Although Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin signed an agreement at Yalta saying that Soviet claims “shall be unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated,” they also included a provision that the understanding “will require concurrence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.” Roosevelt had no doubt that Chiang would see the Soviet demands as a small price to pay for the preservation of his regime. Stalin, too, assumed that Chiang and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung would sign on to the arrangement. Roosevelt and Stalin had high hopes that the agreement would prevent a conflict in China that could seriously strain U.S.–Soviet relations.
But both of them were thinking more in terms of their respective interests than what either Chiang or Mao preferred. For Roosevelt, the agreement impressed him “as the last best hope for preserving a weak but stable China as a cooperative ally on the world scene.” For Stalin, it meant averting a Chinese civil war that could lead to China’s exclusive control by the Nationalists or the Communists, either of whom might see fit to refuse Soviet demands after victory in a civil conflict. Moreover, Stalin was not eager for a Chinese Communist regime that might challenge Soviet leadership of international communism. Neither Roosevelt nor Stalin foresaw their inability to control events in China, or if they did, were willing to acknowledge it.
By the time of Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, the worldwide destruction in the fighting had produced unimaginable losses. No one, then or later, could possibly assess the full extent of the physical and psychological damage. Somewhere between 50 and 60 million people perished between 1939 and 1945—perhaps 60 percent of them noncombatants killed by air raids, disease, executions, and famine. The war uprooted an additional 16 million people in Europe, who struggled to survive the turmoil.
A staggering amount of property damage compounded the sense of loss: in the Soviet Union, hundreds of cities and towns and thousands of villages were largely razed or left as burned-over shells of what they once were. Nearly three-quarters of all Soviet industrial plants and some 60 percent of the country’s transportation facilities were destroyed. City after city in Germany had been reduced to rubble, with millions of civilians displaced. France and the Low Countries did not escape the damage: bridges and rail lines as well as rivers and harbors were rendered inoperable by the combat. The Continent’s industrial and agricultural production were down to half of prewar levels, with creature comforts like good housing and modern plumbing a luxury beyond the reach of millions. It was apparent that the reconstruction of Europe would cost billions of dollars, and that it would be years before its residents could resume anything resembling a normal prewar life.
Only the United States emerged from the war with its population largely intact and an expansive economy that dramatically raised the country’s standard of living from where it had been in the 1930s. True, some 12 million Americans served in the armed forces, and 419,000 died in combat, but the loss of life was relatively small alongside the 325,000 British military and civilian deaths in a population roughly one-fourth that of the United States, and much smaller than the millions who perished in China, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Russia’s casualties were at least fifty times that of America’s.
Although Americans mourned their losses as much as any other combatant, they did not have to anguish over civilian deaths from air attacks on their cities, and they lived with a sense of mounting exhilaration over battlefield victories and a belief that America’s resurgent prosperity would make her the most powerful nation in the world after the war. The GNP more than doubled in the four years between 1940 and 1944, from $101 billion to $214 billion; unemployment dropped from 14.6 percent to 1.2 percent; and the share of income made by the wealthiest 5 percent fell from 25.4 percent to 15.8 percent, demonstrating a greater equality of economic well-being than at any time to that point in the country’s history. Americans entered the postwar era confirmed in a long-standing conviction that their system of governance and economic exchange made them a fit model for the rest of the world.
It was not just optimism that distinguished the American outlook, but also high hopes that the postwar world would, as Roosevelt predicted after returning from Yalta, replace traditional national security arrangements with Woodrow Wilson’s vision of collective security through a more effective international organization than the League of Nations. This time, Americans looked forward not to a league of nations but a union of nations, suggesting a commitment to larger idealistic goals by the world’s governments than was implied in a less cohesive league.
Nothing better signaled the renewed American affinity for world cooperation than the rise in public regard for Woodrow Wilson. During the 1920s and ‘30s, Wilson was a sort of national pariah. The Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations in 1919 and again in 1920, as well as the resurgent isolationism of the two decades, put Wilson in bad odor as a utopian dreamer whose hopes for international peace through a world league were thoroughly discredited. The 1934 Nye Senate Committee hearings about international arms traffic suggested that bankers and munitions makers, who were described as the driving force behind U.S. involvement in World War I, had made Wilson a tool of their self-serving interests. Although Wilson continued to have his faithful followers, no one on the national scene in the 1930s could imagine majority support for anything associated with Wilson’s idealism. Roosevelt, who had been assistant secretary of the navy in Wilson’s administration and a warm supporter of the league until his run for the presidency, made sure to keep his distance from Wilson’s memory during his election campaigns in 1932 and 1936.
The shift in mood came with the onset of the war in 1939, and especially after Pearl Harbor. Opinion surveys in 1942 revealed a revived sympathy in the country for participation in a postwar league. Americans now felt guilty for having rejected Wilson’s assertions about the League of Nations and the need for participation in international affairs; in 1942, a sympathetic Broadway play about the betrayal of Wilson’s vision was an initial indication of the shifting mood. During 1944, as postwar peace plans became a national focus, Wilson emerged as a heroic leader who had been ahead of his time. Wilson now morphed into “The Unforgettable Figure Who Has Returned to Haunt Us…. The word ‘Wilson’ now has a new definition,” the editors of Look declared. “It means peace.”
