We dealt with the immediate threat to world security. No one was ready to launch another war to liberate the Soviet Union or its sphere of influence. In the first place, people were exhausted and horrified at the destruction already wrought. In the second place, there was a variety of opinion on the evils of Stalin's regime at the time that would have prevented a consensus. The Cold War was not initiated until it became clear that post-War cooperation was going to be replaced by duplicity and competition by the Soviets, especially after reneging on pledges of political freedom and free elections in their zone of occupation. The Berlin Wall, which was, be it noted, built in the 60s by the Communists, arose to keep East Germans from escaping into the Western zone of Berlin. No, it was not our fault. It would not even matter if it were arguable, in hindsight, that we might have done something to have eased the tension, considering that people deal with immediate exigencies as best they can.
The mention of Roy Cohn trivializes the distinction between overzealous, and sometimes unscrupulous, pursuit of security issues, and the wholesale butchery or exile of groups deemed even remote threats to the Soviet regime, and show trials ending in execution of prominent Communists that Stalin considered rivals, carried out by the Soviets under Stalin.
Hitler was worse than Japan, which committed numerous atrocities, including the butchering of civilian population centers such as Nanking, but never carried out a program of systematic extermination comparable to the Nazis......... |
