Three leading Americans, each officially out of power, spent 1948 grappling with the coming Cold War. Henry Wallace sought accommodation with the Soviets. Eleanor Roosevelt still viewed Germany as the greater threat and pressed for conciliation with the Russians. Herbert Hoover saw no alternative to confrontation. This chapter tells the story of each person’s efforts to shape both the public discourse and the official policy at the dawn of a cold peace.

After seemingly endless and bitter infighting over postwar policy, Roosevelt clearly needed his administration heads to come together. Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 would become the ultimate document to govern American occupation policy. Thanks to his relentless plotting, wrangling, and badgering, Morgenthau had succeeded in bending it to his will. The consequences would prove disastrous. This chapter tries to understand how Morgenthau succeeded in outmaneuvering the majority within FDR’s administration.

Though support for Zionist aspirations in the United States from 1945 to 1947 included some prominent members of the Republican Party, the strongest, most persistent support came from liberals, left liberals, and leftists responding to the Holocaust and World War II. The chapter examines writings by Richard Crossman, Freda Kirchwey, I. F. Stone, Alexander Uhl, Henry Wallace, and Sumner Welles in The Nation, PM, and The New Republic.