When Truman came to power in 1945 he was under pressure to mend an already fragmented affiliation between the two superpowers. Truman was influenced by other individuals and attitudes to aid the current situation America was in. George Kennan’s “long telegrams” in 1946 and Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech in 1946 shaped U.S foreign policies and relations with the Soviet Union for ever.
The long telegram provided analysis of Soviet foreign policy which emphases the communist ideology. His ideas became the basis of Truman’s administrations of foreign policy “containment”. Churchill’s speech in 1946 did more to obstruct than promote the relationship between the Soviets than the United States foreign policies. (2000)
Both government officials…show more content… The primary source is from a British cartoonist called Illingworth. His cartoon was published by in the Daily Mail on March 6th March 1946, “Joe is Joseph Stalin”. Iron is hard and the Material of war, a curtain is both a divide and a screen to hide what you are doing. Stalin creating an “iron curtain”, Churchill is having a “peep under the iron curtain” giving him a glimpse of the reality of the situation. Behind the wall it shows a developing Soviet economy the factories symbolizing economic strength, planes representing military strength and black flags which ultimately symbolized the world view of the Soviets created by western propaganda. Stalin a tyrant who kept control by force, which instilled a fear of…show more content… He had lived in Moscow as an ambassador since 1933. He hated Communism; his telegram was re-written and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” became public to the Americans. It formed the foundation of American policy towards Russia for the next century. Many criticisms of Kennan’s telegram have been, by some historians, for not giving enough weight to Soviet belief in Communism. Both historians proved a balanced view if the events that led up to 1947 Gaddis “citizens of the United States could plausibly claim to live in the freest society on the face of the earth’ while ‘the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, at the end of World War II, the most authoritarian society on the face of the earth’. No wonder the two societies clashed. His view was further strengthening by Martin McCauley puts the post-revisionist view in 1983. The Cold War was not inevitable: it became a reality because of the needs of both the Soviet Union and the United States. The USSR placed security above all other considerations, and this was not sufficiently appreciated in the United