STEPHEN D. KERTESZ - Between Russia and the West

The democratic states were quite unprepared for the Second World War when that great conflict began in 1939, and they struggled for years thereafter to bring their military forces up to a level of readiness sufficient for victory. After Pearl Harbor, the concern of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to mobilize the country's economy, to build ships, and to train a huge army for battle in the Pacific and in Europe. Meanwhile it was necessary to support Britain and Russia through Lend-Lease and to foster their fighting spirit, for the loss of either country from the Allied coalition would have postponed victory into an uncertain future. At the outset of Nazi Germany's campaign in Russia, in the summer of 1941, most of the general staffs in Europe and the leading American generals, estimated that the Soviet army would collapse in a matter of weeks or months. It was imperative to promise aid to Russia and to give as much immediately as was possible; this fact became even more obvious after the sudden Japanese attack upon the Pacific Fleet, followed within days by German and Italian declarations of war upon the United States. American entrance into the war automatically created a de facto alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The goal of the Big Three was to defeat the Axis powers and destroy the Nazi and Fascist political systems. Otherwise, their aspirations and expectations for the postwar era were quite different, if not contradictory. Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill desired to pre serve the British Empire, to keep open the world's sea lanes for the British navy, and to maintain a balance of power in Europe so as to limit Soviet expansion. These were reasons for his Mediterranean strategy, for British diplomatic support given to France to regain Great Power status, and for eventual British opposition to dismemberment of Germany. Premier Joseph V. Stalin was not bashful about expressing territorial goals in Europe and the Far East, in accord with centuries-old Russian expansionist policy. The United States wanted to defeat the enemy as rapidly as possible and bring back the American

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forces from foreign lands. Unlike the European Great Powers, the United States did not have a tradition of continuous participation in world affairs. The American hope was that in the postwar era the victorious Allied powers would cooperate in a world organization for the benefit of mankind.

While Britain and the Soviet Union followed traditional foreign policy practices during the war, such was not the case in the United States. Roosevelt was his own secretary of state, and he often made important decisions without consulting or even informing the Department of State. Although the president appreciated Secretary of State Cordell Hull's authority, especially with the Senate, he preferred to discuss foreign policy questions with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who resigned in August 1943. According to Welles, Roosevelt harbored a "deep-rooted prejudice against the members of the American Foreign Service and against the permanent officials of the Department of State."' At the Cairo conference with Chiang Kaishek and at Yalta, the president had no expert on Far Eastern affairs at his side, and American diplomats trained in the 1920s to deal with Russian affairs did not participate in formulation of foreign policy toward the USSR. Roosevelt's far-reaching decision was that military considerations should prevail during the period of hostilities and that political and territorial questions should be postponed to the peace conference. It is true that without military victory political ideas usually do not prevail, no matter how wise, but Roosevelt's approach gave the military a role for which their training did not prepare them. During the last stage of the war spectacular Western military successes were not used for political purposes. When the British insisted that the Western armies occupy Berlin and later Prague, American military leaders refused to hazard American lives purely to gain political advantage. General Omar Bradley commented in his memoirs: "As soldiers we looked naively on this British inclination to complicate the war with political foresight and nonmilitary objectives."2 The American military leaders' way of thinking disregarded the fact that before the atomic age war was considered to be an extension of diplomacy by other means.

Karl von Clausewitz, a century and more earlier, had expressed a generally accepted view on wartime decisions, namely, that "The art of war in its highest point of view is policy, but of course a policy that fights battles instead of writing notes." He added that "in spite of the great diversity and development of the present system of war, the main outlines of a war have always been determined by the cabinet; that is, by a purely political and not a military organ."3 This consideration

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was not followed in the United States. Declarations of principles, such as the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter, fostered hope in Europe, but declarations were no substitute for concrete political objectives. Roosevelt did not have plans for postwar Europe and the Far East. George F. Kennan in a letter to Charles E. Bohlen during the Yalta Conference pointed out one of the consequences of the lack of American policy for Central and Eastern Europe: "we have consistently refused to make clear what our interests and our wishes were . . . We have refused to name any limit for Russian expansion and Russian responsibilities, thereby confusing the Russians and causing them constantly to wonder whether they are asking too little or whether it was some kind of a trap."4

