Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists
Robert H. Ferrell
Robert H. Ferrell
[NAME]
[STUDENT #]
[COURSE CODE]
October 15 2009
Part A
Robert H. Ferrell’s Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists is a refutative work in which Ferrell evaluates the success of Truman’s presidency against revisionist critique. Contrary to the charges of the Cold War revisionists, Ferrell states that Harry S. Truman led an effective administration that made significant contributions to American foreign policy during the Cold War. He investigates Truman’s conduct throughout 1945 to 1953, while focusing on foreign policy and key events during the Cold War in this time. The book adopts a Plutarchian view of the period, and through Ferrell’s traditionalist lens it provides a scholarly examination of the conduct of the Truman administration by the common prospective of historical events for an academic audience.
Ferrell opens his book with an outline of the revisionist arguments denouncing Truman’s performance in foreign affairs during the Cold War. The first revisionist thesis states that Truman’s decision for dropping two atomic bombs in Japan was intended for Russian impressments, and was not a measure towards putting an end to World War II. A second thesis states that the United States wanted to intervene in Russian safety zones in Eastern Europe and supervise politics foreign politics in order to secure American interests. Ferrell follows by raising a number of counter-arguments to refute the revisionists’ charges. First, he justifies Truman’s use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II as a well-apprised and carefully considered decision. Ferrell then argues that American forces were militarily weak and did not have the means to engage in Soviet impressments during the early Cold War years. Lastly, he demonstrates how Truman’s program was pivotal in reshaping American foreign policy and for expanding American influence and power on the global scale. He provides a thorough assessment of the success of Truman’s administration.
Part B
Ferrell asserts that Truman was informed and cautious in his decision to use nuclear weaponry on Japan during World War II. In the JCS 924, a comprehensive government report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding the details of an invasion of Japan, it was stated that an invasion would result in half a million American casualties and “many times that number wounded”[1]. Also, Truman was presented with casualty figures from the invasions of Luzon and Okinawa in Japan, which yielded a ratio of one American casualty for every five Japanese casualties[2]. Americans suffered 31 000 casualties in Luzon and 63 000 in Okinawa, and Truman was reluctant to keep his military pushing on this way on the Pacific theatre[3]. This was all information Truman received prior to arranging a meeting on June 18, 1945 in order to discuss the continuation the invasion in Japan[4]. The meeting was held in response to memorandum he received from former-President Herbert Hoover, informing him for the first time of the JCS 924 statistics[5]. Truman intended to make a decision only after receiving the opinions of a number of his significant personnel, including Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Undersecretary Joseph C Grow and service secretaries Forestall and Stimson[6]. Presented information on the degree of American casualties in a continued Japanese invasion, Truman considered other options to secure an end to the war.
Ferrell also argues that the revisionist charge that America was attempting Russian impressments throughout the Cold War years is not justified, since America and the Western Allied forces were lacking in the military force to do this. General Omar N. Bradley stated in his biography that the U.S. forces comprised of 552 000 men and officers, half of which were “overseas on occupation duty, serving as policemen or clerks. The other half were in the States performing various administrative chores”[7]. This was a known issue to Truman, who said in a stenographic report on April 3, 1949, the evening before NATO was signed, “despite the huge U.S. war potential, the Western nations are practically disarmed and have no power sufficient to prevent the five hundred Soviet divisions from overrunning Western Europe and most of Asia. To be sure, we have the atomic bomb; but we must recognize the present limitations of our strategic methods for delivering it”[8]. Ferrell establishes that the atomic bomb was the only notable force at the Western nations’ defensive arsenal, but he continues by providing evidence to the ineffectiveness of its use before the late 1940s. The assembly of a bomb took two days and twenty four men[9]. The United States had no bomb assembly team between 1945 and 1950; with the organization of the American Energy Commission, the bomb assembly teams trained in the army had been dropped and dispersed[10]. Furthermore, other aspects needed to ready the deployment of a bomb were not available; polonium initiators, needed for the establishing of a critical mass within a bomb, had a half-life of only 138 days and were in very little supply before 1947[11]; also, a bomb could not remain on a plane for more than forty-eight hours due to its need to recharge[12]. Before 1950, the means for Russian impressments by America and the Western nations did not exist.
Finally, Ferrell contends that Truman led an effective program that improved American foreign policy and the condition of Western European allies. First he addresses the Marshall Plan, established in 1947 by Secretary of State George Marshall and otherwise known as the European Recovery Program. The Marshall Plan provided relief from the U.S. to the nations of Western Europe, most of which had made a significant economic revival by 1950[13]. Also he discusses in detail the significance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On April 5, a day after the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, the Brussels nations sent the U.S. an arms request for $1.45 billion, and Truman responded immediately[14]. Another $1.3 billion was sent to NATO nations after news was confirmed of Soviet detonation of nuclear weaponry[15]. American relief through NATO was assured to go on indefinitely, and was significant in shaping American foreign policy.
Part C
This book provides a comprehensive overview of revisionist and traditionalist commentary on the Truman administration during the Cold War. Arguments and counterarguments are provided in contrast to each other, for example on the topic of the Baruch Plan of 1946. The revisionists believe that the U.S. offer to limit atomic weaponry was “so full of American safeguards that the Russians could not accept it ...the Americans were scheming to maintain their atomic monopoly”[16]. Ferrell counter-argues that the plan was so extensive that it “suggested a serious effort on the part of the Americans,” and that also “there was evidence that the president himself had little faith in the bomb as a diplomatic or even military weapon”[17]. Two standpoints are presented in contrast to each other, and this helps provide a wider prospective for the audience.
Ferrell provides a very strong and extensive array of sources in the historiography of this book. It encompasses oral histories from the Truman Library, archival records such as the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States, books from notable historians, and a vast number of other such credible, primary sources.
Sections are often opened with a broad summary of ideas followed by a detailed account of historical context and notable information in Ferrell’s presentation of the arguments in this book. This is seen for example preceding his argument on Truman’s consideration of the use of nuclear weapons in Japan. Ferrell starts by describing “a remarkable change from the languid incompetence from the last year ...of Franklin Roosevelt,” and continues on to describe the transition from the presidency of Roosevelt to Truman[18]. This helps the audience gain a thorough understanding of Ferrell’s points alongside the context of the period.
Ferrell often uses a very explicit, condescending tone towards the views of the Cold War revisionists. This can be seen for example in his commentary of the revisionist notion that the Truman Doctrine amplified the Cold War rhetoric and provided a significant reinforcement of American anticommunism. A disparaging tone can be noted as he states “this was a remarkable accusation, and it was ventilated not merely in the random assertions of revisionist books and articles but in two volumes devoted to the point”. Ferrell’s stance as a traditionalist and the nature of this work makes use of counterarguments understandable, but by outwardly demeaning the points of the Cold War critics he takes away from the validity of his presentation.
Bibliography
Ferrell, Robert H. Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionist. Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2006.
[1] Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists (Missouri: University of Missouri Press), 42.
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