February 11, 2003
D-DAY (AS IN DESPICABLE)
Big 3 Doom Nazism and Reich Militarism; Agree on Freed Lands and Oaks Voting; Convoke United Nations in U.S. April 25 (Lansing Warren, 2/12/1945, The New York Times)Allied decisions sealing the doom of Nazi Germany and German militarism, coordinating military plans for Germany's occupation and control and maintaining order and establishing popular governments in liberated countries were signed yesterday by President Roosevelt, Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill near Yalta in the Crimea, the White House announced today.The conference, held in the summer palace of former Czar Nicholas II on the black Sea shore, also called for a United Nations security conference in San Francisco on April 25. [...]
The three Chiefs of State were assisted by their Foreign Ministers, chiefs of military staffs and numerous other experts, as was the case in the previous three-power meetings. Besides Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr., President Roosevelt was accompanied by Harry L. Hopkins, his special assistant, and Justice James F. Byrnes, Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion.
Other United States delegates included W. Averell Harriman, Ambassador to the Soviet Union; H. Freeman Matthews, the State Department's Director of European Affairs; Alger Hiss, Deputy Director of Special Political Affairs, and Charles E. Bohlen, assistant to the Secretary of State. [...]
At the close of the conference President Roosevelt presented to Marshal Stalin a number of decorations awarded by the United States to military men in the Red Army. Those to be decorated will receive the rank of commander in the Legion of Merit. They include Marshal Alexander M. Vasilevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army; Air Chief Marshal Alexander A. Novikoff, commanding general of the Red Air Forces; Gen. A. K. Repin, Chief of the Soviet Military Mission to the United States; Lieutenant General Brendal, Lieutenant Colonel Krolenko, Major General Levanovich, Major General Slavin, Deputy Chief of the Red Army Staff, and Colonel Byaz.
The decorations were given in recognition of distinguished services in connection with their cooperation in American Air Force shuttle-bombing operations in Germany.
Fitting, isn't it, that the UN was gestating while we (led by communists and fellow travelers) appeased a totalitarian dictator, effectively losing WWII. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 11, 2003 10:54 PM
"effectively losing WWII" -- Huh?
1. It was the Red Army, led by Zukov (and carried by American 6x6's) that defeated Hitler's Germany. They would have done so even without the Allied invasion into Normandy.
2. At the end of hostilities Stalin had troops on the ground throuhout Eastern Europe. It would have required another war (not WWII) to displace them.
3. Indeed, that subsequent war -- known as the "cold war", commenced in 1946 (Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech" -- March of '46). and ended with the revolutions of 1989.
In what way did we "lose" WWII?
You just answered the question--we spent over 40 years, trillions of dollars, and tens of millions of lives winning the war against communism in Europe (and losing it in Asia, so far), who could have been dispatched relatively easily in '45 and immediately after.
Posted by: oj at February 12, 2003 10:02 AMThe Red Army was 10 times as big as the combined
US-British armies in 1945. If the likes of Patton
had been followed, the Russians would have
been in Dunkirk.
Hiss was an administrator. He didn't lead anybody.
Harry:
Hiss wrote the UN Charter. Hopkins was very powerful. FDR was, as you may have heard, President of the U.S. and pro-Stalin.
Harry, Alger Hiss was considerably more than "an administrator who didn't lead anybody." This was detailed in J. Haynes & H. Kehr's "Venona," a report on the decrypting of Soviet transmissions in the '40s.
According to the book, Hiss was passing government material to the GRU (the military counterpart of the KGB) in the middle '30s. Some of the information he passed concerned the State Department, where he held a high post, but much of it concerned military data. He was secretly awarded Soviet decorations.
By the time he was exposed, the statute of limitations on espionage had run out, but he was tried and was convicted of perjury in lying about it under oath.
I am aware that Hiss passed on valuable information to the USSR. But he was a minor functionary in the US government, had no policymaking duties and no influence.
Orrin's remark about Hopkins baffles me.
Given the choice between Hitler and Stalin, even a conservative like Churchill chose Stalin. There was no possible choice that said neither. The world was not structured that way then.