Alicia

“The USSR felt safe only on a continent it controlled. The movement of Russian power or ideology westward from the Elbe or Danube could only bring the USSR into violent confrontation with the North Atlantic civilization. And the United States had twice taken to crusade to prevent the consolidation of Western Europe under single-power hegemony.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, This kind of peace

“Neither the Russians nor the Americans were the cleverest people, or the most experienced, in the world that followed 1945. The French were rather more civilized, the British more knowledgeable, and even the Italians at times more practical. But if you have the ships, the guns, and the money, too, cleverness or experience is not really necessary. Even a reasonable amount of blundering can be survived.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, This kind of peace

“The great-power veto, which paralyzed the security arrangements of the Council, had not been unrealistic. It was merely a sublimation of the veto power actually held by powerful countries in the field of action, in the same way that ballots are not sacred, but only a sublimation of clubs or bullets, in the domestic arena.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, This kind of peace

“Harry Truman, and the men around him, were learning the necessity of acting first and talking later. Harry Truman was learning there are times when peoples have to be saved whether they want such salvation or not.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, This kind of peace