Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (135 page)

I
N THE SAME
letter, Roosevelt informed Churchill: “I have a cordial message from Stalin telling me he is sending Molotov and a general to visit me.”

Stalin, for understandable reasons, became suspicious whenever the Americans and British discussed strategy among themselves, without him or an envoy present. Given that the Americans and British were always talking among themselves—this was what the Combined Chiefs of Staff
did
—Stalin spent most of the war suspicious of Roosevelt and Churchill.

The dithering of the British and Americans over a second front made him even more suspicious. The way to fight Germans was to fight Germans, he believed—the way the Red Army did. Stalin felt particular pressure during the first months of 1942. For almost a year the Russians had carried the burden of the fighting against Germany, and though winter had stalled the Wehrmacht short of Moscow, spring would doubtless bring another offensive. Hitler had taken personal command of the army, which meant that the new drive almost certainly would be more ferocious than the last. Stalin was desperate for anything that would ease the strain, and nothing would accomplish more toward that end than a western front.

Roosevelt assured Stalin that America had Russia’s best interests at heart. “I am looking forward to seeing Molotov, and the moment I hear of the route, we shall make preparations to provide immediate transportation,” the president wrote. “I do hope Molotov can stay with me in the White House while he is in Washington, but we can make a private home nearby available for him if that is desired.”

The visit proved more difficult than Roosevelt expected. Molotov was never cheerful among capitalists, but now he was gloomier than usual as his arrival coincided with the surrender of a Soviet army of 200,000 to the Germans at Kharkov. For his country’s sake, and perhaps for his own, he judged it imperative to bring home a commitment to a second front.

Roosevelt was uncomfortable for different reasons. “His style was cramped,” Hopkins observed. The need for interpreters slowed the talks to a crawl, essentially negating what little effect the Roosevelt charm might have had on the Soviet diplomat. And Molotov was simply a hard case, as arrogant ideologically as he was personally humorless.

Molotov’s communist ideology afforded him confidence in the ultimate victory of socialism. But between the present and the millennium, he acknowledged, socialism needed help from its capitalist allies. Molotov said that 1942 looked grim and 1943 hardly better. Hitler was preparing a “mighty, crushing blow,” which had already begun to fall. The Red Army might not be able to withstand it. “Mr. Molotov therefore put this question frankly,” Samuel Cross, a Harvard professor of Slavic languages who sat in on the meeting and took notes, recorded: “Could we undertake such offensive action as would draw off 40 German divisions?” If the answer was yes, Molotov had great confidence. “The war would be decided in 1942.” If no, he couldn’t predict. A delay of the second front until 1943 would render many things much less certain. “If you postpone your decision,” he told Roosevelt, “you will have eventually to bear the brunt of the war, and if Hitler becomes the undisputed master of the continent, next year will undoubtedly be tougher than this one.”

Roosevelt answered Molotov by turning to Marshall. “Could we say to Mr. Stalin that we are preparing a second front?” he asked the general.

“Yes,” Marshall replied.

According to Cross’s notes: “The President then authorized Mr. Molotov to inform Mr. Stalin that we expect the formation of a second front this year.”

This was the message Molotov had come to Washington to hear, and though it was followed by several days of discussion in which Roosevelt’s advisers appended qualifications and disclaimers, it was the message that informed the joint statement that closed the discussions:

Full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.

The statement left a little room for interpretation. The “full understanding” applied, grammatically speaking, to the “urgent tasks.” But to ordinary readers—and to the extraordinary reader in the Kremlin who had sent Molotov to Washington—the operative phrase was “second front in Europe in 1942.”

B
EFORE
M
OLOTOV LEFT,
Roosevelt broached another subject, less pressing but no less important than the second front. He had not discussed this subject in any detail with Churchill, but he wanted to raise it with Stalin, through Molotov. “We know there will be two kinds of postwar settlements,” the president said. “First, those among the United Nations, and, second, arrangements for the reconstruction of the other nations with a view to ensuring a more stable form of peace.” Regarding the former, Roosevelt suggested that at war’s end the Soviet Union and Britain should repay debts incurred under Lend-Lease on a principal-only basis; the United States would waive any interest. Referring to the problems the debts from the First World War had caused, the president said he hoped to prevent similar problems among the Allies after this war. He asked Molotov to present this proposal to Stalin “for the purpose of exploring it without commitments.”

Regarding the other nations—Germany, Japan, and Italy—Roosevelt suggested that a peace settlement must start with disarmament and extend to inspection and control of those countries’ weapons industries. The president proposed that the senior members of the United Nations—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China—should police any postwar settlements, serving as “guarantors of eventual peace.” Their police actions would extend beyond Germany and Japan. “There are, all over the world, many islands and colonial possessions which ought, for our own safety, to be taken away from weak nations,” Roosevelt said.

