17 Despotism Loves Company: The Story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin Yuri N. Maltsev and Barry Dean Simpson

Many people consider Franklin D. Roosevelt one of the greatest presidents of the United States. Republican Party leaders solemnly invoke him as a protector and not a destroyer of liberty.[1] Historians such as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., look to him as a model and hero.[2] Public opinion seems to agree with prominent magazines that Roosevelt’s legacy is unmatched by any other American president.[3] But for all his tributes, the damage Roosevelt inflicted on the U.S. through his affinity for and mishandling of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin, set the stage for the cold war and communist expansion.

Thus, the concern here is with Roosevelt’s general approach to foreign policy, his goals in the field, and possible reasons for his pursuit of Marshal Stalin. Roosevelt’s urge to meet Stalin manifested itself at Yalta and the Atlantic Charter Conference through various concessions made to the Soviets in the hopes of attaining foreign policy goals after the war. Roosevelt had a flair for the dramatic, so many of his pronouncements and decisions resulted from these conferences. The relationship between Roosevelt and Stalin leads to our conclusion that history will not be as kind to Franklin Roosevelt as Schlesinger and current public opinion.

Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy was decidedly progressive. He introduced internationalism and globalism to foreign policy.[4] According to Amos Perlmutter:

Projecting Wilsonian idealism, Roosevelt was the offspring of the old expansionists. The Calvinist origins of Wilsonian idealism were congenial with Roosevelt’s own protestantism; but his instincts governed his foreign policy, and those instincts were patrician and expansionist. Roosevelt was not a disappointed Wilsonian, but rather a combination of both Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. FDR, not Henry Luce, authored the American century.[5]

The president viewed himself as fulfilling the mission that Woodrow Wilson began in World War I: to take upon himself the moral leadership of making the world safe for democracy.[6] After implementing the New Deal at home, Roosevelt wanted to give the entire world a New Deal.[7] Globalization of his welfare state required the support of the competing socialist model of the Soviet Union. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett summarizes:

President Roosevelt’s ambition was to establish the United Nations but to superimpose upon it an American-Soviet alliance, which should dominate world affairs to the detriment of Britain and France, and to this end he made copious concessions to Marshal Stalin.[8]

Adulation

Two factors led to Roosevelt’s desire to secure the confidence of Stalin. The first followed from his quest for a global new deal. In this manner, he could obtain his goals of universal democracy and an end to colonialism.[9] Roosevelt was suspicious and resentful of what he saw as English imperialism and colonialism.[10] Elliott, his son, even managed to blame the British for the failure of the finer points of the Atlantic Charter.

The second factor was Roosevelt’s admiration of the power of Stalin. Roosevelt’s own love of power is self-evident in his court-packing and economic schemes. He saw Stalin as using his power on behalf of the Russian people, and he saw this somehow as a bond with Stalin.[11] In fact, the entire Roosevelt family seemed to harbor a fascination with the Soviet Union.[12] Tansill’s description of the Roosevelt administration’s position on Russia is certain: “Russia was to be courted, not criticized.”[13]

Of course, this does not mean that Stalin did nothing worthy of criticism. Scholars knew of Stalin’s reputation for ruthlessness before 1940. Marshal Stalin had already killed millions of Ukrainians, and innumerable Spanish socialists, and he had purged his own Communist Party during the Moscow Trials of the 1930s. In 1939 Stalin, along with Hitler, was busy dividing the spoils from Poland and the Baltic States.[14] Moreover, Russia’s invasion of Finland led to an eviction from the League of Nations in the same year.[15] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told of Stalin’s desire for imperial expansion, and a report from Virgil Pinkley of the United Press noted the build-up of a huge military machine for the purpose of taking countries by force. Pinkley described the political structure in the Soviet Union as moving toward a dictatorship, with Stalin gaining more power than Hitler.[16]

If President Roosevelt up to this point denied knowledge of these events, there is one event in particular of which he could not deny knowledge—the Katyn Forest Massacre. The Russians in 1939 had taken fifteen thousand Polish officers captive and promptly murdered them in the Katyn Forest. Germans discovered the corpses in 1943, and the Red Cross was ready to investigate the matter. Roosevelt reacted with anger toward the messengers when presented with factual evidence of the atrocity. Quickly and quietly, the president swept the incident under the rug and suppressed the potential investigation.[17]

Roosevelt’s pursuit of Stalin materialized in the form of aid and propaganda from the United States. The president had already informed British Prime Minister Churchill that he could “personally handle Stalin.”[18] According to William Bullitt, Roosevelt’s method of handling the dictator consisted of giving him everything he wanted and asking nothing in return.[19] This acquiescence to Soviet command began with the Lend-Lease Act.

