American Experience

Historian Walter LaFeber on Truman's Soviet Policy

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The first moment of truth for Truman as far as foreign policy was concerned was 11 days after he became President. And he was still trying to find out what his foreign policy was all about. The Russian foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, passed through Washington on his way to San Francisco and the United Nations conference. And he stopped in Washington to talk with Truman about what was the key issue. And that was, how the Russians were dealing with Poland. They were imposing a Communist government on Poland and Truman thought this was not the way that Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed to deal with Poland at Yalta four months before.

Before Truman meets with Molotov in the White House, he calls a meeting of his top advisors and those advisors split. Probably the most distinguished person in the cabinet, 77 year-old Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, tells Truman that he must be very, very careful in dealing a Molotov on the Polish issue because Poland is the key issue of Russian security. It's been Poland through which the Germans have attacked Russian twice in 30 years and, consequently, he warns Truman that this is an extremely sensitive issue.

But there are other people around the table, including Averill Harriman, who's just returned as U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, tells Truman that the Soviets have not been upholding the agreements that they had made with Roosevelt and that this is the time to draw the line.

Truman listens to all of this advice and then dismisses Stimson and the people who had agreed with Stimson and talks with Harriman and the people who'd agreed with Harriman about how to approach Molotov. He then walks into the room with Molotov and has a very, very tough conversation in which he tells Molotov that the Soviets are not carrying out their agreements on Poland. And Molotov says, "We are." And according to Truman's record of this, "I then explain to him in words of one syllable," Truman said, "exactly why they were not." Molotov apparently said, "I have never been talked to like that in my life," and Truman said, "Carry out your agreements and you won't be talked to like that." Truman then walked out of the room, saw a top State Department aide and said to the State Department aide, "I just gave him a straight one-two to the jaw." And then he stopped and looked at this man and said, "Do you think I did right?" Which, I think, was extremely revealing not only in terms of Truman's toughness at this point without really knowing what he was going to be tough about, but also this incredible insecurity that Truman had in the first weeks after he became president.

I think the thing that has to be understood about this story is that when Truman did find out what Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed to, he essentially backed away and allowed the Soviet-dominated government of Poland to take its position and the United States recognized that government as a official government of Poland. In other words, after this show-down with Molotov, Truman found out what the foreign policy was and backed down, but by that time the relationship between the two powers, between, particularly, Truman and Stalin at this point, had soured. And the Polish issue became the issue that divided, I think, Truman and Stalin to a degree that it was very difficult to bridge.

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