the administration to provide military assistance to Tito if he so requested. The US, UK, and France had even wanted to stockpile weapons in Europe in case of an emergency to provide to Yugoslavia if their was an invasion. Acheson and Marshall organized joint defense planning with the UK, France, and Italy should Yugoslavia be attacked. In September, 1951, Eisenhower and Omar Bradley outlined steps to be taken to achieve this joint policy. Clearly the US wanted to exploit the Stalin-Tito split. The US would support Yugoslav independence to prevent Soviet control and dominance. The US sought to economically bolster the Tito regime by economic aid as well as military assistance. The US obtained funds from the Export-Import Bank, the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP), the Economic Cooperative Administration (ECA). The US Congress also gave Yugoslavia $38 million in famine relief in December, Public Law 897, the Yugoslav Emergency Relief Act of 1950. By 1950, the Yugoslav Communist regime had abandoned many of the trappings of Communism. The collectivization of agriculture, begun after the war, was aborted. Industry was decentralized by the establishment of worker-management councils. Special housing and food privileges for Communist party members, government workers, and the military were rescinded. Yugoslavia had freed political prisoners, had eased restrictions on churches and travel to the West. Due to intense pressure from the US, Tito stopped supporting the Communist insurgents in Greece. Moreover, on December 5, 1951, Croatian Roman Catholic cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was released from prison due to intense US pressure, especially by the Roman Catholic lobby and Roman Catholic members of the US Congress. Stepinac had been tried and convicted as a war criminal by Communist Yugoslavia for his complicity and involvement in the Ustasha mass murders and genocide committed against the Serbian Orthodox populations of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Stepinac was sentenced to 16 years in prison but was released in 1951 following US pressure. The Vatican and Roman Catholicism, however, were the bulwarks against Communism during the Cold War and during World War II. In the bipolar, Manichean world of the cold war, between the “free world” and the “evil empire”, you were either for us or against us, either in our camp, or in the enemy camp. Roman Catholicism was opposed to Communism. Therefore, Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholics can never be guilty of anything, let alone war crimes or genocide. This is why Stepinac had to be exonerated as a “political prisoner” and as an instance of religious persecution. The US Congress initially wanted to link all economic aid to Yugoslavia to the release of Archbishop Stepinac. Indeed, the US Congress passed a resolution condemning the incarceration of Stepinac on grounds that it amounted to religious persecution and that it violated the UN Charter. Dean Acheson, however, sought to widen the Stalin-Tito split by linking aid to Yugoslavia based on Tito’s abandonment of the Communist insurgents in Greece. Acheson also wanted to downplay the Stepinac issue because it would exacerbate tensions against the Roman Catholic population and Yugoslavia and lead to more “religious persecution” of the Catholics. Acheson told Allen to pressure Tito to release Stepinace but that it should not be a “specific proposal” but “only a suggestion”. The continued imprisonment of Stepinac made it difficult “for many in the US, Catholics and non-Catholics, to support aid to Yugo.” Mike Mansfield objected to MDAP aid for Yugoslavia because Yugoslavia would not release Stepinac: “[A]s a Catholic, it was difficult for me to go down there and fight for the bill when we have men like Stepinac in prison.” Allen had repeatedly raised the issue of Stepinac’s release with Tito. Tito finally agreed to release Stepinac but according to Campbell, “doubted that would satisfy Catholic opinion in the United States.” Campbell stated that Catholic opinion in the US “has of course been the most vocal element in opposing our Yugoslav policy.” Yugoslav ambassador Vladimir Popovic told US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs George Perkins that Stepinac would be confined to a monastery and would not be allowed to return to his bishopric because of his conviction as a war criminal and his wartime “collaboration”. The US Congress sought to condition US economic and military assistance on the release of Stepinac. In November, 1951, two congressional delegations from the US visited Yugoslavia, both demanding the release of Stepinac. US Congressman Clement J. Zablocki and Congresswoman Edna Kelly demanded to see Stepinac. Tito relented and announced that Stepinac would be released within a month but could not act as a bishop because of his complicity with the Ustasha regime in the genocide of Orthodox Serbs. Allen concluded that this US pressure resulted in Stepinac’s release. According to Allen, Tito relented to the pressure by the US Congress because it would “get Tito off hook with Serbs.” The administration, Perkins averred, could not subordinate the “national security interests” of the US to such conditions as the restoration of Stepinac as the US Congress demanded. Stepinac was released in 1951 due to this unrelenting US pressure. The Stepinac case illustrated the divergent views on war criminals in the US and the UK and in Communist Yugoslavia. The US and British policy regarded the Serbian guerrilla forces under General Draza Mihailovich, known as Chetniks, as “innocent of willful collaboration with enemy”. There were various groups that referred to themselves as Chetniks although many had no connection to Mihailovich’s guerrilla forces. In Bosnia-Hercegovina, Mihailovich’s forces included Bosnian Muslims. Mihailovich’s forces made up the first anti-Nazi guerrilla movement in Yugoslavia and in all of occupied-Europe. The Communist partisans under Tito at the start of the war in Yugoslavia abided by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and were allied with Nazi Germany. Mihailovich was backed by both the US and UK. Indeed, Mihailovich remained a US and British ally throughout World War II and had rescued over 500 Allied airmen. The US and Britain thus made a distinction between Mihailovich’s forces and members of the Croatian Ustasha, allied with Nazi Germany and Italy. The Croat NDH Ustasha regime under Ante Pavelic had organized a genocide against the Serbian Orthodox, Jewish, and Roma populations. The US and Britain thus regarded only Ustasha members as alleged war criminals. Mihailovich’s forces were merely political opponents of the Communist dictatorship that Tito instituted. By contrast, the Communist Yugoslav government position was to lump all those who opposed the Communist partisans as “collaborators”, thus equating the Ustasha with Mihailovich’s guerrilla forces, all dubbed with the generic term “Chetniks”. This is the origin of the Communist Yugoslav policy of equating the “Ustasha” with the “Chetniks”, two sides of the same coin in Tito’s Communist vilification of all opponents of Communism. Tito’s vilification of