Roosevelt developed the Lend-Lease proposal in early 1941, shortly after the 1940 election. The president had promised to keep America out of the war when he signed the Neutrality Act in 1937, hence he could not afford the appearance of belligerence. Once passed, Lend-Lease allowed him to circumvent the Neutrality Act by sending arms and supplies to England and the Soviet Union in return for repayment at war’s end.[20] The bill breached the concepts of neutrality in international law; in fact, Senator Burton K. Wheeler argued that Lend-Lease entitled Roosevelt to wage an undeclared war on Germany. No conditions or warnings accompanied the billions of dollars worth of aid that flowed to the totalitarian Communist state.[21]

The fact that Russia became an ally of Great Britain immediately changed the status of Stalin in the eyes of Roosevelt’s administration. Overnight, the official propaganda shifted its slant on the Russian dictator and his American Communists and fellow-travelers. The official Communist line turned squarely from urging the country to stay out of the European war at all costs to strong pleas that America must now enter this great fight to save democracy.[22]

Pro-Soviet propaganda blanketed the country from Washington to Hollywood. Joseph E. Davies’s 1941 book Mission to Moscow was released as a movie in 1943. According to George N. Crocker, “Stalin was pictured as a sort of combination of Pavel Milyukov, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Bernard Baruch, and Jane Addams.”[23] Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s intimate friend and confidante, published an article in American magazine after his first meeting with Stalin and portrayed the dictator as “an austere, rugged, determined figure in boots that shone like mirrors.” Robert Nisbet describes the Hopkins article as “rapturous.”[24]

Perhaps the most incredulous of Roosevelt’s actions was his attempt to appease Christians against Soviet atheism. At a press conference in November 1941, Roosevelt invoked Article 124 of the Russian constitution which, according to the president, affords freedom of religion to the Soviet people. Roosevelt held that the rule in Russia was “essentially what is the rule in this country; only we don’t put it quite the same way.”[25] As Robert Dallek points out, Roosevelt knew that freedom of religion was nonexistent in Russia, but he needed it to make the war acceptable to his constituency.[26]

The Atlantic Charter

The propaganda and preludes to war continued with the meetings between Roosevelt and Churchill. The two leaders met in a bay off the coast of Newfoundland. Roosevelt considered a meeting aboard a ship as a great show that would play well in the press. His first candidate for such a meeting was Adolf Hitler, but he could hardly meet with the German leader once the war began. Roosevelt retained the stage and the props; only the cast changed.[27]

The White House cloaked the August 1941 meeting in secrecy, conveying the semblance of a fishing vacation for the president.[28] Roosevelt carefully and skillfully pacified Americans before his departure by assuring them he would do everything within his power to avoid getting into a “shooting war.”[29] His true intentions, however, were anything but an attempt to avoid war. On the first day of the conference, Roosevelt and Hopkins attended an intimate lunch with the British prime minister. Churchill expressed his desire that the United States enter the war immediately. Rather than showing antiwar disgust at such a plan, Roosevelt was much more concerned with “public opinion, American politics, all the intangibles that lead to action and at once betray it.”[30]

Roosevelt made two military commitments to Churchill during this clandestine affair. Churchill expected the Nazis to overtake Spain within the month. England would have to evacuate Gibraltar and would no longer be able to honor its commitment to Portugal to protect the Azore Islands. Roosevelt agreed to assume this role. The second commitment involved the Japanese seizure of Indochina. With this capture, the position of Singapore became a precarious one. Roosevelt issued a warning to the Japanese ambassador in Washington that amounted to an ultimatum. The warning conveyed the simple message that if Japan continued in her conquest of the Pacific, the United States would take the necessary means, in the name of national security, to stop Japanese expansion.[31]

