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Main article: Truman Doctrine
The immediate post- 1945 period may have been the historical high point for the popularity of Communist ideology. The burdens the Red Army and USSR endured have earned it massive respect which, had it been exploited by Stalin, had a good chance of resulting in a Communist Europe. Communist parties won sizeable shares of the vote in countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Finland and won significant popular support in Asia - in Vietnam, India, and Japan - and throughout Latin America. In addition, they achieved a significant popularity in such nations as China, Greece, and Iran.
Britain and the United States were concerned that a political victory by communists in any of these countries could lead to a Soviet takeover similar to those in Eastern Europe. While the Soviet Union acquiesced to Anglo-American efforts to impede Soviet access to the Mediterranean (a perennial focus of British foreign policy since the Crimean War in the 1850s), the Americans heating up their anti-Communist campaign.
Greece was regarded as a nation well within the sphere of influence of Britain by both East and West. Stalin had respected his agreement with Churchill to not intervene, but Yugoslavia, under Tito, continously sent arms and supplies to the Greek communist partisan forces, the ELAS (National Popular Liberation Army). Initially Britain had given aid the royalist Greek forces, and ELAS leaders, failing to realize that there would be no Soviet aid and foolishly boycotted the elections, was at a disadvantaged position. However by 1947, the near-bankrupted British government, forced to take aid from such nations as New Zealand, could no long maintain its massive overseas commitments. In addition to granting India independence and handing back the Palestinian Mandate to the United Nations, the British government decided to withdraw from both Greece and the nearby Turkey. This would have left the two nations, in particular Greece, vulnerable to a communist takeover.
Notified that British aid to Greece and Turkey would end in less than six weeks, Washington, already hostile towards and suspicious of Soviet intentions, decided that they had to act. With the Congress solidly in Republican hands and populated by the traditional isolationists, Truman adopted an ideological approach. In a meeting with congresssional leaders, the argument of "like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one" was used to convince them of the significance in supporting Greece and Turkey. It was to become the Domino Theory, the justification for containment. On the morning of 21 January, 1947, Truman appeared before congress to ask for $400 milion of aid to Greece and Turkey. Calling on congressional approval for the United States to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures", or in short a policy of containment, Truman articulated an over-simplistic presentation of the ideological struggle that became known as the Truman Doctrine and was to be the single dominating (albeit misleading) influence over American thinking untill at least the Vietnam War.
Truman's speech had a tremendous effect. The anti-communist feelings that had just begun to hatch in the US were given a great boost, and a silenced Congress voted overwhelmingly in approval of aid. The United States will no longer withdraw back to the western hemisphere as it did after WWI; from then on Ameica would actively engage perceived (hence often false) communist threats anywhere in the globe. Though done in the name of freedom and democracy, in reality the United States would support anyone that is not communist, as evident in Korea, Vietnam and the South American nations. Other cases at which this was tested include the European Recovery Program, the Italian elections of 1948 and the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan.
Main article: Marshall Plan
After placing these concerns before the public, the United States launched massive economic reconstruction efforts, first in Western Europe and then in Japan (as well as in South Korea and Taiwan). The Marshall Plan began to pump $12 billion into Western Europe. The program was presented as a financial tradeoff; by rebuilding these states quickly, the U.S. could end their long-term dependence on aid and restore them as trade partners. Germany, Europe's most industrialized and resource-rich country, was particularly important in this effort. Furthermore, the reconstruction programs helped create clientelistic obligations on the part of the nations receiving US aid; this sense of obligation fostered willingness to enter into military alliances and, even more important, political alliances.
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