Mihailovich’s forces was not based on the extent of their “collaboration” but on the level of threat they posed to the Communist dictatorship regime. Tito painted both with the same brush because he wanted to destroy any and all opposition to his Communist dictatorship. The result was that history was falsified. The Communist Yugoslav regime wanted both Mihailovich’s troops and Ustasha members of the NDH regime extradited to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav government requested that all “collaborators” in US/UK custody and in prisoner of war camps be surrendered to the Yugoslav Communist regime. In a combined Chiefs of Staff to State Department and British Embassy dispatch of August 7, 1946, the US and British governments announced that only proven members of the Ustasha would be surrendered to the Yugoslav government. Acheson and John M. Cabot, the charge d’affaires in Belgrade, supported this view. The US and British stance was that the Communist regime was labeling the Mihailovich forces as “collaborators” so that it could eliminate opposition to the Communist regime, so that “political retribution” could be obtained, not justice. The powerful Roman Catholic lobby in the US and the influential role of the Vatican in Rome contributed to whitewashing and covering up the genocide committed by the Roman Catholic Ustasha against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Roman Catholicism was perceived as a bulwark against Communism during the Cold War. US intelligence sought to exploit and manipulate the inherent antipathy between Roman Catholicism and Communism by recruiting Croat Roman Catholic Ustasha fugitives in the Cold War conflict. US intelligence assisted former Ustasha officials and operatives to escape from Yugoslavia with the help of the Vatican “rat line” operations so that the former Ustasha members can be recruited by the US in the anti-Communist conflict. Yugoslavia represented a different path or road to Communism, known as “Titoism”, a nationalist approach, which would evolve into the Nonaligned Movement which Tito led. The Yugoslav Communist position on “nationalism” mirrored the contradictory and convoluted Soviet model. Both sought to create a supranationalism that would supersede traditional nationalism. The USSR sought to create a “Soviet” nationalism, while Yugoslavia sought to create a “Yugoslav” , or South Slav, nationalism. It was not a rejection of traditional nationalism, but a sublimation or transference of nationalism to a different object or focus. It was an all-inclusive or broader nationalism. The flaw was that both a supranationalism and a traditional nationalism were maintained simultaneously in an uneasy and unstable symbiosis. Supranationalism was given primacy but the forces of traditional nationalism were never subordinated. The nationalities question or problem was never solved or resolved in either Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union. At best, a highly unstable equilibrium had been established. Ironically, by creating political units based on ethnicity or nationality, both the USSR and Yugoslavia fostered the destructive forces of traditional nationalism. In hindsight, this was the glaring failing of the nationalities policies in Yugoslavia and the USSR. Traditional nationalism was not rejected, but only deflected or sublimated in a fix that was only temporary and short-range. By contrast, the US, which is also a supranationalist country, has based federation not upon ethnic or national identification, but on a supranationalist identification with “American”. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union sought to solve the issue of nationalism by embracing and recognizing ethnic and national republics and provinces and regions. Yugoslav and Soviet federation was based on ethnicity and nationality, the political union of ethnic or national units. This reliance on nationalism eventually proved unworkable in both the USSR and Yugoslavia and resulted in the break-up of both federations on the basis of ethnicity and nationality. Communist Yugoslavia pursued a nationalist approach to Communism, rejecting the internationalist approach. John Foster Dulles perceived Tito as a “Bukharin” Communist who maintained that “you could have Communism on a national basis.” Nikolai Bukharin had been a theorist of the Soviet Communist Party who advocated Communism in one country, or national communism, and a gradualist approach to socialist reforms. Bukharin argued for a slow-paced collectivization in the Soviet Union. Bukharin was tried and executed in 1938 for treason during the purges. Tito espoused a national approach to Communism that rejected an international Communist movement controlled from Moscow and espoused a gradualist approach in socialist reforms. But Tito rejected full integration into NATO and the Western capitalist system as well. Instead, Communist Yugoslavia followed a nonaligned approach which was not to the liking of either the US or USSR, but which was acceptable as a moderating influence on the superpower polarization. US policy did not support a nonaligned stance but a definite and concrete commitment to the US/NATO. The reason for US support, however, was to keep the Tito regime afloat and to prevent a collapse that would enable the Soviet Union to take over the country. The Stalin-Tito split allowed the US the opportunity to “penetrate the Soviet bloc”. As Lees noted, “the administration acted because Tito’s defection represented a decrease in Soviet power and a corresponding gain for the West.” US support for Yugoslavia was based on self-calculation within the context of the US-USSR cold war conflict. In other words, Yugoslavia was a pawn in this larger Cold War game between the two superpowers. Nationalism was manipulated and exploited by the US to maintain enmity and antagonism in the region. The US saw in Yugoslavia cannon fodder in a potential conflict with the USSR. US ambassador to Yugoslavia George Allen emphasized that US support of Yugoslavia was justified because Yugoslavia could provide twenty divisions: “George Allen … used to take those twenty Yugoslav divisions and parade them up and down all over the United states in order to persuade people there was a reason for our policy.” The US policy was to make Yugoslavia the frontline in a war with the Soviet Union in the Balkans. US Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins visited Yugoslavia and sought to integrate Yugoslavia within NATO’s strategic military planning. Collins sought to gain Popovic’s and Tito’s agreement in coordinating Yugoslavia’s defense strategy with NATO. Both Popovic and Tito rejected coordination with NATO but left it open as an option. NATO wanted Yugoslavia to defend the so-called Ljubljana Gap in northern Slovenia. Yugoslavia instead followed a defensive strategy to “hold a continuous line running the length of Yugoslavia.” Moreover, Collins refused to provide US air support in the event of a local invasion of Yugoslavia by neighboring Soviet-allied states. Popovic wanted US aid in creating a strong Yugoslav air force. On November 7, 1951, President Truman sent $77.5 million in US military aid to Yugoslavia. A week later