I doubt the West was happy about such a large expansion, despite the Soviet Union’s contribution to the war effort (and also considering how evident the USSR’s territorial ambitions were prior to taking up a front against Germany).
What do you think the Cold War was all about?
Yes, mccarthyismsprings to mind
Here’s a little introductory lesson.
George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” from 1946:
It’s worth noting, though, that Kennan was not as paranoid and fanatical about dealing with the Soviet Union as others who came after him. He did advocate a policy of “containment,” in order to prevent the spread of communism, but he also argued that the American government had a responsibility to talk honestly with the American people about the true nature of the threat, without blowing it out of proportion:
This last section was quite prescient, given the anti-communist hysteria that would grip the United States from the late 1940s and through the 1950s.
Another important indicator of how some in the American intelligence and security community felt about the threat of the Soviet Union can be found in NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, from 1950. This document is much more pessimistic than Kennan’s, and much more aggressive in terms of its policy recommendation, arguing for massive military buildup to counter the threat of Soviet expansion and of nuclear war (the Soviets had exploded a nuclear device the previous year). In advocating a huge escalation of military preparedness and the development of new military technology, the report argues:
So, just keep spending, no matter what it costs. Ten years later, as he left office, President Eisenhower would look back at the consequences of that spending and warn the American people of the dangers of the military-industrial complex that it helped to create.
NATO, the military alliance by which the US guarantees the security of Northern Europe (as in: nuke the USSR if it tries to grab more land) was established in 1949.
Joe McCarthy (with Dick Nixon as legal assistant) was the ultimate “Red-Baiter”.
There is a saying: “You live your Grandparent’s life”.
Sadly, I suspect Millennials are about to see what the 50’s really looked like.
What I meant was the gain in territory immediately following WW2. Not the anxiety surrounding the Cold War. I’m just interested in how people foresaw the ‘Red Menace’ after their huge initial gains.
You can start with Churchill. He was quite cognisant of the problem, and was working to contain it before WW2 ended.
Bear in mind that the USSR took a not totally unreasonable approach that history was replete with episodes where western Europe would fling itself across the border into Russia, many millions would die, and then the remains of the invaders would retreat utterly defeated. It is doubtful they imagined that this threat had abated at the end of the war either. It only took 20 years for the hostilities of WW1 to essentially re-ignite.
All sides were looking at a recent history that suggested that a new outbreak of war was more likely than not. Given WW1 was known as the war to end all wars, you can’t blame them for the cynicism.
All of this is independent of the perceived ideological threat. It probably would not have mattered if the Czars were still in control. Communism simply provided a ready made set of alliances to exploit and expand.
Beyond the well-known Soviet anxiety about invasion through Central Europe that led them to set up friendly governments in the Warsaw Pact nations, the Soviets began to show expansionist tendencies in the Middle East, refusing to end their wartime occupation of Iran (a joint occupation that had been set up to allow Iran to act as a conduit for Lend-Lease aid coming via the Mediterranean). The crisis quickly convinced the Truman administration that wartime coöperation had been a unique pause in—rather than an end to—Soviet expansionism.
I think people were more concerned about Soviet influence outside of the Soviet Union than they were about the relatively minor expansion of Soviet territory.
Eisenhowers ‘m-i complex’ speech was a poke at Kennedy, who was going to increase defence spending. 50’s republicans were obsessed with balanced budgets. Bookend with Nixons “we’re all keynesians now”.a
Eisenhower was certainly concerned that spending would go up under Kennedy, but the speech was not simply a forward-looking poke; it was also a backward-looking assessment.
One big difference between then and now is that, then, the recent war, with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fresh in their minds, there were few politicians who relished the use of atomic weapons. They were insurance and a last resort. Now, the death and destruction of WW1 & 2, and the scares of the Cuban crisis are as much history as the Napoleonic and Trojan wars. Even Vietnam and Desert Storm are history and many young people see war as a computer game played by geeks in bunkers steering drones.
