Those hasty, impetuous souls who urged President Roosevelt to take a tougher line against the wartime claims of the Soviet Union were faced with a number of obstacles. There was Roosevelt’s strong belief that co-operation was not impossible, the desire to sustain the alliance against the Axis and give no excuse for a separate, Soviet-German peace, and concern lest a precipitate showdown prejudice impending Soviet help in the war against Japan. With the death of Roosevelt and the collapse of Germany, two obstacles were removed; and the accession of a President untrained in foreign affairs, ignorant even of the development of the atomic bomb, opened the way for advisers within the State, the War Departments, and the Moscow embassy to press their counsel. In their view, the agreements negotiated at Yalta in February 1945, and the interpretation that both Roosevelt and Stalin had put upon them, gave the Soviet Union too great a role in Europe and the Far East. That role should and could be reduced. With the military decision, at the end of April, that Soviet aid was no longer necessary in the war against Japan, diplomatic initiatives might reasonably be undertaken.
Two methods of influencing Soviet policy were tried. The first stemmed from the belief that the shattered Soviet economy would depend on western aid in its recovery; but the cutting-off of Lend-Lease failed to take effect, and Soviet policy in Poland remained unchanged. The second, the attempt to hold western troops beyond the settled demarcation line in Germany was simply parried by a Soviet counter-move in Austria. Yet pressures for an immediate showdown continued—one that might achieve effect before American troops were withdrawn from Europe.