Molotov cabled Roosevelt’s recommendations to Moscow and, before departing, was able to answer that Stalin was “in full accord with the President’s ideas on disarmament, inspection, and policing, with the participation of at least Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and possibly China.”

C
HURCHILL READ THE
Roosevelt-Molotov statement with great interest, especially the part about the second front in Europe in 1942. No sooner had Molotov left Washington than the prime minister embarked for the American capital, to make sure Roosevelt didn’t mean what he had just said.

Henry Stimson tried to ready Roosevelt for the prime minister’s wiles. “May I very briefly recall to your memory the sequence of events which led to and the background which surrounds this problem,” the war secretary wrote, perhaps consciously dropping the question mark from what clearly was not intended as a question. During the Anglo-American talks in Washington the previous December, he reminded Roosevelt, both sides had agreed on the value of a second front in 1942. “The one thing Hitler rightly dreaded was a second front. In establishing such a front lay the best hope of keeping the Russian Army in the war and thus ultimately defeating Hitler. To apply the rapidly developing manpower and industrial strength of America promptly to the opening of such a front was manifestly the only way it could be accomplished.” These considerations had given rise to Bolero, as the plan for a buildup in Britain preparatory to an invasion of France was called. Bolero would yield benefits even before the invasion took place, Stimson said. “The menace of the establishment of American military power in the British Isles would be immediately evident to Hitler. It at once tended to remove the possibility of a successful invasion of Britain, Hitler’s chief and last weapon. It awoke in every German mind the recollections of 1917 and 1918.” Recent events—the German advances in Russia, which increased the strain on the Soviet government, and the American victory over Japan at Midway, which diminished the pressure on the United States in the Pacific—rendered Bolero even more advisable. “Under these circumstances, an immense burden of proof rests upon any proposition which may impose the slightest risk of weakening Bolero,” Stimson concluded. “No new plan should even be whispered to friend or enemy unless it was so sure of immediate success and so manifestly helpful to Bolero that it could not possibly be taken as evidence of doubt or vacillation in the prosecution of Bolero.”

Stimson had the strong support of Marshall. “You are familiar with my view that the decisive theater is Western Europe,” the chief of staff wrote Roosevelt. “That is the only place where the concerted effort of our own and the British forces can be brought to bear on the Germans.” Any effort by Churchill to divert American forces to the Mediterranean must be resisted. “A large venture in the Middle East would make a decisive American contribution to the campaign in Western Europe out of the question. Therefore, I am opposed to such a project.”

Whether Churchill could have overcome the opposition of Stimson and Marshall without help is unclear. On reaching America the prime minister traveled to Hyde Park, where Roosevelt was spending the weekend. Churchill handed the president a memo outlining his concerns about Bolero. German depredations upon Allied shipping in the Atlantic had been especially severe of late; Churchill wondered whether these would disrupt the Bolero buildup. At the least, they must delay things. “We are bound to persevere in the preparation for Bolero, if possible in 1942 but certainly in 1943,” he said, in an affirmation that was really a negation. He noted that Bolero thus far was merely an aspiration, while the invasion of France—code-named Sledgehammer—for which Bolero was to be the precursor, was hardly a dream. “No responsible British military authority has so far been able to make a plan for September 1942 which had any chance of success unless the Germans become utterly demoralized, of which there is no likelihood.” The Americans weren’t any farther along. “Have the American staffs a plan? If so, what is it? What landing craft and shipping are available? Who is the officer prepared to command the enterprise?”

Churchill worried that a premature Channel crossing would fail. He recalled the carnage of the First World War, and especially the debacle at Gallipoli, the botched 1915 invasion of Turkey that he had advocated and helped plan. He feared that an attack on France might become a second Gallipoli and thereby hearten the Germans, demoralize the British, and alienate the Americans. “The British Government would not favour an operation that was certain to lead to disaster, would compromise and expose to Nazi vengeance the French population involved, and would gravely delay the main operation in 1943,” Churchill explained to Roosevelt. “We hold strongly to the view that there should be no substantial landing in France this year unless we are going to stay.”

It was clear to Churchill that the British and Americans were not prepared to establish a permanent presence in France. This being so, they should think about alternatives to Bolero. “Ought we not be preparing within the general structure of Bolero some other operation by which we may gain positions of advantage and also directly or indirectly to take some of the weight off Russia?”

The other operation was Gymnast, an Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa. Churchill’s argument for Gymnast gained sudden and unexpected strength in the middle of the prime minister’s visit. On June 21 Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps captured Tobruk, the last British outpost west of Egypt. With little in Egypt itself to slow a German advance to the Suez Canal, Churchill’s nightmare of an Axis connection across the Indian Ocean grew ominously realistic.

“This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war,” Churchill wrote afterward. “Not only were its military effects grievous, but it had affected the reputation of the British armies.” The garrison at Tobruk had surrendered to a German force half its size. “I did not attempt to hide from the President the shock I had received. It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.”