Yugoslavia and the US signed a military assistance agreement which made Mutual Security aid available to Yugoslavia under the Mutual Security Act (MSA) of 1951 in the Mutual Security Program (MSP). US policymakers feared a Soviet pre-emptive strike. Would the USSR sit idly by while the US armed Yugoslavia? The US thus wanted a concrete and definite commitment to the West and to NATO by the Yugoslav government. Tito never offered this commitment. Nevertheless, the US saw support for Tito as depriving the USSR of potential economic and strategic benefits. Tito, however, never militarily committed Yugoslavia to either the US- led bloc, NATO, or the Soviet-led bloc, the Warsaw Pact. Instead, the Tito regime played the superpowers off one another. Ironically, both superpowers derived benefits from the continuation of the status quo. The USSR saw Communist Yugoslavia as a fellow Slavic state with a large Orthodox population that was not a natural enemy of Russia. Russia and Serbia and Montenegro had a long history as traditional allies in conflicts with Ottoman Turkey and Germany. Both the USSR and Yugoslavia were socialist. Both were committed to Communism. A Soviet conflict with Yugoslavia would endanger socialist gains in Yugoslavia and allow the US an opportunity to intervene and possibly install a capitalist system. The USSR thus did not find the Yugoslav regime as threatening to Soviet interests as might appear at first glace. Yugoslav-Soviet relations thus fluctuated during the Cold War. In 1955, the visit of Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin to Yugoslavia resulted in a rapprochement or thaw in relations. But the Yugoslav Communist regime never accepted subordination into the Soviet camp, just as they never accepted membership in the NATO bloc. The USSR continued to castigate Yugoslavia for committing “mistakes of a nationalist character” and for espousing Communist theories that were “contrary to the principles of Marxism-Leninism.” By the time of the April, 1958 Seventh Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), the Soviets continued to reject Yugoslav “revisionism” and the Titoist “heresy” which advocated an equality between Communist states and a nationalist approach to Communism. Tito and Yugoslav vice-presidents Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo and Aleksander Rankovic upheld the precepts of the Belgrade Declaration that each nation had a right to determine its own road to socialism with foreign interference and to conduct an independent foreign policy. The Soviet ambassador and those from the Eastern European Communist nations stormed out of the Congress in protest. What resulted was “The Second Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute.” Communist Yugoslavia thus continued to rebuff any plans at subordination into the Soviet bloc. Both the USSR and US became resigned to the fact of Yugoslav “nonalignment” and exploited the circumstances to their benefit. A symbiotic relationship resulted for all three actors with the emergence of a modus vivendi acceptable to all parties. The US, on the other hand, saw the Yugoslav scenario as a boon, a bonus. Yugoslavia had been consigned to the Soviet camp even before the end of World War II by the US. Yugoslavia was in the Soviet sphere of influence as delineated by Churchill. The 1948 Stalin-Tito split was an unexpected windfall for the US. The conflict between the USSR and Yugoslavia was seen as benefiting US interests because in the zero-sum game of the Cold War, a loss for one side was seen as a gain for the other. In short, both the US and USSR had an incentive to maintain the status quo in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia would remain a pawn in the larger chess game between the US and USSR. Germany and the Cold War Following World War II, Germany was occupied and its territory dismembered. Germany ceased to be an independent nation. Gradually, Germany was re-established as a nation. During the Cold War, US foreign policy focused on recreating a viable German nation with a restoration of German nationalism but without unleashing a militarist nationalism that would lead to a new war. How did U.S. foreign policy toward Germany seek to rectify the problem of a power vacuum in Central Europe during the period between the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961? Following the Potsdam conference of July 17 to August 2, 1945, US President Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (replaced by Clement Attlee following the victory of the Labor Party), worked out the occupation and administration of post-war Germany. The US, the UK, the USSR, and France would be assigned zones of occupation for Germany as well as the city of Berlin, which was 100 miles inside the Soviet zone. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had argued that the Allies---the US, USSR, UK, and France---should work in “cooperation” in the post-war period. By 1949, the de facto division of Germany resulted s the US and the USSR were at an impasse on how to resolve the issue. As Frank Ninkovich argued in Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (Updated Edition; NY: Twayne Publishers, 1995), the US had no clear-cut policy goals with regard to German policy, “no conceptual road map, no clear image of Germany’s place in the world, no idÙe maitresse with which to plot Germany’s future.” In A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), Melvyn P. Leffler noted that there was “administrative disorganization” on the part of US officials. Leffler cited a statement by John J. McCloy in which he stated that “everything … was in a state of chaos. There was no planning, no cooperation, no high purpose.” In Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1067 of April 1945, the US policy goals were “demilitarization”, “denazification”, “decartelization”, and “democratization” and “preventing Germany from becoming again a threat to the world.” The policy was not as harsh as the rejected Carthaginian Morgenthau Plan of US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau which sought to destroy the German economy and industrial capacity and create a “pastoral” nation, an agrarian society. As noted by Thomas Alan Schwartz in America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), High Commissioner John J. McCloy first sought the “moral integration” of Germany, which “could begin only when Germans came to terms with the horrors of the Nazi era, both by prosecuting the perpetrators of the crimes and making amends to the victims.” Thus, before Germany could be reintegrated into the West, there must first be a “reckoning with the past” (Vergangenheitsbewaltigung). The Nazi crimes committed during the Holocaust and against citizens in the occupied countries of Europe needed to be acknowledged, prosecuted, and punished. Economic considerations also went into the formulation of US policy. The “revisionist school” emphasized the importance of economic factors in American foreign policy during the Cold War. There was a US commitment not just to stop Communism but to defend the economic interests of the US, ideological and material. In Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1985), Robert