Although associates at the State Department and in the press saw Stettinius as handsome, affable, charming, and adept at muting personal tensions, they considered him something of a lightweight, a man with limited knowledge and understanding of the world. Nevertheless, they appreciated that he brought an enthusiasm and optimism to his leadership of the San Francisco meeting that might, in conjunction with the president’s genuine commitment to U.S. support for a new world league, bring the deliberations to a successful conclusion.
It was a daunting task that took two months of tense bargaining and left many doubtful that the result would make the world any safer from future conflicts. Soviet-American clashes over the admission of two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Belarus, of Argentina with a pro-Fascist history, and a suspect Poland under Soviet control, as well as a renewed struggle over the veto power or Russia’s ability to block action against potential acts of aggression repeatedly brought the conference to the edge of collapse.
These events occurred against a backdrop of Soviet-American tensions: a Truman decision to cut off lend-lease shipments to Russia in mid-May seemed to signal an end to wartime cooperation. But the law governing lend-lease mandated an end-of-war stoppage and a mission to Moscow at the end of the month by Harry Hopkins, who had been Roosevelt’s personal conduit to Stalin, temporarily eased difficulties and facilitated compromises that gave birth to the United Nations. The conversations with Stalin, Harriman advised the president, were “a great help. If it were possible to see him more frequently, many of our difficulties could be overcome.” The report increased Truman’s eagerness for a personal meeting.
The new organization, however, seemed unlikely to have the power to prevent future wars. Like its League of Nations predecessor, decisions over war and peace would remain invested not in the world organization but with the great powers or coalitions of states jousting with each other for national security and international control.
John F. Kennedy, the son of prominent wealthy businessman and former ambassador to Britain Joseph Kennedy, correctly pronounced on the results of the San Francisco meeting. A navy veteran with credentials as a war hero and the author of a popular 1940 book on foreign affairs, Why England Slept, Kennedy covered the conference for two Hearst newspapers. He thought the new world body would “reflect the fact that there are deep disagreements among its members…. It is unfortunate that unity for war against a common aggressor is far easier to obtain than unity for peace.” He did not think that people all over the world were “horrified by war to a sufficient extent” that they were ready to relinquish national sovereignty to a world government. “War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
New Yorker editor E. B. White shared Kennedy’s pessimism. He came away from San Francisco with the feeling that nation-states were incapable of “applying law and justice to each other…. Justice and law do not now operate and will never operate until there is in ternational government.” He complained that “under all is the steady throbbing of the engines: sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty.”
Kennedy and White were less cynical than realistic. While President Truman’s injunction to the new organization “not [to] fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a world-wide rule of reason—to create an enduring peace under the guidance of God” was an appropriate expression of hope at the close of the conference, his words could not overcome the limitations of the UN in its reach for international peace. It lacked the wherewithal to prevent the numerous wars and civil upheavals that would plague the world through the rest of the century and beyond.
Yet in spite of its shortcomings, the UN would have its share of unanticipated accomplishments: aid to displaced persons and victims of natural disasters such as famines, tsunamis, cyclones, and floods, support for environmental protections and nuclear nonproliferation, peacekeeping troops holding off explosions of ethnic cleansing and cross-border violence, and monitors trying to assure honest elections in countries struggling to establish representative governments.
Moreover, Kennedy and White were too pessimistic about the capacity of national states to curb their militarism or affinity for organized violence. The reluctance of either Germany or Japan to rebuild armies and navies that consumed so much of their country’s resources in the 1930s and ‘40s suggests that defeat, unlike after World War I, was not a lost memory or a spur to overcome past humiliations by acts of revenge. Only in response to Cold War tensions would Germany re-create an army in 1954.
The same was not true of the United States and Soviet Russia, the greatest victors in World War II. The devastation suffered by the Soviet Union became not an inducement to passivity but a reason to build as powerful a military machine as possible—one that could ensure the safety of the country from a rerun of the horrors suffered between 1941 and 1945. Similarly, the United States saw the war as a cautionary tale: isolationism and unpreparedness had been prescriptions for war, not peace. However much war seemed a monstrous alternative to peace, Soviet and American leaders made their differences not a rationale for heroic efforts at accommodation—although initiatives in that direction were not lacking, especially from the American side—but a basis for distrust and fear, the twin sources of preparations for war.
Ultimately, one of the great tragedies of World War II after the death of so many millions was that it became not an object lesson in how devastating modern weaponry had made wars of any kind—not just total war—but the foundation for military buildups by America and Russia, the two greatest victors in the conflict. Soviet defense investments deprived the consumer economy of resources that could have improved Russia’s low living standards. Ironically, Soviet military outlays ultimately contributed more to the collapse of Soviet communism than to its preservation.
