The paper focuses on the role played by Italy and Greece in the formation of the international policy line adopted by U.S. policy-makers towards Europe in the crucial period between early 1945 and mid-1946, during the construction of the Cold War bipolar system. What emerges from the analyzed archival sources is a White House foreign policy focused on the European Mediterranean scene. As documents in the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park allow us to observe, starting in the first half of 1945 Italy and Greece were considered by the United States as crucial to preventing Western Europe falling under the expansion of the communist bloc, and were major geostrategic theaters sensitive to national security. The two strong domestic Communist parties were elements that in Washington's analysis combined the Greek and Italian theaters, and the Mediterranean peninsulas were both evaluated by the Truman administration's top advisers as critical points for the post-war global order.
