"Of course not, in fact, if we fight with the Soviets, we will drag the American economy into the abyssal quagmire, although we regard ** as a flood beast, but there is nothing we can do." Secretary of State Marshall answered honestly.

"Then why do we have to do this kind of excesses, you know that it may be a way to drag the United States into the quagmire of war, maybe we should seek a peaceful way to talk to the Soviets for the time being." Truman wanted to appease the Soviet Union with appeasement first, after all, what the Americans did was untenable until the investigation was clear.

"That's a no-no." James Forrestal, a military-turned-defense secretary, also spoke in a hard-line tone: "The Soviet economy collapsed after World War II, and from the moment they first expressed interest in Secretary Marshall's plan, we knew that their economic construction had not yet been able to climb out of the quagmire of the Soviet-German war." All we have to do is continue to adopt a tough foreign policy and military blockade to let the Soviets know that the Americans are not the characters that the guys with screwdrivers can bully. ”

From the beginning of Marshall's plan, Stalin had shown cautious interest in aiding the plan. He believed that the Soviet Union was in a very favorable international environment after the war, and therefore it was not impossible to accept even conditional assistance. He also sent Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to Paris for talks with the British and French foreign ministers.

Britain and France had already grasped the true intention of the United States not to want the Soviet Union to join the aid program. As a result, they put forward a number of conditions that were unacceptable to the Soviet Union. One of the most important was that any country receiving aid would inevitably lose a portion of its economic sovereignty, which the Soviet Union simply could not accept. At the same time, the British and French foreign ministers insisted that the recipient countries must participate in the construction of a single European market, which was obviously incompatible with the highly centralized planned economic system of the Soviet Union. In the end, Molotov rejected the aid package and left Paris.

"But in July and August last year, the Soviet Union signed trade agreements with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and other Eastern European countries, which is the Molotov plan of the Soviets, and they used it to resist and counter our economic aid plan."

James Forrestal was overly optimistic about the situation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and although the European part of the Soviet Union suffered the same devastation as other European belligerents in the war, her Asian part did not suffer much and took advantage of the war to industrialize rapidly.

The Soviet Union also demanded large war reparations from the former Axis powers in its sphere of influence. Finland, Hungary, Romania and East Germany were forced to pay large reparations, with East Germany in particular paying the largest amounts. At the same time, these countries had to supply the USSR with large quantities of raw materials and industrial goods. These reparations brought the Soviet Union no less than the benefits that those countries that participated in the Marshall Plan received from the program.

In short, although the Soviet Union has not yet recovered 100% from the war, it is still far from the economic weakness described by the Minister of Defense.

But no matter how sober Truman's mind was, he could not stand the joint deception of a chief adviser and a secretary of defense, a group of winners who had crawled out of the dead of war, and the way to think about the problem was first and foremost from a military point of view, Marshall proposed, "We can use a limited war to contain and deter the Soviet Union from imminent action." ”

"Oh?" Marshall's words piqued Truman's interest.

Marshall took out a pen, picked up a piece of white paper and put it on the table, and then took a few circles on the white paper to represent the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe, and he pointed to the area on the paper with the pen and said, "This circle represents the United States, this circle represents the Soviet Union, and this is the whole of Europe, and this is the Berlin dividing line." ”

"We can deploy tanks, planes and artillery in West Germany to form a strategic deterrent, and we can deploy C47 and C46 transport planes in Europe to increase the transportation of supplies, and we must ensure the living conditions of the West German people. If the Soviets make any moves, such as warning us, we can also strike back diplomatically and build momentum in international public opinion, saying that this is a deliberate ploy by the Soviets in order to discredit our aid. Second, to warn the Soviets that if one of our transport planes was shot down by one of your shells, the United States would use all its military power to help the East Germans liberate themselves from the tyranny of the Soviets. ”

"Yes, we don't need to fight the Soviets to the end, even if there is a real war, we just need to control the situation within the scope of Germany and never cross the line, as for the people involved in the war, it is not necessarily us Americans, it is enough to have angry West German government troops, the United States only needs to provide them with weapons."

"Moreover, the cause of the war was also provoked by the Soviets first, and they were untenable in public opinion, and the countries of Eastern Europe were not willing to join another war just after the end of the war. In addition, the countries of Western Europe were afraid of the strength of the Soviet Union, and if the United States offered to help them build up their military deployment, I think these countries would also be happy to accept it, so that we could carry out a deployment strategy in Europe and complete the containment plan for the expansion of the power of the Soviet Union and its allies. ”

The plan proposed by Marshall was the prototype of the strategic containment of the Soviet Union by the United States in the future, but later it was to directly deploy ballistic missiles against polar bears, which is the so-called NATO European missile defense system.

"And of all the countries, only we, the United States, have the atomic bomb, so the worst plan is for us to evacuate all the civilians of East Germany to West Germany, and then use the atomic bomb to turn the whole of East Germany into radioactive ruins. The complete disappearance of the Soviet Union's strategic buffer would be dangerous, and would turn the United States into the focus of international public condemnation. ”

After talking for so long, Marshall's mouth was also a little dry, and at this point he hoped that President Truman would make a decision based on his advice.

"Well, I think Marshall's approach is very feasible, so James Forrest can talk to the British side to see if they support our plan, and the United States needs a group of allies who speak to the Soviet Union and let the Soviets know that they are isolated in the international environment." Truman said thoughtfully.

Perhaps remembering that he had been leaving the director of the CIA aside, Truman also gave him a task at this time, "to maintain a continuous follow-up of the situation in East Germany, to give priority to the analysis of any first-hand intelligence, and then present the results of the processing directly to me." ”

"Yes, so does President Truman need to listen to intelligence about the Chinese Civil War?" Rothko tried to save his image in front of Truman.

However, the director of the intelligence bureau really didn't open any pot, Truman was already disgusted with Chiang Kai-shek, and when he mentioned him at this time, he complained again, "No need, this guy will ask us for weapons and funds, what else does he do?" He's a bad horse! ”

The only person who has outspoken the number of leaders of China's state-state-party-party group is Truman. Historically, Truman was extremely disgusted with Chiang Kai-shek, and he said in his "Oral Autobiography": "Chiang's army was never a good army. We gave about 350 million yuan of military equipment to these so-called free Chinese, and as a result, on the front from Beijing to Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek's army of about 5 million was defeated by 300,000 communists, and the communists took these military equipment and swept Chiang and his men out of Chinese mainland. To be honest, he has never been a thing. They asked me to send millions of American troops to save him, but I refused. Chiang Kai-shek is really hopeless, their ** is innate, and I am determined not to waste even the life of an American to save him. I don't care what they say. They continue to scold and accuse me of softening communism and of being ignorant, but I will not succumb to these accusations. I've never changed my opinion about Chiang and his gang, and these bastards deserve to be in jail one by one. ”

Of course, there is another leader in the future who is also lying down and getting shot, that is, South Korea's Syngman Rhee.

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