In the United States, President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning against the dangers of the military-industrial complex came too late to forestall the destructive influence of the national security state. The permanent defense establishment—especially civilian national security officials bolstered by widespread, overwrought fears of communism—not only undermined democratic processes and liberties at home but also produced unwise actions abroad: witch hunts and the suppression of dissenting domestic opinion, the subversion of foreign governments in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, unnecessary wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The die was cast in the war years after Pearl Harbor and by the evolving tensions between East and West in the months between the closing days of World War II and the ossification of the Cold War in 1947.
4
HOPE AND DESPAIR
There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1965, recalled quoting the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture, as his reaction to the atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 12, 1945
With the war over in Europe, costly fighting still ahead against Japan, and a United Nations organization given life in June, Truman wanted to believe that Stalin and the Soviets would be eager to find enough common ground with the United States to ensure the peace for as far into the future as either of them could see. And yet the recent divisions over Poland and Eastern Europe raised serious doubts about the durability of the East-West alliance.
A meeting between Churchill, Stalin, and Truman, which all three agreed was needed to settle postwar arrangements for Germany, was scheduled for mid-July in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. The discussions seemed likely to be a major test of what to expect from the Big Three powers in postwar Europe.
The end of the war had freed Stalin to consult his worst angels. He had never entirely trusted his allies: knowing how quick he would be to exploit any irresoluteness they showed toward his reach for Soviet national security advantages, he assumed they were as ru
thlessly self-serving as he was. In 1944 he confided his suspicions of the British and Americans to Milovan Djilas, Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav representative: his alliance with the English did not mean “that we have forgotten who they are and who Churchill is.” Stalin recalled the British and American interventions in the post-World War I civil war between Red and White Russians in support of the conservatives. “And Churchill?” he asked rhetorically. “Churchill is the kind who, if you don’t watch him, will slip a kopeck out of your pocket! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill—even for a kopeck.”
The establishment of pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe in the closing months of the war had convinced Churchill that nothing but the firmest response to Moscow would secure Polish independence and impede Communist domination of eastern Central Europe, the Balkans, and parts of Western Europe, where he expected Stalin to encourage Communist parties to reach for control or at least a share of power. Three days after Roosevelt’s death, Churchill cabled Truman, “I am much concerned at the likelihood of Russian armies occupying large parts of Austria before any decisions are agreed for allied action in that country. I fear that this may have incalculable effects if we do not at once make clear to the Russians our very real interest in what happens in Austria.” Truman entirely agreed, and his response convinced Churchill that the new president “is not to be bullied by the Soviets.”
Churchill also made his concerns clear to Stalin. At the end of April, he bluntly cabled him that “there is not much comfort in looking into a future where you and the countries you dominate, plus the Communist parties in many other States, are all drawn up on one side, and those who rally to the English-speaking nations and their associates … are on the other. It is quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces and that all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with that would be shamed before history.” By May, Churchill was convinced that “nothing can save us from a great catastrophe but a meeting and a showdown as early as possible at some point in Germany.” He told Truman that “correspondence” could not settle current differences and “that, as soon as possible, there should be a meeting of the three heads of Government.”
Churchill was so distrustful of Stalin’s intentions and so determined to resist them that he asked British military chiefs to develop a plan of attack against the Soviet Union. Titled “Russia: A Menace to World Civilization” and code-named “Operation Unthinkable,” it was seen by Sir Alan Brooke, the chief of the General Staff, as “fantastic and the chance of success quite impossible.” The very existence of such a plan, however, spoke volumes about the extent to which East-West relations had deteriorated rapidly in the days after victory in Europe.
Truman saw the need for a meeting, but resisted a suggestion that he travel first to London, where Churchill promised him “a great reception from the British nation.” Churchill wanted them to send a message to “U. J.,” as he and FDR had privately referred to Stalin, by flying together to the conference in Germany. Truman vetoed this proposal as well: “In order to avoid any suspicion of our ‘ganging up’ it would be advantageous for us to proceed to the meeting place separately.”
Truman disliked traveling to Europe for a confrontational conference. “I am getting ready to go see Stalin and Churchill,” he wrote his mother, “and it is a chore. I have to take my tuxedo, tails, Negro preacher coat, high hat, low hat and hard hat…. I have a brief case filled up with information on past conferences and suggestions on what I’m to do and say. Wish I didn’t have to go but I do.” He confided to a diary as a navy cruiser carried him across the Atlantic, “How I hate this trip!” The thought that he might not measure up to his two counterparts—“Mr. Russia and Mr. Great Britain,” he called them—worried him. He viewed himself as something of an interloper, a replacement for the irreplaceable Roosevelt, who he believed had made an indelible mark on Churchill and Stalin.
