The Lost Peace
A Churchill-Roosevelt message to Stalin summarizing the results of their deliberations put the best possible face on their plans for action in 1943. They emphasized the advantages they saw in additional Mediterranean operations, expanded bombing of Germany, and all-out efforts to meet Soviet needs for supplies that would bolster their struggle against the Nazis. As for crossing the Channel, they promised only to “prepare themselves to re-enter the Continent of Europe as soon as practicable.”
Churchill had no doubt that the news would disappoint and enrage Stalin. He thought that nothing would satisfy Stalin short of placing fifty or sixty divisions in France before the summer of 1943. Churchill was right: In February and March, Stalin pressed for more substantive details on the extent and timing of an invasion. When Roosevelt explained that they were trying as hard as possible to prepare themselves for a cross-Channel assault in August, Stalin insisted that conditions on his front demanded an attack considerably before the summer. When Roosevelt would only promise to mount an invasion “at the earliest practicable date,” Stalin gave stronger expression to his displeasure: He warned that Hitler was rehabilitating and reinforcing his armies for a spring and summer offensive in Russia; it is “essential for us that the blow from the West be no longer delayed…. I must give a most emphatic warning … in the interest of our common cause, of the grave danger with which further delay in opening a second front in France is fraught.”
During April, with no new German offensive under way and Stalin thrown on the defensive by charges that his military had executed thousands of Polish officers captured during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939, complaints about Allied hesitancy in saying when an invasion would occur temporarily disappeared. Public assertions that the Nazis had killed the Polish officers allowed Churchill and Roosevelt to mute the issue, but both had their doubts about the Soviet denials. Churchill said privately, “There is no use prowling round the three-year-old graves of Smolensk.”
Roosevelt now tried to arrange what he described to Stalin as an “informal” meeting between the two of them without military staffs and just a few aides. He suggested that they meet on either the Russian or American side of the Bering Straits, which would make it easier to exclude Churchill and avoid a formal conference with “official agreements or declarations.” He hoped that they could achieve an agreement on their military actions and the broad outlines of what their next step would be if there was “a crack-up in Germany next winter.”
Roosevelt hoped to achieve a number of things by an informal meeting. He believed he could disarm Stalin’s concerns about a second front by making clear that only tactical considerations stood in the way, and that these would be solved by the spring of the next year. Second, he wished to win Stalin’s private commitment to join the war against Japan shortly after Germany’s surrender. He saw this as vital in forcing a Japanese collapse before American troops might have to invade their home islands and risk large numbers of casualties. Third, he hoped that Stalin and he could speak candidly about Russia’s “postwar hopes and ambitions” in relation to the Balkan states, Finland, and Poland.
In addition to military strategy and postwar arrangements, Roosevelt believed that he could use a meeting to influence America’s domestic outlook on postwar international affairs. He was understandably worried that the intense isolationist sentiments of the post-1918 years not govern national thinking after the current fighting ended. Nor did he believe that Wilsonian collective security was a realistic alternative. By the spring of 1943, however, Americans were already thinking about a brave new world that might emerge from the fighting. The popularity of One World, an April 1943 book by Wendell Willkie, FDR’s Republican opponent in 1940, put Roosevelt on notice that internationalism in the United States was viewed as the fulfillment of Woodrow Wilson’s dream of international peace through a new world organization.
The bedrock of this cooperation was harmonious relations among the United States, Russia, Britain, and China. Moreover, it envisioned a world in which other nations yearned to become just like the United States. As Time publisher Henry Luce announced, the coming decades would become an “American Century.” For Roosevelt, who felt compelled to cater to public illusions if he were to prevent a return to isolationism, a meeting with Stalin could be advertised as a first step along the road to the sort of international harmony that Americans wanted to believe was the natural state of affairs between nations rather than the kind of power politics that had brought on the two world wars.
