The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

In Eastern Europe, Stalin took a very different approach, as he considered this area his rightful sphere of influence, because his troops had taken it from Hitler, and an important buffer against possible invasion from the West. After the announcement of the Truman Doctrine and the beginning of the Marshall Plan, Moscow engineered a communist coup in Czechoslovakia. The Western powers did not play fair in the territory their armies had occupied, either. After it became clear that so many Italians and French wanted to vote freely for Communist parties, the US intervened heavily in Western Europe to make sure that the leftists didn’t take over. In Paris, the government, which was heavily dependent on US financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers in 1947.29 In Italy the US funneled millions of dollars to the Christian Democratic Party and spent millions more on anticommunist propaganda. Big stars like Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper recorded spots for the US government’s Voice of America radio station. Washington organized a huge writing campaign from Italian Americans to friends and relatives back in the home country, with form letters including messages such as “A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result” and “If the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American Government will not send any more money to Italy.”30 The Communists lost.