A. Pollard stated that American policy makers had learned “several lessons” from the last three decades regarding economic matters: “They concluded that American prosperity depended at least in part upon a thriving international economy.” Thus, a repeat of the Versailles punitive reparations regimen meant to utterly destroy the German economy was to be avoided. Nevertheless, under the 1067 directive, any measures which were aimed “toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany” or which were “designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy” were prohibited. In the initial stages of the US occupation of Germany, the US lacked a policy with regard to the future of Germany. Major General Lucius Clay stated: “Our first objective is to smash whatever remaining power Germany may have with which to develop a future war potential.” US policy began to change in 1947 with the emergence of the so-called Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine was a foreign policy abandonment of co-operation with the USSR. The US would seek to confront and contain Communist/Soviet expansion around the globe. Greece and Turkey were the first test cases. The Truman Doctrine entailed the commitment of the US to contain Communism, to wage a world-wide goal against it. The Cold War had begun. US Policy of “Double Containment” The US faced a dilemma with regard to occupation of Germany. Should the US demilitarize Germany or should Germany be re-armed? This was the dilemma that US foreign policy faced with regard to Germany. Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Lucius Clay, and US President Harry S. Truman favored a demilitarized Germany. Germany had to be “contained” to ensure peace. The Soviet Union, however, sought to fill the power vacuum that resulted from this policy of keeping Germany disarmed. The Soviets Union thus strengthened its military position in Central Europe. The Russians had 27 divisions in East Germany, their zone of occupation, as well as a German Barracks-based “People’s Police” (Kasernierte Volkspolizei) of up to 100,000 men, which were seen as a camouflaged army. The US had to thus contain the Soviet Union as well. So a policy of “double containment” resulted where the US sought to contain both Germany and the USSR. The problem was complicated by the fact that Four Powers occupied Germany jointly. Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State, 1949-1953, in his memoirs Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (NY: W.W. Norton, 1969) noted that “American ideas had changed greatly in the four years since the harsh occupation policy laid down in the April 1945 Joint Chiefs of Staff directive (JCS 1067).” Acheson sated that JCS directive 1067 had these policy goals: 1) “to bring home to the Germans that they could not escape the suffering they had brought upon themselves”; 2) “to be firm, aloof, and discourage all fraternization”; 3) “to prevent Germany’s ever becoming a threat to the peace” by “controlling Germany’s capacity to make war” by denazification, democratization, demilitarization, and decartelization, the “Four Ds”; 4) to enable war reparations to be made and to expedite the return of POWs; 5) “to control German economy to achieve these objectives and prevent any higher standard of living than in neighboring nations.” According to Acheson, Major General Lucius Clay pronounced the policy goals of JCS directive 1067 as “unworkable.” James F. Byrnes, US Secretary of State from 1945 to 1947, under whom Acheson served as Under Secretary, in a speech on September 6, 1946, had argued that Germany should not be turned in an “economic poorhouse” and that the Germans themselves should be given “primary responsibility for the running of their own affairs.” On May 29, 1947, Byrnes and British foreign minister Ernest Bevin agreed to unite the US and British zones into an economic unit known as “Bizonia”. France, however, refused to join in this plan. On May 8, 1947, Acheson himself made a speech in Cleveland, Mississippi in which he argued that the US should “push ahead with the reconstruction of those two great workshops of Europe and Asia---Germany and Japan.”
US policy goals thus shifted in mid-1947 from a Carthaginian punitive occupation of Germany to a “more liberal” policy of allowing Germany to create “a self-sustaining economy” and greater initiative. On July 11, 1947, JCS directive 1779 was issued which enunciated this change in German policy favoring a more liberal approach. The result was that German industrial output was allowed to reach the 1936 level, generally regarded as the last year before Germany went into a war economy. Why was there a change in US policy? The US State Department quickly realized that a weak German economy was leading to “economic misery” in Western Europe which resulted in strengthening Communism parties and movements in those countries. By punishing Germany economically, the US was inadvertently helping in the rise of Communism in Europe. This was the rationale for the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program). George C. Marshall, the new US Secretary of State since January 21, 1947, sponsored this aid program that offered loans, raw materials, and food stuffs to the impoverished European nations. To implement the plan, currency reform was needed in Germany. Most production and price controls were ended in Bizonia in 1948 by the economic director of the zone, Ludwig Erhard. The new Deutsche Mark (DM) was also introduced in the Western sectors of Berlin. The Soviets objected to this measure, intending to introduce a uniform currency for all of Berlin themselves. In his memoirs, Acheson agreed that “the much-needed currency reform for West Germany (though, at this time, not for Berlin, still regarded as under four-power control) triggered the final break with the Soviet Union in Germany.” The sequence of events leading to the Berlin Blockade began on March 17, 1948 when Britain, France, and the Benelux countries signed the Brussels Defense Pact a mutual defense treaty that was to last for fifty years. The Soviet representative walked out of the Allied Control Council meeting in Berlin three days later. The US, UK, France, and the Benelux countries met in London and announced on June 7 their recommendations that sought to revitalize the German economy and provide political institutions with ‘the minimum requirements of occupation and control.” On June 11, the Soviets stooped rail traffic between Berlin and West Germany for two days. On June 18, the US, UK, and France announced that they would initiate currency reform in West Germany. The Soviets responded with their own currency reform for East Germany and all of Berlin on June 23. The US, UK, and France introduced currency reform in West Berlin. The next day, the Soviets retaliated with a full land blockade of Berlin. As Acheson described in his memoirs, this confrontation over Berlin came close to precipitating a war with the USSR. General Clay had first assumed the Russians were bluffing but then became convinced that “it was clear the Russians meant business” when they stopped an allied military train. The Soviets had superiority on the ground and so would