The Wilson revival reached a high point with the release of a 1944 Twentieth-Century Fox feature film biography. In this early Technicolor production, Wilson all but deserved sainthood, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, his principal rival in the fight over the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, became the familiar Hollywood villain whose appearance on the screen provoked boos and catcalls. The film reached millions of Americans and rivaled the other great spectacle of five years before, the Civil War epic Gone With the Wind. As a celebration of internationalism, the movie made the public eager for a postwar organization that could save the world from another great war.
Ever attentive to the shifting national mood, Roosevelt became an outspoken advocate in deliberations with London and Moscow of the prime need for a new peacekeeping body in postwar international relations. Roosevelt had his doubts about the effectiveness of collective security by the world’s nations and quietly emphasized his preference for the “four policemen,” Britain, China, the United States, and the USSR, assuming responsibility for regional and world peace. But mindful of how vital the American people considered a world organization, Roosevelt proposed at Yalta that the organizing conference meet in San Francisco. The venue would underscore America’s backing for the league and put the focus on the Pacific, rather than Europe, which was more of a red flag to isolationists.
Churchill and Stalin were only too happy to have the UN founding conference in the United States. Like Roosevelt, Churchill doubted that collective security was a realistic possibility in a world of self-interested nation-states. The Soviets had even greater doubts about the utility of a world organization, where they believed clashing national interests, rather than international ha
rmony, would be on full display. Moreover, they were even more doubtful than American skeptics about the likely effectiveness of giving the world community a say in the survival of individual nations.
Soviet fears of being outvoted in an international organization that could threaten their perceived security needs made them resistant to Roosevelt’s proposal for a United Nations. If they agreed to such a plan, they wanted a veto power over all UN actions, above all, anything involving their own interests. They also asked that all sixteen Soviet Socialist Republics become members of the organization, assuring Moscow of a reliable number of votes against anything they opposed and appeasing nationalistic aspirations among the many ethnic groups comprising the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt saw agreement to the Soviet proposals as calculated to destroy American public support for a new world body. He insisted that nothing be leaked to the press about the Soviet demands. The State Department labeled the sixteen Soviet republics idea the “X Matter” and kept all references to it in a department safe. Roosevelt warned the Soviets that their proposals violated American ideas about fair play and would discourage smaller countries from joining the new organization and cause the Senate, as in 1919–20, to reject American membership.
At Yalta, however, as a trade-off for tacit Anglo-American assent to Soviet control of Poland, Stalin reduced his demand for sixteen Soviet republics in the UN to two or three and agreed that states involved in a dispute should not have veto power or a vote on the issue as long as the collective action did not threaten either military intervention or economic sanctions. It was a non-concession: the UN would not be able effectively to punish Moscow for any violations of the organization’s rules. Stalin hoped that giving the Ukraine, Belarus (White Russia), and Lithuania UN Assembly seats would quiet the most intense independence sentiments among his countries’ minorities.
Churchill, who wanted to extend membership to some British Commonwealth countries, supported Stalin’s request for additional seats. Churchill also insisted that the UN have no say in the affairs of Britain’s colonies. Assurances that UN trusteeships would apply only to colonies of the Axis powers eased Churchill’s fears. Roosevelt now also saw to American interests: worried that Stalin’s demands for two or three additional UN votes would ignite public resentment, Roosevelt asked and received British-Soviet approval for U.S. parity in assembly seats.
In 1945, if Americans had learned about the self-serving decisions of the Allies in planning the United Nations organization, it would have shattered some, if not most, of their idealistic hopes for the new world league. But Roosevelt took pains to assure that the public did not learn the full substance of plans for the UN before it became a reality. Stalin, by contrast, tried to downplay the importance of the emerging organization by telling the president that Soviet foreign secretary Molotov would not be able to attend the organizing conference in San Francisco beginning on April 25 and that the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Andrei Gromyko, would come instead. Roosevelt bluntly told Stalin that “Molotov’s absence would be construed all over the world as a lack of comparable interest on the part of the Soviet Government in the great objectives of this conference.” In reply, Stalin gave rhetorical support to the importance of the emerging UN but insisted that Molotov had to be present when the Supreme Soviet of the USSR met at the same time.
Stalin’s explanation was transparently false: he could have postponed the Moscow meeting if he wanted. He may have hoped to extract some concession from Roosevelt for Molotov’s attendance in San Francisco. But he gave no indication that this was his intention. He made clear, however, that neither world nor American opinion would sway him about Poland or the UN or anything else; Soviet interests were his only concern. “As regards various interpretations, you understand,” Stalin told the president, “this cannot determine the decisions which are to be made.”