Despite initial receptivity to Roosevelt’s proposal for a meeting, Stalin rejected the suggestion in May when Churchill and FDR informed him that they were now committed to a cross-Channel attack in the spring of 1944. Stalin threw back at them their repeated unfulfilled promises to attack in 1943. He said that the Soviet government could not reconcile itself to the Anglo-American indifference to Russia’s needs in the war against their enemy. He ominously warned them that “this is not simply a matter of disappointment of the Soviet Government, but a matter of preservation of its confidence in the Allies.” Rather than drawing the United States and Britain closer to the Soviets, the tribulations of the fighting were deepening the suspicions between them and making it less certain that friendship rather than prewar antagonisms would follow the common struggle against the Axis.
Although less important to Roosevelt and the American public in the war years, relations with France were also a source of concern. France’s shocking capitulation to Germany after only two months of fighting in the spring of 1940 had soured Roosevelt on France’s place in the pantheon of great powers. Although he had recognized France’s Vichy government, which owed its existence to collaboration with Nazi Germany, Roosevelt considered that a policy of strict expediency. He hoped to use the connection to Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain’s government as a way to keep the French fleet and its North African colonies out of German hands.
Roosevelt saw no significant place for a French representative in the postwar peace arrangements, even for General Charles de Gaulle, who had made himself the head of Free French forces in London by refusing to concede defeat. In spite of his status as an exiled general in a foreign capital with no army to command, de Gaulle exerted influence by his manner and determination. At six foot four, he towered over Churchill and Roosevelt, whose disability confined him to a sitting position.
A haughty aristocrat with a dismissive manner, whose personal style and unyielding defense of what he considered French interests offended the president, de Gaulle reciprocated what he saw as Roosevelt’s small regard for France’s future autonomy. “Behind his patrician mask of courtesy,” de Gaulle wrote later, “Roosevelt regarded me without benevolence. [He] meant the peace to be an American peace, convinced that he must be the one to dictate its structure, that the states that had been overrun should be subject to his judgment, and that France in particular should recognize him as its savior and its arbiter.” When they clashed at Casablanca over wartime arrangements for control of France’s colonial territories and postwar leadership, Roosevelt saw de Gaulle as an unelected spokesman whose pretensions to power gave him an inflated sense of importance; in private, the president unflatteringly described de Gaulle as believing he was a cross between Joan of Arc and Clemenceau.
Like the problems with Stalin, however, all this was to be kept hidden for the sake of the war effort. Pressing de Gaulle to shake hands publicly with General Henri Giraud, a rival for French leadership, and issue a joint declaration, Roosevelt told de Gaulle, “In human affairs, the public needs a drama.” De Gaulle did not dispute the president’s observation: “We took care not to meet head on, realizing that the clash would lead to nothing and that for the sake of the future, we each had much to gain by getting along together.” Yet however much Roosevelt wanted a show of unity, he had no intention of supporting de Gaulle’s reach for power. On his return to Washington, Roosevelt told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that he had tricked de Gaulle into shaking hands
with Giraud. “Look at the expression on de Gaulle’s face!” he snidely told the editors about photos of the incident. France, the president asserted, would decide its postwar fate not by de Gaulle’s dictates but by democratic means.
Churchill’s dealings with de Gaulle were more cordial, but essentially reflected their respective national interests. He had no illusions about de Gaulle, as he told a secret session of the House of Commons in December 1942. He admired de Gaulle “because he stood up against the Men of Bordeaux [Vichy] and their base surrender at a time when all resisting will-power had quitted France.” At the same time, however, Churchill complained that de Gaulle’s actions during his visits to French colonial territories “left a trail of Anglophobia behind him.” Churchill had no interest in facilitating de Gaulle’s postwar control of France; like FDR, he wanted this left to the desires of the French people.
But Churchill admired de Gaulle’s extraordinary independence and devotion to French interests. When Churchill threatened to cut him loose from British support if he did not reach an accommodation with Giraud, de Gaulle seemed unresponsive. He would not let on that he needed Churchill’s support. He acted as if he were “Stalin, with 200 divisions behind his words…. England’s grievous offence in de Gaulle’s eyes,” Churchill said, “is that she helped France. He cannot bear to think that she needed help. He will not relax his vigilance in guarding her honour for a single instant.”