overpower a US response. The US, however, held air superiority. So the airlift option was decided upon. The ball was then placed in the Soviet court. The Soviets could either not interfere in the airlift or attack the planes, initiating a military conflict in an area where they lacked superiority, air power. Moreover, the onus would be on whoever fired the first shot in starting a potential war. In many ways, this confrontation was the precursor to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cold War was now in full swing. What resulted in this US-Soviet confrontation over Germany was thus the Berlin Blockade, the total land blockade of Berlin beginning on June 24, 1948. The US responded with the Berlin Airlift in which the Western Allies flew approximately 200,000 air sorties into the city to deliver 1.5 million tons of food, coal, and other material. The blockade lasted for eleven months. What eventually emerged from this political impasse was the division of the city of Berlin into an East and West Berlin. Ernst Reuter of the SPD became the mayor of West Berlin while Friedrich Ebert of the SED became the mayor of East Berlin. Berlin became a microcosm of Germany as a whole. Acheson noted that in those four years, the Soviet “control of Eastern Europe” had “intensified” and had “produced dangerous action farther west, of which the most ominous was the blockade of Berlin.” More accurately, US policy evolved over those four years from one of a harsh and punitive military occupation to one of greater German integration into the Western alliance system and greater German economic and political freedom. A “Forward Strategy” On September 21, 1949, West Germany was created. On April 4, 1949, the US had signed the North Atlantic Treaty creating NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a “defensive” military alliance between the US, UK, Canada, France, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, and the Benelux countries. This alliance would be under the leadership of the US and pledged that each nation would provide mutual military assistance and “that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” In 1952, Greece and Turkey joined NATO. West Germany was excluded from NATO. Indeed, in November, 1949, the new chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer, signed an Occupation Statute with the high commissioners that mandated the continued demilitarization of Germany and prohibited the formation of armed forces of any sort. As Ninkovich noted, even by 1949 thee still lingered a powerful “taboo” against “militarism” in Germany that was shared by Adenauer, the German public, French leaders, and US policy makers. The extent of the aversion to “German militarism” is shown by the prohibition of glider planes and fencing because they were categorized as “military exercises.” US foreign policy reflected this goal of the total demilitarization of Germany. There was major and dramatic shift, however, in this US policy. Why was there such a drastic change in US policy? When did it occur? In this US policy shift on the rearmament of Germany, several factors played a role. Frank Ninkovich pointed out that this US policy change occurred only after a “long series of hurdles” were cleared, which included “self-doubts, widespread European reluctance, and Soviet obstructionism.” Germany had been an “ideological, not a traditional enemy” of the US according to Ninkovich. More importantly, the Russians fought the major battles with Germany during World War II. The US fought its major battles against Japan. In acknowledgment of this fact, General Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to let the Russians take Berlin, the capital of the Third Reich. Up until 1944, there was only one front in Europe, the Russian Front. By this time, however, the Russians were already near to occupying German territory. By October, 1944, Russian troops had advanced into East Prussia. So, arguably, by the time of the D-Day landing, Germany was already militarily defeated by Russia. And, indeed, the battle of Kursk-Orel in mid-1943, which broke the back of the Germany army, decided the war. The battle of Kursk-Orel involved meticulous planning and complex organization by the Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov, who was the overall commander of the Soviet armed forces. The German forces were stopped dead cold. There was a famous Soviet dispatch that read: “The Tigers are burning!” Importantly, the Kursk-Orel engagement disproved the myth or fallacy that the reason Zhukov defeated the German Panzer “blitzkrieg” armies in Moscow in 1941 was because of “General Winter” and “General Mud”. The argument was that Zhukov defeated the German tank armies of Heinz Guderian in Moscow because of the cold weather and because of the ice and snow and mud. The battle of Kursk-Orel was fought on level steppes in scorching summer heat. Moreover, the troop strength of both sides was roughly equal, with Zhukov favoring a 1:1.2 advantage in manpower to ensure a reserve. So there were no suicidal mass assaults by “hordes” or human “waves” of troops. These were myths and fallacies consciously engendered by biased military historians. The German Army lost offensive strategic capability following that disastrous engagement. German forces were in retreat by the summer of 1943 on the Russian Front. The bulk of the German armed forces, over three million men, along with 150,000 Romanian troops, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, and Hungarian volunteers, were deployed in the Soviet Union. All the elite German formations, including the Waffen SS divisions, were deployed in Operation Barbarossa. The Einsatzgruppen (Action Squads) police units were also sent into Russia which engaged in the mass executions of not only Jews, but Communist “commissars”, guerrillas, hostages, and civilians. The Russians, thus, felt the full brunt of the Nazi war machine. The US did not. This is an important factor in showing why the US was willing to be more lenient or “liberal” in its occupation policy towards Germany. Moreover, the German invasion and occupation of the USSR destroyed the economic infrastructure of those areas. The losses were massive. The Soviets thus were eager to obtain reparations, especially in kind, including heavy industrial equipment, from Germany. By contrast, US economic infrastructure was not impacted by Germany. So consequently the US did not need to be made whole by Germany. These factors are important in analyzing differing US and Soviet attitudes toward Germany. Thus, there was much greater antipathy to the rearmament of Germany in the USSR and the other countries of Europe who had been occupied by Germany during the war, such as France, than there was in the US. US policy continued to oppose the rearmament of Germany as late as August, 1950. A US State Department statement declared that it had “opposed, and still strongly opposes, the creation of German national forces.” A rearmed Germany “frightened” the State Department. George Kennan stated that the “German people are still politically immature and lacking in any realistic understanding of themselves and their past mistakes.” In April, 1950 US High