ABSTRACT
President Truman, with a less popular touch but perhaps more accuracy, preferred the term ‘War of Nerves’ to describe the tense uncertainty that surrounded Soviet intentions in the post-war world. In February 1946 Stalin had announced a build-up of Soviet heavy industry in a speech that appeared to threaten the West. Truman sought an explanation of Soviet behaviour and George Kennan in Moscow sent the 5540-word cable to Washington known as the ‘Long Telegram’, with the opinion that the Soviet Union was an expansionist, hostile power. Kennan’s assessment was swiftly endorsed by Churchill in his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech of March 1946, followed by the State Department’s Clifford Report in September 1946.
