How Truman Didn’t Start The Cold War, Part 1
How FDR Misjudged Stalin Well Before Yalta And How His Approach to Diplomacy Led Him To Make Critical Errors
Because of FDR’s place in history as one of the greatest Presidents of all time, there is a tendency to view him as perfection in the office personified and that everything that went wrong with the Soviets could have been avoided because of a misunderstanding of Roosevelt’s vision. But while he had the greatest political instincts imaginable and was superb at using the strength of his personality to sweep his vision for the office along, the fact remains that he was so convinced of his own vision that he far too often refused to consider anyone else’s position then his. He was considering running for a third term even before circumstances made it necessary and the fact remains that during the years leading up to that decision he did nothing to groom a potential successor.. In a way for FDR that statement of Louis XIV “l’etat es Moi’ was a reality. As is written by Wilson Miscamble whose From Roosevelt to Truman is one of my primary sources:
“FDR relished moving outside established channels and in diplomacy he seemed especially to enjoy overlooking State Department officials and foreign service professionals in favor of confidantes and personal emissaries….His keen desire to preserve his freedom of action led him often to either postpone decisions or to make them hastily without significant study regarding implications or consequences. Both approaches would be evident in his wartime diplomacy.
Roosevelt’s personalization of the office and of foreign policy was only going to be effective as long as he was President. It was inevitable when he died that there would be immediate changes in the way foreign policy was formulated. Harry Truman was not FDR and couldn’t carry on policies the way he had. Somehow that fact never enters into certain interpretations of the post-war policy.
And the fact remains that FDR’s international policies were formed in a very real sense by his experiences as part of his role in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. This is understandable considering how the failures to realize a world after Versailles were the underlying cause of Hitler’s rise in Germany. Roosevelt understandably viewed Germany as the villain and its total defeat was the underlying goal of whatever post-war policy he imagined.
And he also believed in a ‘radical reduction of the weight of Europe’. This amounted to a permanent disarmament of all nations in colonial Europe. The problem was that in this post war Europe he saw the Soviet Union taking the role, along with the United States, Britain, and (improbably) China as the world’s policemen, something me told Foreign Minister Molotov in a visit he made to DC in May of 1942. In his conception of it, the extension of Soviet power into Eastern and Central Europe was acceptable.
While FDR was foresighted in seeing that America would have to take the central place of leadership in his envisioned postwar world and that the policies of isolation of his predecessor were no longer applicable he fundamentally and repeated failed to misjudge that the Soviet Union could play a similar role in a post-war world. While he was reluctant to even consider reviving the League of Nations that had doomed Wilson’s Presidency he eventually conceded to it in 1943. Nevertheless he was still insistent that this could only work with continued cooperation among Britain, the Soviet Union and America, particularly between the latter two countries.
He was also correct in his position on colonialism and the dissolution of imperialism, a view that Churchill in particular was never onboard with and spent much of his leadership and indeed the rest of his life fighting against. FDR and Churchill’s relationship, however strong it was, does not hide the fact that both men had radically different views of the post-war world. Churchill believed unabashedly in the idea of the British Empire and for all his views on Hitler to the freedom of the world, it was clear his vision of involved a restoration of Great Britain and by extension’s Europe’s superiority in the world order. Churchill was a member of the Conservative Party and that was what conservative met in Britain then — and still holds over the United Kingdom today.
FDR rejected the idea of continued British imperialism and he was speaking from a clear position of strength. The British Empire place in the world was in decline even before the war began and as the war progressed it became more evident. But where FDR clearly blundered was to ‘trust the Russians and win their trust in return.” And it’s there that his fundamental flaw in post-war policy is the most obvious,
From the start of his administration FDR had never been as anti-communist as the rest of the country, granting diplomatic recognition to the Communist regime something no predecessor had done. The first American ambassador to the U.S.S.R William Bullitt, quickly learned what was happening under Stalin. His successor Joseph Davies, however, had a high regard for Stalin and chose to ignore or dismiss the realities — which including, need the left be reminded, purges, show trials, brutality and tyranny. Laurence Steinhardt, Davies’s replacement, was a realist and took an accurate measure of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the War against Finland, and the seizure of the Baltic states. He correctly saw the Soviets as ‘accomplices’ of Nazi aggression in the first two years of the war in Europe. As a result he opposed unrestricted aid after Hitler violated that pact, recommended reciprocity and then only in exchange for Soviet cooperation. As a result, FDR would marginalize him because of this.
FDR seems to have basically chosen to ignore what Stalin was doing to much of Europe, rationalizing it as ‘a natural step in view of the (supposed) British and French intentions to push Hitler eastward.” Nor was he troubled by Stalin’s record of ruthless violence and internal repression as cause for restraint. Apparently he was in accord with the left-wing and progressives of his New Deal coalition for the Soviets when they moved into the anti-fascist camp and even seemed to believe the Western intellectual romance of the Soviet experiment. That would seem to be an absurd point of view to take for not only the President but a man who was getting radically different pictures of the reality on the ground from his diplomatic corps. And yet he chose to ignore then in favor of Davies and more importantly Harry Hopkins. Even the fact that his administration consistently warned him of Soviet espionage efforts within it — which would later be revealed to include dozens of mid-level government employees, including Harry Dexter White, his assistant secretary of the treasury — he spent the war basically ignoring what he was hearing. There is even a real possibility that Hopkins himself may have been a Soviet agent.