The Western governments weren’t entirely happy about the extension of the USSR’s boundaries they had to agree to at Yalta, especially since the main loser was Poland, in whose name the war had been started; but it was accepted that the territory reoccupied by the USSR wasn’t necessarily entirely populated by Poles, that the USSR was entitled to its buffer zone and both force majeure and a recognition that the USSR had won a gigantic victory in the east at huge cost obliged them to agree.
Certainly in Britain, there was in general no strong sentiment against Soviet expansion until well after 1945, and considerable sympathy for the Russians’ suffering and achievements. There was a relatively small revolt in Parliament against the plans for Poland in the Yalta agreement, but it was very much a minority.
The Western allies hoped (and thought that at Yalta they had got Stalin’s agreement) that the other countries liberated from German occupation by the Russians would be returned to regular democratic government, albeit that some of them would be regarded as within the USSR’s “sphere of influence” in terms of economic relationships. Hence Churchill’s back-of-an-envelope allocation of percentages of influence over the central/eastern European countries: Churchill was convinced Stalin was to be trusted to keep to his agreements.
Stalin countersigned Churchill’s list, but it was the recognition over the next 2-3 years that Stalin and his henchmen were busy manipulating elections, strong-arming the well-intentioned into Communist front organisations and setting up the whole mechanism of phoney “treason” show trials to dispose of opponents, that led to a change of heart, especially when it was clear that the USSR was busy trying to help local Communist parties in France and Italy into the kind of position that would enable them to take over there, in the way that they had in Hungary, Poland and so on. Moreover, the way the USSR behaved in the attempted joint Allied government of Germany destroyed any confidence that there was any common ground.
When you just got done fighting a world war against one powerful nation ruled mass murdering tyrant, you are on guard against an even more powerful nation ruled by another mass murdering tyrant that just made huge territorial gains. One that as Max Hastings points out in his book on codes and spies took advantage of the naivety of the West in spying on them.
That strikes me as a terrible irony.
It wasn’t one of Eisenhower’s finest moments. You have to remember this was Eisenhower’s farewell speech; he delivered it three days before leaving office.
So you have to ask what Eisenhower had done about the military-industrial complex during the previous eight years and the answer is ‘not enough’. Eisenhower, obviously, had a huge reputation as a military leader. He could stand up and defy the military-industrial complex based on his personal reputation.
But none of the candidates to succeed him - Nixon, Kennedy, Goldwater, Johnson, Rockefeller, Symington, Lodge, Humphrey - had Eisenhower’s stature. So none of them were going to be able to control the military like Eisenhower could.
So Eisenhower shouldn’t have just given a warning about a too-powerful military. He should have done something about it. During his presidency, he should have used his power over the military to bring it fully under presidential and congressional control so that future presidents, without his personal stature, would have held institutional control.
Fiction. European communist parties were highly popular after the war because they led the resistance and the old capitalist parties were collaborators with the Nazis. They and their allies won elections in Poland as well as in Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria , which had declared war against the Soviet Union and fought with the Nazis, in 1946 and 1947. The US refused to recognize these governments. Communists would have won elections in France and Italy if it had not been for US rigging the election. This is well known.
The Soviets also funded the Communists, so arguably it was a level playing field 
At the same time there were suspicions of fraud surrounding the 1946 Italian referendum on the monarchy…
The Communist parties did not win free and open elections, especially in Hungary. Instead, they used the tactic of getting themselves into coalition government, and then inserting Communists into the key public order and security jobs and using those positions to strong-arm other parties into a Communist-run “National Front” set up and to haul those who resisted before show trials on trumped-up charges. There were signs that that was in the wind, even in the first year or so after liberation, and by 1947 it had become blatant.
Like it or not, these are undeniable facts, evident at the time, and confirmed in more background detail since the opening of archives after the collapse of Communism.