Commissioner in Germany John McCloy argued that German economic restrictions should be lifted and Germany should be made “a full partner” in the future. The punitive approach was “unrealistic” according to McCloy. This had been the reasoning behind the Marshall Plan. Only an economically strong Western Europe could resist the incursion of Communism. Italy, for instance, had a large Communist movement. The change in US policy evolved in 1950. It began with National Security Council resolution 68 which argued that the US should “conclude separate arrangements with Japan, Western Germany, and Austria which would enlist the energies and resources of those countries in support of the free world.” The major shift in US policy with regard to German rearmament was reflected in NSC-71 in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that Germany should be rearmed: “the appropriate and early arming of Germany is of fundamental importance to the defense of Western Europe against the USSR.” President Truman stated that the proposal was “decidedly militaristic” while Acheson regarded the creation of a German army as “quite insane”. In his memoirs, Acheson stated that as late as June 5, 1950, he opposed the rearmament of Germany, a view shared by the State Department, but not the Defense Department: “the United States would continue the policy of German demilitarization.” Acheson recounted how General Omar Bradley had suggested to him the next day that “from a strictly military point of view, I do believe the defense of western Europe would be strengthened by the inclusion of Germany.” McCloy had recommended in July that Germany be rearmed. Thus, US policy was gradually evolving towards German rearmament. The decisive event that changed US policy in Germany was the June 25, 1950 North Korean invasion of South Korea. Acheson sated that a reassessment of US policy in Germany was now in order: “it was time to consider our plans for European defense in the light of Korea.” The US was evolving a “forward strategy” before the Korean attack in 1950. As Acheson noted, “the need for increased military strength was in the air, given a renewed fillip by the Korean attack.” General Bradley described this “fundamental change” in US foreign policy strategy with regard to Germany as follows: “Communism is willing to use arms to gain its ends. This is a fundamental change, and it has forced a change in our estimate of the military needs of the United States.” The Korean scenario was now transposed onto Germany by US policy makers. If East Germany invaded West Germany, the West Germans would be out-manned and outgunned because Germany was demilitarized. The USSR acquired atomic weapons in 1949 so the US no longer had the nuclear deterrent. According to Acheson, there were only 12 NATO divisions in Europe compared to 27 Soviet divisions in East Germany and up to 100,000 East German police units that could quickly be converted into a military force. The Korean invasion changed everything. Acheson did an about-face on German rearmament: “My conversion to German participation in European defense was quick.” The Korean events had changed his views: “Korea had speeded up evolution.” It meant that West Germany now had the primary role in the “balancing of power in Europe.” According to Acheson, US defense strategy against the USSR in Europe “had to be based on a forward strategy.” This was the key decision in US policy towards West Germany. What followed now was a search for a way to realize a forward strategy with German military participation. A rearmed Germany was opposed by France, the USSR, and even by the German population that had undergone five years of demilitarization. Now, the US was asking that the Germans reverse their anti-militarist position. Stalin proposed a solution of his own. He proposed that Germany be united with both the East and West German governments joining as equals. The requirement was that Germany adopt a neutral policy towards East and West, that the united Germany be “neutralized”. The way to solve the problem, it was decided, was by creating a European Army which would include German troops at the regimental level. The idea of creating a European army resulted from the Pleven Plan, proposed by French prime minister Rene Pleven. According to Frank Castigliola in France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War II (NY: Twayne Publishers, 1992), Acheson had “shocked” French defense minister Jules Moch at a NATO meeting in September, 1950, by proposing that there be a “rapid creation” of ten German divisions. Moch and French foreign minister Robert Schuman opposed the creation of German divisions. Full support of the EDC plan became official US policy in 1951. Acheson proposed that the German divisions be “in an integrated command” which would be led by a US commander. In conjunction with the formation of German divisions, Acheson envisioned the stationing of additional US divisions in Europe. In addition, France would receive additional military aid. The US played a central role in negotiations that transformed the Pleven Plan into the treaty that created the European Defense Community (EDC). On May 26, 1952, the EDC treaty was signed. The treaty effectively died two years later when the French national Assembly refused to ratify it because it was seen as infringing national sovereignty by putting French troops under supranational command. The EDC plan entailed the violation of national sovereignty: ” from a traditional nationalist viewpoint the EDC was a wildly improbable project.” Moreover, Acheson, being an “Atlanticist”, not a “Europeanist”, generally opposed a European solution that would in effect create a United States of Europe. German leaders opposed the EDC as well. Kurt Schumacher dismissed the EDC because it treated German troops as “second-class human beings and first-class blood donors.” The Germans would thus function as mercenaries or cannon fodder in the EDC scheme. According to Ninkovich, “traditional nationalism” underpinned German rejection of the EDC. Germans would be rearmed but not Germany. The EDC never gained the approval of more than a third of the West German population. The French Assembly refused to ratify the EDC treaty on August 30, 1954. As Ninkovich concluded, “the EDC was effectively dead.” By this time, President Dwight Eisenhower was the new US President and John Foster Dulles the new Secretary of State. On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin had died. So a change of political leadership resulted in both the US and USSR in 1953. They continued the Truman and Acheson policy with regard to Germany. The rejection of the EDC by France startled Dulles, which he called “a crisis of almost terrifying proportions.” Dulles rejected a policy that would necessitate a reliance on “a course of narrow nationalism.” Dulles envisioned a supranational solution to the rearmament of Germany. Adenauer saw the French rejection as wasting three years of diplomatic effort and saw the French as wrecking the “European idea.” The French rejection of the EDC plan led to a major shift in US policy towards Germany by the Eisenhower administration. Eisenhower now regarded West Germany as the closest ally