Incredibly the administration determined that the Soviet Union was evolving towards democratic socialism and that much of its pathological behavior had to be overlooked or tolerated. They were certain that if they were patient, accommodating, friendly and did everything short of appeasement, democracy would take root in the Soviet Union. Less than a year after Stalin was still maintaining his pact with Hitler, FDR assured Molotov that they would be part of the post-war world.
The clearest difference between Churchill and FDR, in many ways, comes down to their approach to Stalin. Churchill famously said about him once: “If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” He was also fooled by Stalin to an extent, but he had no illusions at to the kind of devil he was dealing with. FDR either never recognized that Stalin was ‘the Devil’ or somehow thought through the sheer force of his political personality that he could convert him. He remained in complete denial of that fact throughout the war and no matter how many times Stalin betrayed that trust, particularly near the end of the war, he seemed more convinced in his own judgment and those of a very narrow circle. He continuously ignored the advice of his own ambassadors. When Bullitt said in August of 1943 about a dominion of Europe by Stalin FDR said: “I have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man. Harry Hopkins says he not….and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing in return, noblese oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”(Bullitt has confirmed this multiple times.). FDR genuinely seemed to think that he could dispel the prejudices of a man who had no interest of being manipulated of a capitalist nation whose ultimate destruction he welcomed. Indeed the reverse proved to be true: Stalin quickly gained the initiative in this relationship and put all of the burden on Roosevelt to prove Western friendship.”
And FDR was more than willing to do that. He delivered soothing addresses in his fireside chats and promoting what was for all intents and purposes Soviet propaganda to improve their image in America. He either downplayed or didn’t appreciate the ideological chasm between democracy and Stalin’s regime. He actually began to believe the Russian’s predilection for ‘spitting in his eye’ as a mechanism of their diplomacy.
Charles Bohlen, a longtime State department official and who never felt badly towards FDR said the following:
“…as far as the Soviets were concerned, I don’t think Roosevelt had any real comprehension of the thinking of a Bolshevik from a non-Bolshevik, and particularly from an American. He felt that Stalin viewed the world somewhat in the same light that he did, and that Stalin’s hostility and distrust, which were evident in the wartime conferences, were due to the neglect Russia had suffered at the hands of other countries for years after the Revolution. What he did not understand was that Stalin’s enmity was based on profound ideological convictions.”
And this showed his utter disinterest in anything but the defeat of Germany. He had no real concern what happened to all the conquered nations in Europe once Germany collapsed. If that meant the Soviet Union took their place in Central and Eastern Europe, he seemed blasé about it. When the three leaders met in Teheran FDR was absolutely fine letting Stalin absorb not only the Baltic states but redraw the boundaries of Poland. He seemed more concerned about keeping all of this quiet until after the 1944 election then anything else about the fate of the nation. He teased Churchill in front of Stalin, visibly humiliated him in order to make Stalin ‘laugh’, which he consider proof that Stalin was ‘get-at-able’. FDR seemed to believe more that personal relations would bring about a post-war world rather than a hard-headed strategy.
The longer 1944 went Americans seemed to accept that Eastern Europe would be under Soviet control. “The Russians are perfectly friendly,” FDR explained. “They aren’t trying to gobble up Europe or the rest of the world.
Poland showed the fundamental blindness of FDR. Britain had, lest it be forgotten, enter the war in defense of Polish sovereignty which had been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union. FDR’s approach to Poland throughout 1943 and 1944 was essentially to tell them to stop complaining about being Anti-Soviet. When the Polish government was understandably hesitant about this FDR was irritated — and made it clear to his Vice President Henry Wallace that ‘the Poles were handling things very badly and that Stalin’s ideas were sound with regard to Poland.” Even after the Soviet government announced their puppet Polish committee would oversee the administration of Poland and Stalin’s behavior led to the Warsaw uprising and subsequent massacre FDR chose to turn the other cheek. Despite the advice of George Kennan and Averill Harriman during this period FDR blithely denied even the concept of harsher restrictions or demands on Stalin.
Churchill eventually realized that he was dealing with ‘a monstrous Tsar writ large, a new Ivan the Terrible’ and that it was geography and territory that now mattered. But FDR only cared about how Stalin’s behavior would reflect on America. Postponement and obfuscation were now his main instruments.
And all of this falls under the equally undeniable fact that while most of this was going on FDR’s was dying. He was in no condition to run for reelection and the fact that Truman ended up his nominee for Vice President was a sign that everyone around him knew he would not survive to see this post-war world. If ever there was a time to at the very least start telling other people of his post-war vision it was now. And yet FDR remained in denial of that fact all the way through his reelection campaign and up to his inauguration. He still believed his vision could prevail, despite the fact he was in no condition to govern, much less lead. FDR had made it very clear how the world was going to be well before he flew to Yalta.
In the next part of this article I will deal with the events of Yalta, how they were less significant than history has made them appear and how FDR’s passing ensured his legacy would be intact — and that Truman could only disappoint.