Churchill and Roosevelt were at odds, not over assuring a representative government for France after the war, but over the restoration of France’s place in Europe and the world. Churchill envisioned a strong France as a bulwark against a resurgent Germany and an aggressive Soviet Union on the continent, and as a stabilizing international force in its renewed governance of its African and Asian colonies. Churchill believed that the dissolution of the French empire would represent a threat to Britain’s imperial rule as well. And in November 1942, he famously declared, “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”
Roosevelt, by contrast, hoped that the occupation and transformation of Germany and accommodations with Russia could reduce the need for French influence in Europe. Moreover, he favored a system of trusteeships for former French colonies that could head off anticolonial postwar struggles fueled by aspirations for national self-determination. His anticolonialism also masked an interest in temporarily projecting American sea and air power into former French territories such as Dakar in West Africa and Indochina as a way to assure U.S. national security and international stability.
Despite their differences over France’s future, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that managing relations with Russia formed their greatest wartime and potential postwar challenges. In the summer of 1943, after the defeat of Nazi forces at Stalingrad earlier in the year, the Soviets began a series of successful offensives against the Germans. Coupled with the conquest of Sicily and the collapse of Mussolini’s government in July, which compelled the deployment of German divisions to Italy, this success eased Stalin’s demands for an immediate second front. When he believed that Churchill and Roosevelt were excluding him from a say in armistice arrangements with Italy, however, he complained about being treated as “a passive third observer. I have to tell you,” he wrote, “that it is impossible to tolerate such a situation.” Although a full explanation of how they were demanding Italy’s unconditional surrender satisfied Stalin, Churchill said privately, “Stalin is an unnatural man. There will be grave troubles.”
Churchill particularly worried that a Soviet advance into the Balkans would doom those countries to Russian domination. Roosevelt was concerned as well about Soviet ambitions, and despite a determination to give highest priority to a cross-Channel attack, which he and Churchill now set for May 1944, he did not exclude the possibility of seizing upon German weakness in the Balkans to fill the vacuum with British and U.S. forces. The key Roosevelt saw to disarming Stalin’s suspicions of his allies and his plans for Soviet control of occupied countries to his west was face-to-face meetings. These became presidential priorities in the last months of the European fighting.
2
FROM TEHRAN TO ROOSEVELT’S DEATH
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.
—W. L. George, English novelist
By September 1943, Roosevelt was more eager than ever to meet with Stalin. He hoped to convince Stalin not to annex the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania or to arbitrarily seize territory that could undermine postwar relations with the West. With a promise now from his allies that the European invasion was only eight or nine months off and Soviet forces moving toward defeat of German armies in Russia and eventual control of Eastern Europe, Stalin agreed to meet in Iran in November or December.
The meeting from November 28 to December 1 in Tehran was notable both for agreements on immediate military plans and for conflicts over postwar arrangements for Poland and the Baltic states and a new world league muted by wartime exigencies.
During four days of discussion, Stalin’s unremitting pressure for confirmation of a second front in Europe won Roosevelt’s enthusiastic and Churchill’s grudging approval. The prime minister wanted to keep open the possibility that Anglo-American forces in the Mediterranean might seize upon Nazi weakness in the Balkans to help Yugoslav partisans led by Josip Broz Tito holding down twenty-one German divisions. But Stalin saw it as a potential diversion from the invasion of France, which he continued to see as vital to his fighting front, where Soviet forces had still not driven German armies out of Russia. Churchill suspected that Stalin’s motives were as much political as military: Stalin did not want Allied armies in southeastern Europe, where they could interfere with his plans for expanded Soviet influence.