of the US on continental Europe: “We could get along without France but not without Germany.” West Germany joins NATO The Eisenhower administration policy was to make West Germany the focus or bulwark of US containment policy against the USSR on the European continent. This policy shift necessitated treating West Germany as a partner and ally rather than as an occupied foe. What occurred in 1954 was the granting of full sovereignty to West Germany by the US. Similarly, the Soviet Unit granted full sovereignty to East Germany, the DDR. On October 23, 1954, the Paris Protocols mandated the end of the military occupation of West Germany and its admission into NATO. West Germany was also admitted into the reconstructed Western European Union. On May 5, 1955, the occupation of West Germany officially ended and on May 9, West Germany became a member of NATO. The Soviets responded with the signing of the Warsaw Pact Treaty on May 14. The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance that the Soviet Union established to counter NATO. What emerged in central Europe were two military blocs or alliances that opposed each other. West Germany was a member of NATO while East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact. With the defeat of the EDC plan and the admission of West Germany into NATO, the US assumed full responsibility for the defense of Western Europe. Under the EDC plan, the goal was to create a united western Europe that would act as a third force in international affairs along with the US and USSR. The NATO plan precluded such a third bloc. NATO was a hierarchical organizational structure that was under the leadership of the US. In other words, the US would be directly responsible for the security of western Europe. This policy entailed that the US would have to station troops in western Europe and devise a defense or security strategy for western Europe. Allowing West Germany to join NATO meant that the US assumed greater responsibilities and commitments in the defense of western Europe. The border between West and East Germany thus became the confrontation line between the US and USSR in the Cold War in Europe. West Berlin became the “trip wire” for any possible new war between the superpowers. Surrounded by Soviet and East German troops, West Berlin was vulnerable. For the Soviets, it allowed East Germans to emigrate to West Germany. Now that the Cold War confrontation had solidified and crystallized in East and West Germany, now that West Germany was part of the US-led NATO forces, the US was responsible for devising a defensive strategy. Nuclear Deterrence: The New Look The policy the Eisenhower administration adopted was nuclear deterrence, “massive retaliation”, the reliance on atomic weapons to deter Soviet expansion into western Europe. The policy was known as the New Look. To counter overwhelming Soviet troop strength in Europe, the US would have to deploy ground troops in Europe as necessitated by the NATO alliance whereby the US assumed primary responsibility for the defense of western Europe. Eisenhower wanted to avoid the massive expenditure needed for such a deployment. The cost-effective approach adopted was to equip US forces with tactical nuclear weapons. Eisenhower announced: “In the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions.” In 1954, NATO Supreme Commander, General Alfred Gruenther declared that any future war in Europe would “inevitably be atomic”. In December, 1957, NATO authorized the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons would compensate for NATO’s conventional inferiority to the Warsaw Pact in Europe, they would be the equalizer. As Ninkovich noted, West Germany was supposed to amass an army of 500,000 troops for the Bundeswehr when it entered NATO. But by the end of 1956, only a force of 67,000 had been assembled. By the end of 1959, this number had been increased to 230,000. This glaring lack of ground troops on the part of NATO necessitated a reliance on atomic weapons. Fears of an atomic war in central Europe prompted Polish foreign minister Adam Rapacki to propose the creation of a nuclear free zone in central Europe. The threat of nuclear war became heightened as crises intensified between the US and USSR. The crisis point was Berlin. Nikita Khrushchev wanted an end to the Potsdam treaty mandate of four-power administration of the city. During the decade, East Germany had lost up to two million citizens to emigration. They fled East Germany through West Berlin. This drain on East Germany was becoming critical. From 1958 to 1963, Khrushchev sought to resolve the issue of the division of Berlin. Berlin was a microcosm of the wider US-USSR conflict in Germany. As during the Berlin Blockade and Airlift the decade before, the second Berlin crisis took the two superpowers again to the brink of all-out nuclear war. The Second Berlin Crisis, 1958-1963 In November, 1958, Nikita Khrushchev proposed to the US that a new treaty be signed between the US, USSR, UK, and France that would redefine the status of Berlin. The Soviet plan proposed a “free city” of Berlin. Berlin was divided between a West and East sector, the West zone being part of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), West Germany. Initially, it was under four-power administration as mandated by the Potsdam agreement of 1945. From the Soviet viewpoint, the divided status of Berlin was an anomaly and an anachronism. West Berlin was about 110 miles inside East Germany. Most importantly, West Berlin was the easiest way to emigrate out of East Germany and into West Germany. The Soviets and the DDR sought to prevent this refugee crisis. This is what motivated the “second Berlin crisis”. Because the conflict had become “nuclearized” and because of the 1957 launch of Sputnik, which showed that the USSR could launch and deliver long-range rockets, the threat of nuclear war was paramount. McGeorge Bundy described this threat of atomic war that Khrushchev initiated in Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (NY: Random House, 1988): “His four-year effort constitutes the most powerful demonstration yet recorded of the limited value of attempts at nuclear blackmail undertaken in the face of opponents with weapons, commitments, and will of their own.” According to Bundy, the second Berlin crisis was a “single phenomenon” defined by Khrushchev and “was A Soviet exercise in atomic diplomacy”, Khrushchev was using the credible threat of nuclear weapons to force a change in the status quo in Berlin. Eisenhower was willing to negotiate the status of Berlin and was in favor of creating a “free city” so long as all of Berlin was included, not merely West Berlin. John Foster Dulles was willing to discuss a resolution of the Berlin crisis on a basis other than the free elections approach. The 1960 Paris Summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower was scuttled, however, after the infamous U-2 affair involving the Soviet shoot-down of a U-2 spy plane and the capture of pilot Gary Powers. The Berlin crisis remained unresolved with the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960. According to Bundy, Kennedy’s policy on Germany “was at once similar and different” to