His anxiety about replacing Roosevelt is entirely understandable. Roosevelt’s presence—as the longest-serving president in American history, the architect of the country’s economic recovery and its victory in the greatest war ever fought—seemed essential to closing out the Pacific fighting and meeting postwar challenges: demobilization and economic stability at home and reconstruction abroad. As worrisome for Truman, would either Churchill or Stalin show him the regard they had for FDR? Even though he was president, with all the power that implied, would he be able to exert the sort of influence on the British and Soviet representatives that his predecessor surely could have commanded?
To ease his fears, Truman asked Eleanor Roosevelt for advice about dealing with Churchill. She responded: “If you talk to him about books and let him quote to you from his marvelous memory, everything on earth from Barbara Frietchie to the Nonsense Rhymes and Greek Tragedy, you will find him easier to deal with on political subjects. He is a gentleman to whom the personal element means a great deal.”
Truman took some comfort from knowing that he had a way with people—that he had managed to get as far as he had by winning the Missouri public and tough-minded Washington politicians to his side. Moreover, the presence of colleagues he trusted, especially men who had had direct contact with Stalin and Churchill, also eased his concerns: the new secretary of state, James Byrnes; Roosevelt’s principal chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy; General George C. Marshall; Ambassador Averell Harriman; and Soviet expert Charles Bohlen, who was to be his translator.
Truman had been particularly eager to replace Stettinius with Byrnes—not only because he barely knew Stettinius and had a warm relationship with Byrnes dating from their days in the Senate, but also because Byrnes, as secretary, with no constitutional provision for a vice president to replace Truman, would be next in line for the presidency should Truman die. Since Roosevelt had seen Byrnes as a potential successor, Truman believed it would reassure the public that two men FDR considered suited to be president would be representing the country at Potsdam and in other end-of-war and postwar dealings.
The presence of his close friends and poker-playing cronies from Kansas City days—Charlie Ross, now his press secretary; General Harry Vaughan, White House military aide; and Fred Canfil, the U.S. marshal of Kansas City, now Truman’s special bodyguard—lightened the president’s daily burdens during the crossing when they played poker and, after, at the conference, when they gave him occasional moments of relaxed conversation. Truman took special amusement from introducing Canfil to the Russians as “Marshal Canfil,” suggesting to them that he was a high-ranking military man they had never heard of.
After Truman met Churchill on the morning of July 16 in Potsdam, he came away with renewed confidence in himself. With Stalin not arriving until the next day, Churchill had convinced Truman to see him as a prelude to formal conference sessions. Although they had spoken by telephone several times in the three months since Truman had become president, it was a chance to establish the personal rapport Mrs. Roosevelt had recommended. Because Truman still worried that Stalin would see their preliminary meeting as teaming up against him, he resisted discussing conference issues.
Their meeting took place at Truman’s residence three miles outside of Potsdam, a three-story villa, which Truman described as having a “nightmare” interior with heavy dark furnishings that seemed to reflect the gloom that had settled over postwar Berlin. Despite a meeting notable for its absence of substantive discussion about postwar problems, Truman made a positive impression on the prime minister. Churchill saw him as someone with a “gay, precise, sparkling manner and obvious power of decision.”
Truman was less impressed with Churchill. “We had a most pleasant conversation,” he confided to a diary. “He is a most charming and a very clever person—meaning clever in the English not the Kentucky [horse] sense. He gave me a lot of hooey about how great my country is and how he loved Roosevelt and how he intended to love me etc. etc…. I am sure we can get along if he doesn’t
try to give me too much soft soap…. Soft soap is made of ashhopple lye and it burns to beat hell when it gets into the eyes.”
Truman also found Churchill’s pleasure in the sound of his own voice disconcerting. He later complained that “Churchill was a man who didn’t listen very often…. He was more of a talker than a listener. He liked to talk, and he was one of the best.” After Stalin and Churchill proposed that Truman act as chairman at the Potsdam conference, Truman found it as “hard as presiding over the Senate. Churchill talks all the time and Stalin just grunts but you know what he means.”
After their morning meeting, Churchill and Truman separately visited Berlin’s inner city, which Churchill said “was nothing but a chaos of ruins.” The people, notable for their “haggard looks and threadbare clothes,” had been the victims of Hitler’s fight to the “bitter end.” Truman thought “that a more depressing sight than that of the ruined buildings was the long, never-ending procession of old men, women, children wandering aimlessly along the autobahn and the country roads carrying, pushing, or pulling what was left of their belongings…. I saw evidence of that great world tragedy, and I was thankful that the United States had been spared the unbelievable devastation of this war.”
The scenes of destruction made Truman melancholy about prospects for civilized behavior. “What a pity that the human animal is not able to put his moral thinking into practice!” he told his diary. “I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries. We are only termites on a planet and maybe when we bore too deeply into the planet there’ll be a reckoning—who knows?”