William C. Bullitt, a former ambassador to the USSR and to France, submitted a memorandum to Roosevelt in August 1943 in which he suggested obtaining Stalin's pledge for a renunciation of conquest in Europe and recommended a military advance from the south through Eastern and Central Europe: "We must also make clear our position toward the whole problem of Europe," he said. "No one in Europe has the slightest idea what our program is. This is natural since we have no program. Stalin has a clear program and a vas organization working day and night to carry it out. We cannot beat something with nothing."5

The Department of State had sought to prepare for peace, long before the end of the war, and actually began to plan for events in 1939. In the following year, a department memorandum explored the "consequences to the U.S. of a possible German victory." Later peace preparation took on a more optimistic tone. There seemed three categories of postwar problems--establishment of an international organization, economic and financial policy, and plans for an eventual peace conference.6 Peace preparatory work was successful in establishing the United Nations and in economic and financial matters. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank created by the Bretton Woods agreements in 1944 secured monetary stability and economic growth, and increased trade in the industrialized world and they helped the developing nations. Policy papers also were prepared for a peace conference that never met. Officials who prepared position papers for the peace negotiations assumed that the United States would possess overwhelming military and economic power at the close of hostilities and that the peace-making would be influenced by the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter.

But the State Department did not participate in high-level decisions during the war and could not influence the course of events. By

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and large it was restricted to routine diplomatic activities. Ambassador Bohlen testified some years later before the Senate Commit tee on Foreign Relations that the State Department had no representatives who ever sat with the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president. "In that sense, the war was run very much from the point of view of the military considerations." Bohlen explained that while he was an assistant to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., one of his duties was to serve as liaison officer with the White House. He was appointed to this position at the end of 1944 because Roosevelt's confidant, Harry Hopkins had come to realize that "it was a very dangeros thing for our purposes to have the Department of State so completely out of the picture."7

A grand design for Western strategy had been worked out by Churchill during a voyage to Washington on the Duke of York in December 1941. His plan for the forthcoming year suggested an Anglo-American occupation of the coast of Africa and the Levant from Dakar to the Turkish frontier. A series of meetings in the White House at this time, known as the Arcadia Conference, established a Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, but there was no comparable Anglo-American committee for political affairs. It was agreed that Germany was the primary enemy and its defeat the key to victory. While in Washington, Churchill signed the United Nations Declaration together with representatives of twenty-five nations.8

As for Stalin's policy during the war, it was not quite, as Churchill suggested, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. When Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden visited Moscow in December 1941 despite the precarious military situation, Stalin demanded im mediate recognition of the Soviet Union's western boundaries prior to the German attack of June 1941. This meant incorporation into the USSR of a part of Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland Bessarabia, and part of Bucovina. Stalin proposed other territorial changes in Eastern and Central Europe and was prepared in return to support acquisition of bases by Britain in Western European coun tries.9 Although the United States and Britain rejected the Soviet demands, Churchill, three months later, proved willing to accept territorial provisions in the Anglo-Soviet Pact of mutual assistance."' Washington did lodge a protest; the American ambassador in Lon don, John B. Winant, met Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotovand explained that according to the American position all territorial questions must be settled by the peace conference. An Anglo-Soviet alliance treaty hence was signed in London (May 1942) with omission of territorial clauses.

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In military strategy Stalin's demand for a second front in France coincided with the desires of the American military leaders who, from the beginning, advocated a massive invason of Europe across the English Channel because it was the shortest route to Berlin. General Marshalland his colleagues at an Anglo-American military conference auly 2, 1942) proposed the occupation of Cherbourg in the autumn of 1942, a preliminary move to a general attack in 1943. The British argued that there was no hope of Anglo-American forces still being in Cherbourg by the next spring. The American Chiefs of Staff reported back to the White House, and Roosevelt instructed them to agree to some operation that would involve American forces in action against the enemy that year. The conferees decided on an invason of French Northwest Africa, which had been part of Churchill's grand design.11

In the African theater General Bernard L. Montgomery defeated General Erwin Rommel's forces at El Alamein in early November 1942, and a few days later an Anglo-American landing at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers succeeded, despite some French military resistance and political complications. Churchill and Roosevelt met in conference near Casablanca in January 1943 and decided to exploit the success in Africa by invading Sicily, securing the line of communication in the Mediterranean, and intensifying pressure on Italy in expectation of an early Italian surrender. Roosevelt announced the much debated "unconditional surrender" principle, to the joy of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. This principle weakened the possibility of an uprising against Hitler although it in formed the world of American and British determination to fight until destruction of the enemy and thus assured the Russians that the United States and Britain would not conclude a separate peace.

