Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (160 page)

T
HIS ESTIMATE
figured centrally in Roosevelt’s thinking as he approached the second meeting of the leaders of the Grand Alliance. He had known since the previous summer that he needed to meet again with Stalin and Churchill to plan the final thrust against Germany, the sequel regarding Japan, and the future of the United Nations. But Stalin refused to leave the Soviet Union just as the war on the eastern front was turning decisively in Russia’s favor, and Roosevelt was reluctant to stir up political trouble by traveling to the homeland of communism ahead of the election. Once the election was assured, however, he had Harry Hopkins quietly sound out the Soviet ambassador, Andrei Gromyko, as to where on Soviet soil Stalin would be willing to meet. Hopkins volunteered that the Crimean peninsula might be nice in winter. Stalin responded that the Crimea would be fine. “This was the first indication anyone around the President had that the President would even consider a conference in Russia,” Hopkins remembered. “All of the President’s close advisers were opposed to his going to Russia; most did not like or trust the Russians anyway and could not understand why the President of the United States should cart himself all over the world to meet Stalin.”

But Roosevelt was determined to go. He wanted another opportunity to cultivate Stalin. He wasn’t worried, after the election, about the political fallout. And he had never been to that part of Europe. Hopkins thought this last consideration decisive. “His adventurous spirit was forever leading him to go to unusual places,” Hopkins said.

Churchill objected loudly. “He says that if we had spent ten years on research we could not have found a worse place than Yalta,” Hopkins reported to Roosevelt. But the prime minister was outvoted, and after Roosevelt agreed to a pre-Yalta meeting with Churchill at British-controlled Malta, the prime minister acquiesced.

The Americans soon discovered the cause of Churchill’s objections to Yalta. The town had been a health spa in the period when Roosevelt’s father visited such places in search of relief from his heart condition. Its sheltered setting, nestled among mountains that kept out the frigid winds from the Ukrainian steppe while letting the low winter sun enter from the southern sky above the Black Sea, made it many degrees warmer than anything nearby. Russian czars built vacation palaces there; the Russian gentry bivouacked in somewhat lesser digs. The neighborhood declined after the execution of the last czar and the flight or extermination of most of the gentry, but the Soviet commissars and their favorites found use for some of the vestiges of the decadent capitalist order. The Livadia palace, constructed by Nicholas II, became to Russian tuberculosis patients under Stalin what Warm Springs was to polio patients under Roosevelt.

The German war was much harder on Yalta than the Soviet revolution had been. German theater commanders established their headquarters at the Livadia palace, but as the Red Army reclaimed the area, the Germans looted and gratuitously ravaged the palace and its environs. With other priorities, the Russian government made no attempt to restore the building, which fell further into disrepair. Rats and larger animals took over, bringing fleas and lice, which in turn brought diseases of various sorts, rendering the erstwhile showcase of the former health spa decidedly unhealthy.

No one thought much of the mess until mid-January 1945, when Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill scheduled their conference. Yalta thereupon received a crash rehabilitation. Soviet work crews cleared up the rubble in and around the Livadia. Dachas near Moscow were stripped of their furnishings to replace the pieces stolen or destroyed by the Nazis. Hotel staff were spirited away from other facilities and transported to the Crimea. In an exception to Soviet policy and philosophy, Stalin allowed U.S. navy medical crews to travel to Yalta to fumigate and sanitize the palace, where Roosevelt and the American contingent would be staying.

Roosevelt reached Yalta by sea, air, and land. A sea voyage carried him to Malta, where the British and American military staffs were comparing notes, coordinating plans, and generally prepping for their sessions with their Soviet counterparts. Roosevelt stayed at Malta long enough to have lunch and dinner with Churchill but not long enough to give Stalin more reason to suspect Anglo-American conspiracy. From Malta the Sacred Cow, well guarded by an escort of fighter planes, carried the president to Saki, the airfield nearest to Yalta but still eighty miles away. The road over the mountains to Yalta was endlessly winding and unnervingly narrow; it too was guarded, although perhaps not so well. The war obviously had depleted Russian ranks; many of the roadside guards were young girls.

Roosevelt arrived at night, and Stalin the next morning. Stalin and Molotov stopped by Roosevelt’s rooms at the Livadia that afternoon. The three were joined only by their interpreters, Charles Bohlen and V. N. Pavlov. Roosevelt remarked that on the ship coming over he had made a number of bets on whether American forces would reach Manila before Soviet forces got to Berlin. Stalin laughed and said he hoped the president had put his money on Manila. There was much hard fighting to be done between the Oder, where the eastern front currently ran, and the German capital.

Roosevelt replied that he had seen a sample of German rapacity on the road from Saki. As a result, he was “more bloodthirsty” than he had been the previous year at Teheran. He hoped the marshal would renew his call for “the execution of fifty thousand officers of the German army.”

Stalin said everyone was more bloodthirsty than before. The destruction in the Crimea was minor compared with what the Germans had done in the Ukraine. The Germans were “savages and seemed to hate with a sadistic hatred the creative work of human beings,” Stalin said. Roosevelt nodded agreement.

The president inquired as to how Stalin had gotten along with de Gaulle, who had visited Moscow several weeks earlier. Stalin said the French general was “unrealistic” about France’s postwar role. “France had done little fighting and yet de Gaulle demanded “full rights” with the Americans, British, and Russians.

