January 02, 2005
NOT WILLFUL, JUST FOOLISH:
Roosevelt’s Failure at Yalta: At an old tsarist resort almost 60 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met Joseph Stalin to determine the fate of post-war Europe. Roosevelt, argues Arnold Beichman, misread Stalin—and proved naive about communism itself. (Arnold Beichman, Fall 2004, Hoover Digest)
I do not intend to argue about President Roosevelt’s “purposes” at Yalta. Obviously the coauthor of the Atlantic Charter could not have wanted Central Europe to fall prey to Stalin’s postwar designs. The question, then, is not the virtuousness of FDR’s purposes but the quality and intelligence of his diplomacy in seeking the fulfillment of those purposes.I begin by examining President Roosevelt’s decision to engage in personal diplomacy in 1933 on the question of recognition of the Soviet Union.
In the early years after the Bolshevik revolution, some U.S. diplomats who had begun to specialize in Soviet affairs believed that we should have as few dealings with the USSR as possible. Loy W. Henderson, a longtime career diplomat and one of the principal architects of twentieth-century U.S. diplomacy, opposed the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union until it could give credible guarantees that it would not interfere in U.S. internal affairs.
In his memoirs Bohlen says that Henderson “led the quiet struggle in the [Roosevelt] administration against the soupy and syrupy attitude toward the Soviet Union. A man of the highest character, absolutely incorruptible, he always spoke his mind, a practice that did not make him popular.”
Henderson was concerned that Lenin’s revolutionary ambitions had rendered the USSR institutionally incapable of fulfilling the international accords it had signed, let alone of abiding by the private assurances it had given. He wrote:
It was my belief that since leaders of the Kremlin eventually were intending to contribute to the violent overthrow of all the countries with which the Soviet Union maintained relations, they considered Soviet relations with every country to be of a temporary or transitional character, subject to change at any moment.
The fundamental continuity of Soviet foreign policy vis-à-vis the Western democracies, which was luminously clear to Henderson and his subalterns from day one of the Bolshevik revolution, was apparently not so clear to President Roosevelt or to those around him like Harry Hopkins, who simply did not, could not, or would not understand the meaning of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism.
A few months after his March 4, 1933, inauguration, the State Department’s Eastern European Division presented FDR with a paper on how he might proceed in the negotiations for recognition of the Soviet Union. The memorandum, dated July 27, 1933, contained this prescient paragraph:
The fundamental obstacle in the way of the establishment with Russia of the relations usual between nations in diplomatic intercourse is the world revolutionary aims and practices of the rulers of that country. . . . It would seem, therefore, that an essential prerequisite to the establishment of harmonious and trustful relations with the Soviet Government is abandonment by the present rulers of Russia of their world revolutionary aims and the discontinuance of their activities designed to bring about the realization of such aims. More specifically and with particular regard to the United States, this prerequisite involves the abandonment by Moscow of direction, supervision, control, financing, et cetera, through every agency utilized for the purpose, of communist and other related activities in the United States.
Little attention was paid in the White House to this memorandum, which dealt with other bilateral issues as well. President Roosevelt was as determined to recognize the USSR as he was to ignore the openly avowed purposes of the Communist International (the Comintern). Even though the documents leading up to recognition contained a Soviet concession that it would refrain from subversive and propaganda activities in the United States, the document failed to mention the Comintern by name. Within a week after the announcement of the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1933, the Daily Worker, the Comintern voice in the United States, was boasting that any claim that “the Litvinov Pact applies to the Communist International will meet with defeat.”
It was an ominous event; the Soviet Union was flouting its agreements even before the ink was dry. In the ensuing decades, Soviet disregard of its agreements would be repeated over and over again, which American policymakers usually shrugged off with a what-can-you-do-about-it frown, often seeking to conceal the violations from the American public.
The United States government was fully warned, almost prophetically, by its diplomats who had studied the Soviet Union and understood what recognition entailed. As late as 1953, George Kennan wrote that the United States “should never have established de jure relations with the Soviet
government.” Yet FDR, with willful ignorance, embarked on a recognition policy without even seeking an enforceable quid pro quo. American recognition of the USSR, formally announced on November 16, 1933, only strengthened that totalitarian state.What else but this same willful ignorance would account for the foolish White House statements about Stalin during World War II? What else but a frightening opportunism could account for President Roosevelt’s silence on the Katyn Forest massacre when he knew from Winston Churchill that Stalin was responsible for this atrocity?
One of the falsehoods with which the New Deal historians comforted themselves was that no one could have have known that saving Bolshevism and giving Eastern Europe to Stalin would lead to the disaster that it did. It's not helpful to their cause that everyone in government knew it except for FDR and the other true believers. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 2, 2005 08:47 AM
Which New Deal historians?
Posted by: Rick Perlstein at November 21, 2004 05:09 PMSchlesinger is mentioned by name, but most all.
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 05:30 PMOne central planner admires another? That's surprising? What makes FDR any different from the legions of naive dreamers who made excuses for The Great Helmsman? The creation of the bureaucratic state was FDR's program and Stalin was a superstar in that area. He probably found it hard to believe in the capacity for evil inherent to the total state. The modern Democratic party is still unaware of the problem. They have been making excuses for tyrants throughout my lifetime. FDR admired power and within his realm Stalin had it all.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at November 21, 2004 06:16 PMThe Soviet Union was a fact and it is always better to recognize facts than to ignore them. In the immediate postwar world, the Soviets would have kicked our butts, about 40% of Europeans voted for Communist parties in the first election after WWII. If we had fought the Soviets, the Fifth Column damage to our efforts would have been off the charts.
I've often been of the opinion that Beichman is a self-hating Jew, and his admiration of the anti-semite Loy Henderson is merely another example.