The concessions to Russia at this meeting embodied more than semantics to convince United States citizens that Stalin was one of the leaders of the free world. The first piece of propaganda included the loss of two of Roosevelt’s four freedoms. The Atlantic Charter consisted of eight points. Churchill had crafted a point stating that the signers would defend freedom of speech and religion throughout the world. Roosevelt could not allow the word “defend” and still keep up the appearance of avoiding war. More important, however, he could not pursue his courtship of Stalin through such a statement when it was well known that freedom of speech and religion did not exist in Soviet Russia. The solution was a simple one: Roosevelt allowed no mention of freedom of speech and religion in the charter.[32]

Such a result did not restrain Roosevelt in his effort to convince Americans that entry into the war would exist for the purpose of bringing freedom to the world. The following February, Roosevelt delivered a speech in honor of George Washington’s birthday. In his speech, Roosevelt claimed that

[t]he Atlantic Charter applies not only to the parts of the world that border the Atlantic but to the whole world; disarmament of aggressors, self-determination of nations and peoples, and the four freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.[33]

This speech was made with the knowledge that the prime minister had announced to the House of Commons in September that the Atlantic Charter referred only to the states that had lost their rule to the Nazis.[34]

Although he excluded freedom of speech and religion from the Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt in public implied that the Soviets exercised such freedoms. In February he gave a radio address commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. In that address, he pronounced that the principles enunciated in the Bill of Rights were accepted around the globe, with the exception of the three Axis countries: Germany, Italy, and Japan.[35]

Casablanca

After American entry into the war, Russian aid, or “requisitions” as they were known, became the top priority of the Washington bureaucracy. As Roosevelt and Hopkins left for Casablanca in January 1943, however, they had a much different type of Russian aid in mind. Churchill had made his military intentions clear to the president: Once the Allies conquered Africa, naval and air installations should facilitate an expeditionary force in Turkey through which an invasion of the Balkans could occur. Germany had experienced defeat in Africa and at Stalingrad. It seemed only a matter of time before the Axis powers were crushed. Churchill’s long-range goal was clear: He wished to protect eastern Europe from the threat of communist expansion after the war.[36]

Stalin and Molotov had a different plan of attack in mind. The Russians had wished for an assault on France for an entire year. At Casablanca, it seemed that such an effort would be postponed for another year. Although Roosevelt could not yet bring the assault on French shores to a head, he did manage to quell British hopes for a Balkan invasion once and for all.[37] Moreover, the Red Army was beginning to push the German army back after the German surrender at Stalingrad. As the Soviet military gained strength, the Allies would lose political leverage. Roosevelt, however, had already failed to take advantage of Russia’s weak position. According to Flynn, “[t]wo full years had been wasted, instead of applying to Stalin the only pressure he could understand. All he could hope for in arms and material aid he got as fast as we could get them to him without laying down a single condition.”[38]

Perhaps the most regrettable episode at Casablanca was Roosevelt’s pronouncement that the only condition that would end the war was the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. According to Roosevelt, that phrase was not preconceived. As the press conference began, the president considered bringing two French generals together as difficult as arranging a meeting between Grant and Lee would have been. Suddenly, he remembered that Grant had been nicknamed “Old Unconditional Surrender.” At this point, in the president’s own words, “the next thing I knew, I had said it.”[39]

Sherwood’s comment on this Roosevelt quote is a testament to the precocious nature of the American president:

Roosevelt, for some reason, often liked to picture himself as a rather frivolous fellow who did not give sufficient attention to the consequences of chance remarks. In this explanation, indicating a spur-of-the-moment slip of the tongue, he certainly did considerably less than justice to himself. For this announcement of unconditional surrender was very deeply deliberated. Whether it was wise or foolish, whether it prolonged the war or shortened it—or even if it had no effect whatsoever on the duration (which seems possible)—it was a true statement of Roosevelt’s considered policy and he refused all suggestions that he retract the statement or soften it and continued refusal to the day of his death.[40]

Elliott Roosevelt attributes this quote to his father concerning this “frivolous” phrase:

Of course, it’s just the thing for the Russians. They couldn’t want anything better. “Unconditional surrender,” he repeated, thoughtfully sucking a tooth. “Uncle Joe might have made it up himself.”[41]