After Roosevelt died, Averell Harriman, American ambassador to Moscow, seemed to convince Stalin to send Molotov to San Francisco as a show of regard for the president’s memory and as “the most effective way to assure the American public and the world at large of the desire of the Soviet Government to continue collaboration with us and the other United Nations.” It would also help Truman “in solidifying him with the American people,” Harriman advised Stalin. Stalin must have been amused that Harriman was so ready to grant him a say in U.S. domestic affairs. Seizing on the chance to bank some credit with the new president, Stalin, declaring that “President Roosevelt has died but his cause must live on,” agreed to Harriman’s request.
While some small sentiment about the late president may have entered into Stalin’s reversal, it seems more likely that he wanted the more formidable Molotov in San Francisco to fend off possible pressures from the new Truman administration, which he believed would be more resistant to Soviet demands than Roosevelt had been. Through listening devices in the U.S. embassy and diplomatic apartments, Stalin apparently had a good idea of the influence that Harriman, who had been taking a tough line toward Moscow in private, would exert on Truman, someone with no foreign policy experience and a need to depend on his Soviet experts.
Truman immediately lived up to Stalin’s and Molotov’s expectations. Before the meeting, Truman privately remarked that relations with Moscow had been too much of “a one-way street … it was now or never” to correct course. He also said that plans for a UN would go forward no matter what the Soviets did. If they chose not to join, “they could go to hell.”
On April 23, when Molotov came to the White House before proceeding to San Francisco, Truman, following Harriman’s advice and that of other members of the State, War, and Navy departments, gave him a blunt talking-to. Truman was incensed over the fact that Molotov’s arrival in the United States coincided with Moscow’s recognition of a pro-Communist Polish government it had put in place. When discussions at the State Department and then with Truman at the White House produced no glimmer of Soviet accommodation on Poland, Truman gave Molotov what he later described as “a straight one-two to the jaw.” He instructed him to tell Stalin that the United States expected him to live up to his agreements. Truman threatened to cut off economic aid if they couldn’t find common ground. When Molotov tried to turn the discussion to the war against Japan, Truman abruptly cut him off. The seemingly unflappable Molotov, a survivor of the bloodiest of Kremlin purges, turned “a little ashy.” “I have never been talked to like that in my life,” he said angrily. “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that,” Truman replied coldly.
Truman’s tough response persuaded Stalin to adopt a more cautious approach to the new administration. Aware of American progress on an atomic bomb, he may have believed that Truman’s hard line reflected a conviction that he would not need Soviet help in defeating Japan and might be intent on threatening Moscow with the new weapon if Stalin proved too obstinate on postwar arrangements. Moreover, Stalin remained eager not to squander a continuing sense of obligation to Russia for its defeat of the Nazis and its claim on a reconstruction loan.
At the very least, Stalin saw it as wise to be more accommodating in San Francisco, where the Americans hoped to launch a more peaceful world. In a radio address to the representatives of forty-six nations attending the opening session of the conference, Truman declared it vital for the meeting to create “the essential organization to keep the peace…. If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace.” The new organization would be “a permanent monument to those who gave their lives that this moment might come.”
American secretary of state Edward Stettinius followed Truman’s call to grand purposes with another of his own. As chairman of the opening session, Stettinius urged the delegates to believe in the manageability of their task. It was not only possible to achieve the ambitious goal of establishing an effective world peace organization—it was essential. Despite fears of renewed conflicts that would defeat the purposes of the conference, Americans in San Francisco and com
mentators across the country on the emerging UN continued to invest high hope in a new world peacekeeping organization.
American optimism is not difficult to understand: the country had come through the war largely unscathed, or with far less damage than any of the other belligerents and far better prospects for the resumption of a prosperous national life. The president and secretary of state also had personal biographies that made them upbeat about what they and the United States and a world following America’s lead could achieve.
Truman never saw himself as anything but an ordinary American who had been given the opportunity to accomplish extraordinary things. His elevation to the presidency was nothing he ever imagined but came to him by dint of circumstance: he had risen from Missouri farmer to World War I army captain to local officeholder to U.S. senator to vice president and president. And while he was entirely willing to acknowledge how much of a part luck or accident had played in his good fortune, he also believed that his personal attributes had something to do with landing him in the White House. Now he hoped that a combination of favorable developments and his commitment to a new world league would make the UN a reality.
Truman saw establishing the international organization as not only wise policy but also good domestic politics. A public conviction that FDR had made a special connection to Stalin, which had overcome difficulties between them, convinced Truman that for the sake of both international progress and national harmony, he would need to do the same. Because the Stalin-Roosevelt connection had been forged in face-to-face meetings, Truman hoped that future conversations with Stalin would persuade him to continue taking “a reasonable attitude,” as he apparently had in discussions with FDR.
Stettinius’s vision of a new era in international relations also partly rested on a record of personal success. He had been a highly successful businessman, and chairman of the board of U.S. Steel. Roosevelt had brought him into government to help manage the country’s wartime industrial production and lend-lease. His effectiveness had persuaded Roosevelt to make him undersecretary of state in 1943, where he had reorganized the department. His effectiveness in preliminary talks on the founding of the UN had persuaded the president to appoint him secretary of state when Cordell Hull resigned for health reasons in November 1944.