Forging the Cold War consensus in the public sphere: The Truman administration and public opinion, 1946--1948

In the years between 1946 and President Harry S. Truman's election in 1948, the United States witnessed the creation of a cold war consensus. This study attempted to answer how the cold war consensus came into existence in the public sphere, and to determine its immediate effects, in order to shed light upon the interaction of public opinion and the administration over foreign policy.; The study concluded that domestic pressures led Truman to create a cold war consensus, which reached all levels of society. The left's desertion of the administration and the influence of strong right wing movements and anti-Communist administration officials led Truman to implement firm policies, and create, through anti-Soviet rhetoric, a cold war consensus, which resulted in the legitimacy of the red fear and a popular, completely bipartisan, confrontational US foreign policy towards the USSR by the time of the Berlin Crisis of 1948.