Posted by: Bart at November 21, 2004 06:25 PMRecognizing the Soviet Union for what it was would have been helpful.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at November 21, 2004 06:42 PM"...those around him like Harry Hopkins, who simply did not, could not, or would not understand the meaning of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism."
Balderdash! Hopkins understood perfectly -- it is almost certain he was a communist agent, while also being Roosevelt's closest advisor.
Hopkins has been exposed as an agent in KGB: The Inside Story, by Oleg Gordievsky, where Ishhak Akhmerov, an undercover spymaster who controlled the KGB’s "illegal" agents in the United States during World War II, described Harry Hopkins as "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States." He said that other KGB officers in the directorate in charge of illegals and the U.S. experts in the KGB’s code section "all agreed that Hopkins had been an agent of major significance."
Further confirmation of Hopkins’ collaboration with the KGB came with the 1999 publication of The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive. This was based on copies of KGB files spirited out of Russia by retired KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin. One file disclosed that Hopkins had informed the Soviet embassy that the FBI had bugged a secret meeting between Steve Nelson, a member of the U.S. Communist underground, and a Soviet embassy official. Further confirming Hopkins’ treachery, Akhmerov said that an agent identified as "19" reported a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill. An endnote in the Mitrokhin book says that "it is probable almost to the point of certainty that Hopkins was '19'."
It was Hopkins who persuaded Roosevelt to supply arms to Stalin, and it was Hopkins who convinced him to go to Yalta, though Roosevelt was deathly ill.
Posted by: jd watson at November 21, 2004 06:47 PMI'm with Bart on the issue of recognition. Plus, what was the alternative? Diplomatic relations with the White Russian "government" in Paris, which was thoroughly penetrated by GPU/NKVD?
Posted by: PapayaSF at November 21, 2004 07:36 PMBart:
Why aren't you a self-hating Jew for supporting the anti-semites FDR and Stalin?
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 08:04 PMI think Tom C. has it about right. The more history of the 30's-40's I read, the more I am convinced that, to the American liberal establishment, communism was viewed as a movement with its heart in the right place, but jsut a little rough around the edges. In other words, liberalism on steroids. That bias pervades the academic histories not just of theNew Deal and WWII, but of the Cold War as well and is, at bottom the reason most of them resist giving credit to Reagan for ending the cold war. He saw evil and called it by its name, they refused to see it and would argue, assuming arguendo that Communism was evil, that it would be wrong to call it evil.
Posted by: Dan at November 21, 2004 10:26 PM"Was viewed" Dan? They and their spawn are still around with the same viewpoint but a subtler message. True believers, and still working for the party. What they've been able to accomplish in 75 years has been impressive. The Blogs will eventually wear them down, but there'll always be Utopians among us with stars in their eyes.
Posted by: genecis at November 21, 2004 10:57 PMTo the example of Hopkins we can add Harry Dexter White and Algar Hiss, and frankly who knows how many other Soviet agents riddling the Roosevelt administration.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 21, 2004 11:38 PMAll these arguments about Yalta seem to blithely ignore the fact that the Red Army occupied all the areas where the USSR asserted control. Short of an immediate WWIII, nothing could be done to save them.
Had Operation: Market Garden succeeded (or if Pattron was given the supplies he needed to attack the Siegfried Line) and Western Allied troops been east of the Rhine, Yalta would have been much different as American British troops would have likely reached Berlin, Prague, and perhaps even further.
It all comes down to whose boots were on the ground when the fighting ended.
oj,
Because the alternatives to both were worse. Hence, my preference for the Kaiser in WWI and Napoleon in the early 19th century.
I hardly call my opinion of Stalin 'support.'
Posted by: Bart at November 22, 2004 06:53 AMBart:
Ah, so you pick anti-Semites for good reasons but no other Jew does?
Posted by: oj at November 22, 2004 07:09 AMChris:
Certainly he'd so mishandled the Soviets by then that fighting was necessary.
Posted by: oj at November 22, 2004 07:31 AMI went down to the library and read some articles from old magazines (20's and 30's). It really amazed me how they were debating the merits of fascism or communism. Those few men who wrote about the evils of Stalin were saints, by any standard.
During this time, my relatives were being slaughtered by Stalin.
It is interesting to note, however, that a man like FDR can be judged by studying those he chose as friends; and a man like G.W. Bush can be judged by looking at those who hate him.
Posted by: Randall Voth at November 22, 2004 08:56 AMClever man that Hopkins, rescuing capitalism for the benefit of Stalin.
But sneaky.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 22, 2004 09:10 PMRepeating the New Dealer fan's myth about rescuing capitalism was silly then but is absurd now. Are we not still debating the least painful ways to to climb out of the morass? The Soviet Union's version of state socialism was presumably what they were trying to "save capitalism" from becoming. If adopting a milder version was the answer, the question was posed by a fool.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at November 22, 2004 10:32 PMHarry:
Hitler rescued capitalism. No war, no recovery in the States. The New Deal had failed.
Posted by: oj at November 22, 2004 11:23 PMYou miss the point.
Whether Hopkins and the New Deal really rescued capitalism or not, they surely intended to. Odd behavior by agents of Moscow, don't you think?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 25, 2004 02:05 AMHarry:
No, that's the myth the New Deal historians spun. They meant top do away with capitalism, which they thought had failed.
Posted by: oj at November 25, 2004 09:41 AMHarry-
Only those who believed in Marx's historicist, deterministic nonsense would have believed that "capitalism" needed saving. Capitalism merely describes the economics of freedom or old fashioned "liberalism". Capitalism follows liberty as much as stagnation follows statism.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at November 25, 2004 07:37 PM