Sherwood’s implication of a benign effect from the statement is wrong. Shortly before Casablanca, two anti-Nazi Germans had inquired of Bishop Chichester in Stockholm whether the Allies would negotiate with a democratic German government if Hitler was overthrown. Mutiny had already crossed the minds of several of Hitler’s senior officers.[42] The bishop tried to obtain a reply from the Allies, but his entreaties would not invoke a response. According to Crocker, “[a]ll moves toward peace were peremptorily brushed aside.”[43]

Roosevelt’s turn of phrase unquestionably prolonged the war. The Germans equated unconditional surrender with slavery and, as such, were prompted to fight on for over two more years. Moreover, Hirohito perceived defeat during 1943 and would have accepted any terms but unconditional surrender. Roosevelt, however, had no time for the diplomacy of peace. After Casablanca, he had to press on to Marrakech for a short vacation replete with wine, Scotch, picnic lunches, and the singing of songs—at an exorbitant price to American taxpayers.[44]

Cairo

Roosevelt had satisfied all of Stalin’s requests except one: an all-out attack on France. An allied invasion of France to solidify the Soviet position after the war was slow but soon to come. So far, Stalin had coyly eluded the American president. In light of such conditions, it is plausible that the marshal was using himself as a bargaining chip to be dangled like a carrot in front of Roosevelt.[45] The Cairo conference in November 1943 presented an opportunity for Roosevelt to show his magnanimity toward the Russian cause in an attempt to gain an audience with the Soviet leader.

The ostensible pretense of the Cairo conference was to help China out of her current situation. Chiang Kai-shek had battled an internal Communist rebellion during the 1930s. War with Japan caused Chiang to reach an agreement with the Communists in 1937. The Communists would fight Japan alongside the national army in return for a discontinuance of Communist suppression by Chiang. But the Communists would renege on the deal as soon as Chiang was driven to Chungking. Communists seized this opportunity to drop out of the war with Japan and occupy the rural areas between the Japanese occupied cities in the north. The Japanese only wanted Manchuria—the northern, resource-rich section of China. Japan’s goal was to install a puppet government to funnel resources to the motherland. Whoever controlled the north controlled China, so the Communists were content to bide their time until Japan fell.[46]

Roosevelt’s solution for China was to make her more democratic. Engaged in pro-Soviet propaganda at home, his method for accomplishing such a task consisted of talking Chiang into recognizing and forming a unity government with the Communists.[47] Chiang’s reward for this coalition was a deal to send Allied troops into Burma. Churchill was opposed to sending troops to Burma. He still felt that a Balkan invasion represented the best course of action. But Chiang felt that the opening of the Burma Road would enhance his position with his countrymen. So Roosevelt did what any seasoned politician would do—he lied to everyone. First, he neglected to inform the prime minister of the Burma mission. Second, after Chiang left Cairo with Roosevelt’s assurance that the Burma Road would soon be opened, Roosevelt threw the plan away ten days later, once he received a guarantee that Russia soon would join in the war against Japan.[48]

Presumably, Stalin expected the exact results. Chiang went south to Burma, leaving the important north open for the Communists. So Stalin would be the puppet master, as he was in Yugoslavia and Poland later. According to Crocker, “Chiang was never able to recover the military advantage over Mao Tse-tung and the Red Army.[49]

Teheran

Egypt was merely a diversion for Roosevelt. The real challenge was Stalin himself, and this challenge the president undertook at Teheran in November 1943. Notable Stalin biographer Adam Ulam calls Teheran Stalin’s greatest victory.[50] Roosevelt’s failure to factor the nature of a dictator into his calculus predicated such a victory. As Robert Nisbet notes, Stalin had made a career “based upon exploitation of those who came bearing gifts and seeking friendship.”[51] At Teheran, Stalin was to extract the most precious of gifts from Franklin Roosevelt.