Roosevelt volunteered to be “indiscreet” with Stalin, saying he wanted to tell the marshal something he wouldn’t say in front of Churchill. “The British for two years have had the idea of artificially building up France into a strong power which would have 200,000 troops on the eastern border of France to hold the line for the time required to assemble a strong British army.” Roosevelt added, “The British are a peculiar people and wish to have their cake and eat it too.”

Stalin asked Roosevelt whether he thought the French should have a zone of occupation in Germany, along with the Americans, Russians, and British.

Roosevelt said a zone for France was “not a bad idea,” but it would be given “only out of kindness.”

Stalin replied that kindness indeed would be the only reason to give France a sector of Germany.

Roosevelt and Stalin moved from the president’s suite to the grand ballroom of the palace, where they were joined by Churchill and various members of their entourages. Stalin asked Roosevelt to open the formal conference, as he had done at Teheran. The president obliged, thanking the marshal for arranging the meeting in such a lovely and historic spot. He expressed his hope and expectation that the three leaders and their parties would get to know one another better during their week together. There was much ground to cover—“the whole map of Europe, in fact.” But this afternoon, by agreement, the discussion would focus on the war against Germany.

Roosevelt turned to Stalin, who invited General Alexey Antonov, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, to review the progress on the eastern front. Antonov provided great detail on the current and prospective operations of the Red Army, all of which appeared promising. They would be even more promising, he said, if the Americans and British would press harder in the west, in particular to prevent the transfer of any German units to the east.

George Marshall responded for the Anglo-Americans. He said the German bulge in the Ardennes, which had caused such concern a month earlier, had been eliminated. The Allied forces had pushed the front back to where it had been, and beyond. The American and British armies were nearing the Rhine, which they would cross in a few places as soon as they got there. But a broad offensive across the river would have to wait until the ice cleared, probably about March 1.

T
HE DISCUSSIONS
turned to the settlement that would follow the war. The framework for the postwar United Nations organization had been worked out several months earlier at a conference at Dumbarton Oaks, a wooded estate near the embassy district of Washington. Representatives of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China had agreed that the organization would consist of a general assembly of most or all of the world’s nations, and a security council controlled by the Big Four. Details of membership and voting were left to Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill to decide.

The first Yalta dinner—a typical Russian feast, albeit less elaborate than the meals at Teheran, since Roosevelt was the host—avoided business while the food was being served. “Marshal Stalin, the President, and the Prime Minister appeared to be in very good humor throughout,” Bohlen observed. “No political or military subjects of any importance were discussed.” Only at the end did substance intrude. Stalin reaffirmed his position from Teheran that the three great powers, which had borne the brunt of the war and liberated the smaller victims of Nazi aggression, should have “the unanimous right to preserve the peace of the world.” Anything else would insult common sense. “It was ridiculous to believe that Albania would have an equal voice with the three great powers.” Russia, Stalin said, would do its part to keep the peace. He was willing to work with the president and the prime minister to safeguard the rights of the smaller powers. But he would “never agree to having any action of any of the great powers submitted to the judgment of the small powers.”

Roosevelt concurred. “The peace should be written by the three powers represented at this table,” the president said.

Churchill didn’t quite contradict Stalin and Roosevelt but recommended letting the lesser countries have their say. Reaching into his bag of proverbs, the prime minister declared, “The eagle should permit the small birds to sing, and care not where for they sang.”

The fate of Europe provided the theme of the second day’s discussions. The three military staffs had drawn a map of proposed occupation zones of Germany, to guide the planning for accepting a German surrender. The map gave an eastern zone, including Berlin, to the Soviet Union, a northwestern zone to Britain, and a southern and southwestern zone to the United States. Roosevelt circulated the map as a basis for discussion among the principals.

Stalin immediately pushed the discussion farther than Roosevelt had intended. The president was speaking of occupation zones, presumably temporary; Stalin said they should be talking about dismemberment, preferably permanent. The question had come up at Teheran, where, Stalin reminded Roosevelt and Churchill, they had concurred in principle that Germany should be broken up. “I would like to know, definitely,” Stalin said: “Do we all agree? And if so, what form of dismemberment?” How would the dismembered pieces be governed? “Will each part have its own government?”

Roosevelt tried to slow things down. He said the questions of dismemberment and governance could be decided later, as they grew out of the experience of military occupation.

Churchill offered a middle course. “I think we are all agreed on dismemberment,” he said, “but the actual method, the tracing of lines, is much too complicated a matter to settle here in five or six days. It requires very searching examination of geography, history, and economic facts…. If asked today, ‘How would you divide Germany?,’ I would not be able to answer.”

Stalin thought Churchill was stalling. Delay could cause serious problems, he said. No one knew how long the war would last. “Events in Germany are developing rapidly toward a catastrophe for them. In view of such rapid events, we should not be without preparation.” What would the terms of surrender be? Unconditional surrender had served well as a wartime slogan, but at war’s end there would be terms, whether formally announced or not. For example, should the Germans be told that their country was to be dismembered?

Churchill didn’t think so. “I see no need to inform the Germans at the time of surrender whether we will dismember them or not,” he said. “It is enough to tell them, ‘Await our decision as to your future.’”