“Curzon Line B” was proposed by the British Foreign Secretary in 1920

1. “UNITED: The United Nations Fight for Freedom” (USA, 1943):FDR hoped to continue the wartime alliance with the USSR in the postwar world

2. W. Averell Harriman(1891-1986):1913: graduates from Yale, founds major Wall Street bank;1940-42: FDR’s special envoy to Churchill and Stalin;1943-46: Ambassador to USSR;later Secretary of Commerce and Governor of New York

3. George F. Kennan(1904-2005)1925: Graduates from Princeton, joins Foreign Service;1933-38: Posted to Moscow;1938-44: Transferred to Prague, Berlin, Lisbon, & London;1944-46: Returns to Moscow (sends “Long Telegram,” February 1946); 1947-49: Director of Policy Planning at U.S. State Department (quarrels with Dean Acheson);1951-52: Ambassador to the USSR

4. “Curzon Line B”was proposed by the British Foreign Secretary in 1920

5. THE DISPUTE OVER POSTWAR POLAND • January 21, 1944: Ambassador Harriman warns the State Department from Moscow that the London Polish government in exile has no future unless it accepts the Curzon Line, purges its most reactionary members, and adds at least one minister acceptable to Stalin. • February 6, 1944: Churchill appeals to the London Poles to accept the Curzon Line, but they refuse. • March 4, 1944: Harriman approaches Stalin to convey concern about civil war in postwar Poland. • June 1944: The Soviets announce the formation of a “Polish National Council” in Lublin. • August-October 1944: Warsaw Uprising by the Polish Home Army is crushed by the Germans.

6. Hitler ordered the Warsaw Ghetto leveled after the Ghetto Uprising of January-May 1943.

7. The Polish Home Army seized control of central Warsawon August 1, 1944,as the Red Army approached.

8. When the Polish Home Army surrendered on October 2,the Germans destroyed Warsaw completely, then withdrew

9. The Soviet conquest of western Poland in January 1945, on the eve of the Yalta Conference.

10. The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945:Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, & Joseph Stalin Did FDR understand that he had in effect sacrificed Poland?

11. The Occupation Zones Agreed Upon at Yalta:The Oder-Neisse Line marked the new Polish-German border

12. U.S. planners anticipated 1,000,000 casualties during the final invasion of Japan

13. U.S. and Soviet troops link up on the ruins of a bridge over the Elbe River at Torgau, April 25, 1945

14. The Red Army takes Berlin, May 2, 1945

15. At Potsdam in July 1945, Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Stalin agree on the Four D’s:Denazification, Democratization, Demilitarization, Decartellization Truman MAY not have understood the implicit bargain at Yalta (contrast Gaddis, 21-24)

16. THE DETONATION OF THE ATOMIC BOMBOVER HIROSHIMA ON AUGUST 6, 1945:About 70,000 died that day, and 70,000 more within 6 months

17. “No Nonsense!”(USSR, 1948):The Soviets detonated their first A-bomb on August 29, 1949.Gaddis concludes on p. 27 that statesmen in Moscow and Washington were caught in a “security dilemma.”

18. Border revisions and streams of refugees in 1945

19. Communist strongholds in Greece, 1946/47

20. Marhsal Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980),the Communist leader of Yugoslavia who broke openly with Stalin in 1948.He was the real patron of the Greek Communists…

21. Harry S. Truman announces the “Truman Doctrine”to the U.S. Congress on March 12, 1947

22. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposes the European Recovery Program at Harvard in June 1947 (below) and then finalizes the plan for its implementation with Ernest Bevin and Robert Schuman in Paris in October 1948 Stalin prohibited any East European participation

23. The Marshall Plan as the wind in Europe’s sails(Federal Republic of Germany, 1950).By 1952 the USA had contributed $11 billionto revive the economy of Western Europe, the most successful economic aid program in history

24. Klement Gottwald led the Czech Communists to a plurality in 1946 with 38% of the popular vote and then became premier of a Popular Front government. Jan Masaryk and all other non-Communist ministers were replaced with Communists in February 1948. Soon thereafter Masaryk was found dead beneath the window of his Prague apartment

25. The currency reform in “Bizonia,” 21 June 1948:Every West German citizen received 40 new Deutschmarks.Stalin responded with a blockade of West Berlin.

26. The Berlin Airlift, October 1948:Grateful West Berliners greet an American transport plane

27. Dean Acheson signs the NATO treaty in Washington on April 4, 1949, as Harry Truman and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin look on

28. In 1949 Konrad Adenaueremerged as the elected leader of the pro-Western Federal Republic of Germany

29. Walter Ulbricht founded the pro-SovietGerman Democratic Republic

30. The “Iron Curtain” dividing Europe, 1949 to 1989

31. EVIDENCE OF STALIN’S PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION? • The Greek Civil War of 1946/47 (actually fomented by Tito). • April 1947: A strike at the Renault Plant near Paris gains the support of the French Communist Party and leads to the fall of the Popular Front Government (??). • Chinese Civil War, 1947/48: The sudden victory of the Communists over the Nationalists leads to conspiracy theories in Washington. • Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, February 1948. • June 1948: Soviet Blockade of Berlin, which leads to the Berlin Airlift.