Stalin also elicited tacit agreement to new Polish borders that expanded Russia’s western frontier and compensated Poland with additions of East German territory. Out of deference to FDR, who had to face Polish American voters in 1944, the details of such a settlement were left for a later date. Stalin promised to enter the fighting against Japan within three months after Germany surrendered and deferred to Roosevelt’s insistence on establishing a world organization rather than regional committees policing their spheres, as Churchill and Stalin preferred.
Churchill, who had the weakest hand to play at the conference, fretted over the potential conflicts he saw emerging between the Allies. At the end of the first day’s discussions, he candidly told Roosevelt and Stalin “that, although we were all great friends, it would be idle for us to delude ourselves that we saw eye to eye on all matters.” When Churchill said, “I believe that God is on our side,” Stalin countered, “And the devil is on my side. Because, of course, everyone knows that the devil is a Communist—and God, no doubt, is a good Conservative.”
The conversations left Churchill morose: there might “be a more bloody war in the future,” he told Lord Moran, his physician. “I shall not be there. I want to sleep for billions of years.” He saw “impending catastrophe…. I believe that man might destroy man and wipe out civilization. Europe would be desolate and I may be held responsible.”
Churchill was wisely skeptical of Stalin’s long-term goodwill. Stalin had come to the conference full of suspicions about his allies. To refute Nazi propaganda that he planned to bolshevize all of Europe and ease Allied doubts about his postwar intentions, he had dissolved the Communist International, or Comintern, in May 1943. Moreover, in September he had ended his government’s antireligion policy, allowing churches and seminaries to reopen, citizens to attend religious services, and the Russian Orthodox Church to publish a journal.
Stalin flew to the conference filled with apprehension about potential rivals for power in the Soviet Union. Never hesitant to exile or eliminate anyone he saw as a threat to his control, Stalin understandably saw every Soviet power broker as harboring secret plans to replace him. Never having flown before, he feared a plot to sabotage his
plane. At the last minute, he insisted on switching from his aircraft to one assigned to several of his associates.
At the start of the conference, Stalin urged Roosevelt to stay at the Soviet embassy in Tehran, where he was housed, claiming that Nazi assassins hoped to ambush the president as he traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Soviet compounds. When Roosevelt, who hoped to disarm Stalin’s suspicions, accepted the invitation, Stalin arranged to put listening devices in his rooms. Each morning Stalin would get a briefing from his spies, and he marveled at Roosevelt’s naive “private” discussions. Stalin wondered if Roosevelt knew he was being bugged and was putting on a show for Stalin’s benefit. There is no evidence that Roosevelt had such suspicions, but it’s entirely possible that he purposely spoke glowingly of Stalin in the belief that his Soviet host was monitoring his conversations.
No detail was too small for Stalin in his quest for an advantage over his allies: he rehearsed his conversations with associates, even planning where and with whom he would sit during the formal discussions and social gatherings.
Stalin worked hard to hide his true feelings about his allies. He had “a very captivating manner” when he chose to use it, Churchill said. To ingratiate himself, Stalin verbally abused some of his associates, suggesting that they were the architects of unsuccessful policies: “Come here, Molotov,” he shouted at his foreign secretary before the president and prime minister, “and tell us about your pact with Hitler.”
During a Soviet banquet, Stalin proposed that fifty thousand German officers be executed. Churchill strongly objected, saying that such an action would offend the British sense of justice. “The British Parliament and public will never tolerate mass executions…. The Soviets must be under no delusion on this point.” To lighten the moment, Roosevelt joked that perhaps they could compromise on forty-nine thousand. When Roosevelt’s son Elliott, who had accompanied his father to the conference, declared, “Wouldn’t the fifty thousand fall in battle anyway?” and clinked glasses with Stalin, Churchill exploded, exclaiming, “How dare you,” and, jumping to his feet, headed out of the room. Stalin and Molotov followed him and, clapping hands on his shoulders from behind, stood “grinning broadly, and eagerly explaining that they were only playing, and that nothing of a serious character had entered their heads.”