Roosevelt’s first present to Stalin was the Balkans. In defiance of the acts of Congress in 1940 supporting the independence of the Baltic states, Roosevelt suggested that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as the eastern portion of Poland which Stalin seized as part of his 1939–1941 pact with Hitler, remain under Soviet tyranny. The only string attached was that the deal not be made public. Stalin must remain quiet in order for Roosevelt to get the Polish vote in the 1944 election. Roosevelt accepted the idea of postwar eastern European governments friendly to the Soviet Union, and promised Stalin vast territorial gains in the Far East if he agreed to join in the war against Japan once Hitler was defeated. No prolonged arguments or sleepless nights occurred, nor was this a business deal with an aforementioned quid pro quo. All Roosevelt asked in return was Stalin’s participation in the president’s dream of a peacekeeping United Nations in the postwar era.[52]

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia became casualties of war at Teheran. The gains of Stalin’s Red Army were not questioned. Teheran also marked the realization of Stalin’s anticipated second front. Plans to launch an attack in May 1944 were agreed upon and finalized.[53]

Contrary to popular opinion, the decision on the partitioning of Poland took place at Teheran rather than Yalta. Roosevelt did not heed the “self-determination of nations” rhetoric found in the Atlantic Charter. Not one single Pole was invited to attend the conference at which more than half of their country was given to the Soviet Union. It was Germany’s invasion of Poland, moreover, that evoked the British declaration of war against Germany. Roosevelt’s decision was an affront to every allied soldier who gave his life for the hope of a freer world.[54]

George Crocker holds that Teheran was the turning point that led to postwar horrors. The contention is that Roosevelt could have sided with Churchill, making it harder for Stalin to negotiate. The German army was still on Russian soil, and the American and British armies and navies were not committed, hence could strike anywhere. But negotiation was not part of Roosevelt’s plan. He wanted to be liked.[55]

Evidence of this puerile need of the president is found in the small talk that took place at the Russian-sponsored banquet after the second plenary session. In the midst of many toasts and jokes, Stalin proposed a toast to killing the fifty thousand German officers and technicians as soon as they were captured. Churchill was aghast; he announced that the British would not sanction such butchery. Next, the great diplomat Franklin D. Roosevelt chimed in with a compromise: “We should settle on a smaller number. Shall we say 49,500?”[56] When the president’s son, Elliott, rose in agreement with Stalin’s plan, Prime Minister Churchill left the table, surrounded by the laughter of Russians and Americans.[57]

Historian Keith Sainsbury also argues that Teheran constituted a turning point. Militarily, Teheran marked the end of British plans and the ascendance of American plans for the duration of the war. It was also clear that the Soviet Union would be the dominant power in eastern and possibly central Europe at war’s end. Politically, Roosevelt and Stalin drafted plans for a Soviet-American concord on Europe and the Far East. According to Sainsbury:

The breaking up of Germany and control of its major industrial areas, the maintenance of a large number of small States in central and eastern Europe, the annexation of part of prewar Poland by Russia, and of German territory by Russia and Poland, the permanent reduction of France to a minor power, and easy Soviet access to the Baltic and Mediterranean were indicated as part of the future pattern for Europe.[58]

Quebec II: The Morgenthau Plan

Germany had reasons to suspect Western democracy. The Germans believed that the president of the United States had stuck a knife in their back at Versailles. In their view, the Morgenthau Plan represented the twisting of the blade.

The first Quebec conference was fairly innocuous compared with the atmosphere the Morgenthau Plan brought to Quebec II in September 1944. The plan was to render Germany a pasture. All industries would be stripped from the area in such a manner as to prevent their return. The program even listed some German citizens for death at war’s end. Those lucky enough to live would be relegated to subsistence level. Such a bare existence would continue over several generations.[59]

Roosevelt approved the Morgenthau Plan. According to Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, “the president was guilty of none of the humanitarian impulses which had motivated Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt had his own large-scale plan for the breakup of Germany and he was happy to fall in with the rigorous demands of Stalin.”[60] Fortunately, the version of the plan determined at Potsdam was watered down compared with the original version.[61] But its existence at the time allowed Goebbels to rally German troops for seven more months. As Secretary of State Cordell Hull feared, the leaking of the plan led to the loss of thousands more American lives. The coinciding result instilled a hatred of Western democracy within the minds and hearts of the peoples of eastern Europe.[62]

Yalta

The most celebrated meeting of the allied powers came at Yalta in February 1945. Most of the groundwork had been set by the time of the conference, but the secret agreements had not been made public. At Yalta, the world saw for the first time the gravity of the postwar situation. Even today, Yalta cannot be seen in its true light, for the historians who compiled the various papers from the meeting have confessed to tampering.[63]

Yalta provided a more profound function than a simple meeting place for deals and diplomacy. Nisbet describes the importance of Yalta in this manner:

Yalta performed a service to the Soviets that was almost as important to Stalin as the occupied areas themselves. This was the invaluable service of giving moral legitimization to what Stalin had acquired by sheer force. The Declaration on Liberated Europe alone accomplished that.[64]

At the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt felt morally bound to legitimize Stalin’s claims. Harry Hopkins wrote to Roosevelt at the conference, “[t]he Russians have given us so much at this conference that I don’t think we should let them down.”[65] What had Stalin given? He had agreed that in the new United Nations, the Soviet Union would have only three votes—one for the USSR, one for the Soviet Ukraine, and one for Soviet White Russia—instead of sixteen votes, or one for each of the Soviet Republics.[66]

Of course, Stalin’s promises to the West did not bind him. His promise to work for a new Rooseveltian world order and to guarantee free elections in the eastern European nations that the Red Army conquered on its way to Berlin lasted less than two months. In early April 1945, a Yugoslav Communist delegation led by Marshal Tito visited Moscow. At a late-night banquet in their honor, Stalin ruminated on the postwar era. During the feasting and toasting, Stalin explained to his guests, “[t]his war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system.”[67] As for the future, Stalin assured his guests that “[t]he war shall soon be over. We shall recover in fifteen or twenty years, and then we’ll have another go at it.”[68] Here was the true Stalin, the real “Uncle Joe,” as Roosevelt and Churchill affectionately referred to the dictator.

After Franklin Roosevelt’s death, President Truman took over at the Potsdam Conference outside of Berlin in July 1945. Germany had surrendered, thus her fate hung in the balance. While Truman allowed a milder Morgenthau Plan to be selected, “[a]ll the major decisions which make up the incredible record of surrender, blunder and savagery had already been made long before President Truman . . . went to Potsdam.”[69] And although Truman should not be excused for dropping the bomb to end the war with Japan, Roosevelt’s insistence on unconditional surrender prolonged the war and left President Truman few alternatives.

Traveling in free Lithuania a couple of years ago, this cowriter was struck by a huge poster displayed near Vilnius Airport. It was a famous “troika” picture with something different in it: Instead of FDR, Stalin, and Churchill, the picture depicted Roosevelt, Stalin, and Hitler. Lithuanians, like all other east Europeans, believe that the West “betrayed” them twice—to Hitler in Munich in 1938 and to Josef Stalin at Yalta in 1945. In truth, Yalta was only the final betrayal of eastern Europe, and both FDR and Churchill bear a large measure of responsibility for a half-century of communist rape and enslavement of its people.

Conclusions

Franklin Roosevelt’s mark on the political landscape of the twentieth century cannot be overlooked or whitewashed. His naivete and propitiation to Stalin turned half of the population of this planet over to communism. Roosevelt, representing a resourceful country that Russia needed in order to defeat Germany never asked for any postwar concessions from Stalin. Roosevelt was in a position to dictate terms to a dictator, but he never did.

While mainstream politicians praise Roosevelt as a genius, the critical analysis of Roosevelt’s legacy is based on the premise that he was a well-meaning but naive politician. Amos Perlmutter was the first Western scholar granted access to recently declassified key Soviet foreign ministry documents. Perlmutter provides a provocative portrait of a popular leader whose failure to comprehend Stalin’s long-range goals had devastating results for the postwar world.[70] Keith Sainsbury adds that, “[Roosevelt] knew little of Stalin, or indeed of Russia and the Soviet system, but he had confidence in his ability to establish a good personal relationship.”[71]

John Flynn claims that Churchill and Stalin considered postwar goals, while Roosevelt’s two concerns were winning the war and establishing the United Nations. Roosevelt thought Stalin would cease annexing territory with a world policeman to quell Soviet fears against invasion. But Stalin’s “policy was to commit himself to nothing, to admit nothing and to demand and demand and demand.”[72] In Flynn’s opinion, only an infatuated man could not see Stalin’s plan to hold the territories gained by the Red Army. Roosevelt’s foreign policy was not goal-directed but was obscure and whimsical—a direct result of his pet project of wooing Stalin into the Rooseveltian dream of a world government.[73] Flynn concludes, “[i]t is all the more incredible when we remember that the things he was laying in Stalin’s lap were the existence of little nations and the rights of little peoples we had sworn to defend.”[74]