that of Eisenhower. Kennedy publicly stated that his administration’s view of the German crisis was “the same as the view expressed by the previous administration.” How did US policy goals change with regard to Germany in the Kennedy administration? Kennedy favored a greater reliance on conventional strength. Kennedy appointed Dean Acheson to head a senior advisory group that would make new policy recommendations with regard to Berlin. Acheson recommended that American ground forces in Germany should be increased by two to three divisions and US reserves would be increased. In 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy met in Vienna to discuss the Berlin crisis. But nothing resulted from these discussions. The refugee flow was reaching unbearable proportions for the DDR: 30,000 refugees per month were fleeing into West Berlin, 4,000 on August 12, 1961 alone. On August 13, 1961, the East Germans began constructing a wire fence around West Berlin that would be replaced with the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall would become the symbol of the division and confrontation between the US and USSR during the Cold War. It demonstrated an impasse and a stalemate, the lack of a solution. Bundy concluded that “the Berlin crisis of 1958-63 does not display unbroken wisdom and foresight among Western statesmen.” According to Ninkovich, “the West staggered through the Berlin affair in considerable disarray.” The Berlin Wall would embody and symbolize the division between not only East and West Berlin, between East and West Germany, but also between the US and USSR, between the two camps in the Cold War. The US exploited and manipulated German nationalism to further US interests during the Cold War. The US was willing to sacrifice Germany in a tactical nuclear war as the battleground. German nationalism was used to enhance the US strategic position to Europe. Like Yugoslavia, Germany was merely a pawn in the larger geopolitical conflict between the US and USSR. National sovereignty and nationalism were manipulated and exploited by the US in both Germany and Yugoslavia to enhance the US position in the Cold War. Conclusion US foreign policy on Yugoslavia after World War II consisted of using Yugoslavia as a “wedge” against the Soviet Union. The US “wedge strategy” sought to keep “Tito afloat” as an “exhibit” to the USSR and to the other Communist states. The US exploited the Stalin-Tito split of 1948 by attempting to shore up Yugoslavia economically and militarily as an ally in a potential war with the USSR. The US sought unsuccessfully to convince Yugoslavia to join NATO. The Tito regime remained committed to Communism/socialism and rejected an alliance with either the US or USSR, playing off both superpowers against each other to enable Tito to remain in power and to remain in control of the country. Instead, Tito chose to follow an independent approach, founding the Non-Aligned Movement. The US provided economic and military aid to Communist Yugoslavia. By 1958, the US had given $1.2 billion in military and economic aid to Communist Yugoslavia. What was the effect of this US assistance? Did Yugoslavia adopt pro-US policies? Yugoslavia recognized Communist East Germany and in 1956 the Tito regime supported the second Soviet intervention in Hungary because it was necessary to preserve the socialist system and prevent a Western intervention that would impose a capitalist system. These actions by Yugoslavia were against US policy. The Tito regime thus pursued a foreign policy that exploited the conflict between the two superpowers. In the East German and Hungarian scenarios, the Yugoslav government in fact adopted anti-US positions and espoused pro-Soviet policies. Nevertheless, US policymakers such as Dulles saw US support for Yugoslavia as crucial in establishing an “exhibit” for other Communist states. Yugoslavia would encourage a break with the Soviet Union by “satellite” states. Moreover, by buttressing Yugoslavia with economic, diplomatic, and military support, the US was preventing a collapse that would allow for a Soviet/Communist takeover of the country. US policy in Yugoslavia was based solely on geopolitical balance of power considerations inherent in the Cold War conflict between the US and USSR. Nationalism was manipulated and exploited by the US as an instrument to buttress antagonism and hostility between Moscow and Belgrade. Similarly, US policy in Germany reflected US geopolitical considerations in the context of the Cold War conflict with the USSR. Germany became a bulwark against the Soviet Union in Central Europe. The US manipulated and exploited German nationalism in order to amass foot soldiers or cannon fodder in a potential war with the USSR. Germany was a battleground of the Cold War. US policy was guided by US national self-interest. Both Yugoslavia and Germany were pawns in the wider geopolitical
conflict between the US and USSR during the Cold War. Communist Yugoslavia
and post-war Germany were the products of World War II and the geopolitical
conflict between the US and USSR, the Cold War. On October 16, 1944,
the Soviet Red Army troops in the 3rd Ukrainian Front under General
Fyodor Tolbukhin captured Nis; on October 20, Belgrade was captured.
The German armed forces that had occupied the city, facing encirclement
and capture, fled the city. The German Army was forced to abandon
Belgrade and to retreat from Serbia. The history of this event was
falsified by Yugoslav historians and propagandists who erroneously
implied that it was Tito’s Partisans that had “liberated” Belgrade.
These propagandists claimed that Belgrade was liberated by Tito’s
Partisans with the “assistance” of Red Army troops. In fact, Tito’s
contribution to the German abandonment of Belgrade had nothing to
do with the Partisans but the prospect of encirclement by the rapidly
advancing Red Army. Zagreb and Sarajevo, by contrast, would remain
under German occupation until the final days of the war. The Soviet
Union thus gave control of Yugoslavia to the Communist forces of Tito.
By militarily defeating the German Wehrmacht, the USSR forced the
German armies to abandon Zagreb and Sarajevo by 1945. In discussions
between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in Moscow, both agreed
that Yugoslavia would be split 90-10, 90% given to the USSR and 10%
to the UK/US. It was understood that Churchill was acting on behalf
of the US and the Roosevelt administration. So contrary to the myth
and falsified history of the Tito era, Communist Yugoslavia did not
just come about by the military victories of the Partisan “offensives”
against the German Army by the astute military planning of Tito and
the Yugoslav elections of November, 1945. Yugoslavia was in fact created
by the Big Three, the US, USSR, and UK in Moscow, London, and Washington.
Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin (with FDR’s acquiescence) in fact
created Communist Yugoslavia. Once this is understood, then it is
easy to see how the collapse of the Cold War world order would lead
ineluctably to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and concomitantly,
the reunification of Germany.
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