the Lublin government in Poland that Stalin had helped impose, and created a separate West German government that denied the Soviets access to the Ruhr industrial heartland and provided only minimal reparations payments. Truman felt betrayed because the 1947 election in Poland was considered to be unfair and Stalin endorsed acts of political terror against the pro-Western opposition. Stalin felt the West was hypocritical in trying to interfere in Poland by supporting Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (pro-West candidate who got 10 percent of the vote) when the Soviets did not attempt to interfere in Belgium, Italy, or Greece. The Soviets in turn consolidated control over Eastern Europe with their support for Communist dictatorships, and thus the Cold War commenced. “We are living with the problems of a world that did not benefit from the experience at Yalta,” Clemens concluded from the perspective of the 1970s. “It is perhaps relevant to ask what the world would have been like if the spirit of Yalta had triumphed.”17 Perhaps it is still relevant.
THE PATH OF PEACE NOT PURSUED: THE REMOVAL OF HENRY WALLACE
A key turning point that may have influenced the entire history of the Cold War occurred at the 1944 Democratic Party national convention in Chicago when Harry S. Truman was nominated over Henry A. Wallace as vice president on the Roosevelt ticket.
Wallace was a progressive New Dealer who supported free trade, national health insurance, abolishing Jim Crow, and free public schooling and day care. Unique among American leaders, Wallace was sensitive to the conditions of grinding poverty and oppression that Lenin had seized upon, and to the accomplishments and appeal of Soviet Communism. He also questioned many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, such as the State Department’s friendliness toward right-wing dictators.18
As an alternative to Henry Luce’s vision of the “American Century,” which demanded that the United States “accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and … exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit,” Wallace had proposed a “Century of the Common Man,” in which “no nation will have the god-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. The methods of the nineteenth century will not work in the people’s century which is now about to begin.”19
At the Democratic Party convention, California oilman, party treasurer, and chief fundraiser Edwin Pauley and chairman Robert Hannegan coordinated with Southern segregationists, big-city machine politicians, and business interests to remove Wallace from his nomination as vice president through a backroom arrangement supported by Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) leader Sidney Hillman and an ailing FDR. When Wallace appeared poised to receive the nomination, the convention was adjourned and spotlights turned off just before Claude Pepper (D-FL), a Wallace supporter, could take the podium. Overnight, the bosses then worked to secure Truman’s nomination by offering ambassadorships, postmaster positions, and cold cash to delegates, blocking Wallace supporters from entering the arena the next day.20
Wallace was subsequently fired as commerce secretary after proposing in a speech at Madison Square Garden, on September 12, 1946, that the United Nations assume control of the strategically located air bases with which “the United States and Britain [had] encircled the world.” According to Wallace, “nations not only should be prohibited from manufacturing atom bombs, guided missiles and military aircraft for bombing purposes, but also prohibited from spending on its military more than 15 percent of its budget.” The United States, he said, could easily ensure cooperation with the Soviets if they made clear “we are not planning for war against her,” and had “no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in Latin America.” Wallace ended the speech by calling on Americans “who look on this war-with-Russia talk as criminal foolishness … [to] carry our message direct to the people—even though we may be called communists because we dare to speak out.”21
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