Perhaps the most eminent of the “well-meaning naivete” theses comes from historian Robert Nisbet. For Roosevelt, Hitler and Mussolini were merely gangsters, and the law-abiding nations of the world were using their police to take them off the streets of the world. The same naivete, insists Nisbet, hovered over Roosevelt’s relationship with Josef Stalin. World politics seemed to be nothing more to Roosevelt than local ward politics writ large—a matter of horse-trading, personalities, and power. Personal loyalties and relationships were the heart of politics for the president. Roosevelt believed that the same methods that got things done in Albany New York, or Washington, D.C., would work with Stalin at Teheran and Yalta.[75]

Nisbet claims that the Rooseveltian legacy is twofold. First is the legacy of New Deal domestic policy.[76] Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s hand could be found in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society which was proudly modeled after the New Deal. Roosevelt’s corporate bureaucratic state is praised by Democrats and Republicans alike; his and Eleanor’s ideas of social and economic engineering found their way into subsequent legislation, platforms of the two parties, and political philosophies of today’s leaders. Within the Clinton administration, the first and second families themselves could be called Roosevelt’s offspring. Numerous social engineers and tinkers like Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Donna Shalala, or Ira Magaziner proudly used the name, legacy, and ideologies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to legitimize further destruction of the constitutional freedoms and cultural norms of America.

The second legacy of Roosevelt concerns his foreign policy shaped by his alliance with Stalin. Roosevelt’s affair with Stalin left thirty-seven European and Asian nations betrayed.[77] The Soviet Empire, with a antebellum population of 170 million, grew to a size of 800 million after the war.[78] Roosevelt’s foreign policy not only set the stage for the cold war but resulted in the death and forced enslavement of millions of people. As a global power, the Soviet Union was able to apply leverage in the United Nations and impose communism both directly and indirectly by funding revolutions around the world.

Ironically, World War II is still seen as a war for freedom, and Roosevelt is hailed as a great president. While historians label him “well-meaning” or “naive” to make their stories more palatable, such adjectives are certainly not synonymous with the word “great.” The word “great” when applied to a political leader should imply an amount of vision. But Roosevelt had no long-range goals; in the words of Topitsch, “Roosevelt was not at all conscious of what had really happened.”[79] Hence, the Roosevelt legacy is not one of greatness, but one of ineptness, blindness, stubbornness, and ignorance. By the time historians complete their account, the role of the most celebrated American president in solidifying the power and influence of history’s greatest mass murderer doubtless will be a cursed memory.

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[1] See J. Jennings Moss, “Reverence for FDR Crosses Spectrum,” Insight on the News 11, no. 19, May 15, 1995; “Newt and Franklin,” National Journal 27, no. 1 (January 1995); “The Roosevelt Legacy,” The Economist 340, no. 7985 (September 28, 1996): 38; and Polio Survivor’s Page “President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Disability Hero,” http://www.eskimo.com/%7Edempt/fdr.htm. April 4, 1995.

[2] See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Time 151, no. 14, April 13, 1998, p. 98, “The Real Roosevelt Legacy,” Newsweek 128, no. 16, October 1996, p. 43; and “A Conversation with Historian Arthur Schlesinger,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio Broadcast, December 18, 1994.

[3] In a 1997 CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, 32 percent of Americans rated FDR an outstanding president, and 36 percent rated him an above average president. See also Milton Cooper, Jr., “Great Expectations and Shadowlands,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 72, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 377. For magazine support, see “The Roosevelt Centennial,” America 146, February 13, 1982, p. 104; Toast to a Hero,” Time 119, February 8, 1982, p. 30; “Roosevelt’s Long Shadow,” Newsweek 99, February 1, 1982, p. 30; and “The Unforgotten Man,” Newsweek 99, January 11, 1982, p. 26.

[4] See “From Isolationism to Global Leadership,” U.S. Department of State Dispatch, no. 21, U.S. Government Printing Office, May 2, 1991, p. 391.

[5] Amos Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), p. 28.

[6] John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1998), p. 293. See also John Charmley, Churchill (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993), pp. 460, 486.

[7] Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin, p. 31. See also Ted Morgan, FDR (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 633f.

[8] Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, et al., The Semblance of Peace (New York: St. Martin’s, 1972), p. 8. See also Charmley, Churchill, pp. 538f, 550f.

[9] Willard Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s World Order (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1959), p. 137.

[10] Ibid., pp. 102ff. See also Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloane, and Pearce, 1945), pp. 71–75, 115–16, 121–22, and Charmley, Churchill, p. 555.

[11] Robert A. Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1988), p. 108. See also James M. Burns, Roosevelt, the Lion and the Fox, 1912–1940 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1956), p. 373.

[12] George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia (Chicago: Regnery, 1959), p. 60.

[13] Charles Tansill, “Japanese-American Relations,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Harry Elmer Barnes, ed. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers), p. 282.

[14] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, p. 3. See also Burns, Roosevelt, pp. 393f. Michael Parrish, The Lesser Terror (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), p. 53, estimates one million people had been murdered under Stalin’s rule by 1940. See also Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Robert Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996); J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, Stalinist Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

[15] Wheeler-Bennett, et al., The Semblance of Peace, p. 234. See also Nikolai Tolstoy, Stalin’s Secret War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1981).

[16] Don Whitehead, The FBI Story (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 267.

[17] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, pp. 28f., 221, 247f. See also Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (New York: Penguin, 1991), pp. 258, 261.

[18] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, p. 15.

[19] Ibid., p. 6.

[20] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 295. See also Lloyd C. Gardner, Economic Aspects (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 168f.; and Burns, Roosevelt, p. 457.

[21] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, pp. 19–20.

[22] Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin, p. 102.

[23] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 12.

[24] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, p. 22.

[25] Ibid., p. 25.

[26] Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 298.

[27] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 300.

[28] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 97.

[29] Ibid., p. 96.

[30] Roosevelt, As He Saw It, p. 27.

[31] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, pp. 300–01.

[32] “Declaration of the Atlantic,” Saturday Evening Post, September 27, 1941, p. 26.

[33] Samuel I. Rosenman, Public Papers (New York: Random House, 1938).

[34] Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper, 1952), p. 633.

[35] Rosenman, Public Papers.

[36] Roosevelt, As He Saw It, pp. 93, 96.

[37] Ibid., pp. 94, 108–09.

[38] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 314.

[39] Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1950), p. 696.

[40] Ibid., p. 696.

[41] Roosevelt, As He Saw It, p. 117.

[42] See B.S. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (London: Cassell, 1951); William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950); Hans Rothfells, The German Opposition to Hitler (New York: Regnery, 1948); and Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.

[43] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 169.

[44] Ibid., pp. 182–83.

[45] Ibid., p. 196.

[46] Hollingsworth K. Tong, Chiang Kai-shek (China Publishing, 1953), pp. 323ff. See also Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, pp. 321f.

[47] John T. Flynn, The Lattimore Story (New York: Devin-Adair, 1953), p. 53. See also idem, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 328.

[48] Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 800. See also Leahy, I Was There, p. 202.

[49] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 207.

[50] Adam Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), p. 587.

[51] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, p. 27.

[52] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, pp. 209–10.

[53] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, pp. 328f., 361.

[54] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, pp. 210, 221–22.

[55] Ibid., pp. 218.

[56] Ibid., p. 219.

[57] Wheeler-Bennett, et al., The Semblance of Peace, p. 153.

[58] Keith Sainsbury, The Turning Point (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 1–2.

[59] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 231. See also Charmley, Churchill, p. 585.

[60] Wheeler-Bennett, et al., The Semblance of Peace, p. 174.

[61] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 363.

[62] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 238. See also Gardner, Economic Aspects, pp. 267f.

[63] Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 1606.

[64] Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin, pp. 70–71.

[65] Ibid., p. 77.

[66] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 390.

[67] Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harvest, 1962), p. 114.

[68] Ibid., pp. 114–15.

[69] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 362.

[70] See Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin.

[71] Sainsbury, The Turning Point, p. 149.

[72] Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 325.

[73] Ibid., pp. 323f.

[74] Ibid., p 363.

[75]See Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin.

[76] Ibid., p. 109.

[77] William Henry Chamberlin, “The Bankruptcy of a Policy,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Harry Elmer Barnes, ed. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1953), pp. 502f. See also Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 973; and Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, p. 364.

[78] Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, p. 7.

[79] Ernst Topitsch, Stalin’s War (London: Fourth Estate, 1987), p. 139.