The misfortunes of war in North Africa nonetheless deranged the timetable for victory in Europe. Hitlersent about 200,000 troops into Tunis, and the American and British armies were involved in a much longer campaign than Churchill anticipated. He remained convinced that crossing the Channel in 1943 would have led to "a bloody defeat of the first magnitude, with measureless reactions upon the result of the war," and considered postponement of a landing in France a blessing in disguise.12

The Americans continued to champion a massive landing in France, as soon as possible, and advocated early withdrawal of substantial forces from the Mediterranean. Churchill's insistence on a southern invason of Europe produced an adverse reaction in American military circles, and the American Chiefs of Staff ruled in

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the autumn of 1943 that the United States should take no responsibilities "in the areas of the Balkans including Austria." This political ruling by the military foreshadowed the fate of Danubian Europe. One of the consequences of this decision was the opposition of the Chiefs of Staff to American involvement in Austrian affairs. Ambassador Winant had to persuade President Roosevelt in June and December 1944, respectively, of the importance of American participation in the Allied Control Council in Vienna and in the ad ministration of a zone in Austria.13

A major purpose of Mediterranean strategy was the separation of Italy from Germany, and with the invason of Sicily on June 10, 1943, and Mussolini's dismissal a fortnight later, the stage was set for this policy. Although the Allies expected Italy's surrender, they had no military and political plans for so favorable a turn. Eisenhower's political adviser, Ambassador Robert D. Murphy, noted later that the British were hoping that quick success in Sicily and a Fascist collapse would "induce the Americans to assign men and supplies for an accelerated drive into Italy and the Balkans." He added: "Although I knew nothing of the military aspects of the British proposal, I did recommend the political advantages which might result if our forces could gain northern Italy and conceivably Budapest."14

The actors in the Italian drama indulged in a vas illusion. A document prepared by an Allied committee in London assumed that an Italian government could capitulate without German interference. At the time of Mussolini's dismissal there were only scattered German forces in Italy, and the Germans planned to defend a line north of Pisa and Rimini. If the Allies had deployed troops around Rome, the disgruntled Italian army could have changed sides. Because of misunderstandings between the Italians and the Allies, an armistice was signed only on September 3 and proclaimed five days later. Application of unconditional surrender to Italy was a great disappointment in Rome, for the Italians had wanted to change sides by becoming full-fledged members of the Western Alliance. While Prime Minister Marshal Pietro Badoglio was secretly bargaining for favorable armistice terms, the Germans sent nineteen divisions to Italy.15

The Anglo-American armistice with Italy incidentally provoked Stalin's wrath, and he complained in a letter to Roosevelt and Churchill that the Soviet government had not been kept informed. He said bluntly:

To date it has been like this: the USA. and Britain reach agreement between themselves while the USSR. is informed of the agreement

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between the two Powers as a third party looking passively on.

I must say that this situation cannot be tolerated any longer.16

Stalin proposed a tripartite military-political commission "for consideration of problems related to negotiations with various governments falling away from Germany," but later he was satisfied with establishment of the European Advisory Commission. He received a message from Roosevelt and Churchill on August 26 that indicated their objectives as "elimination of Italy from the Axis alliance and the occupation of Italy, as well as Corsica and Sardinia, as bases of operation against Germany."

All the while there were important developments on the vas eastern front where the Soviets faced more than two hundred German divisions. Delay in the promised second front in France, and the heroic fight of the Soviet army created a diplomatic atmosphere advantageous to Stalin. The turning point in Soviet politics came with the victory at Stalingrad in early 1943, and a few months later with the battle of Kursk, when Stalin realized that Nazi Germany would be defeated, for him the English-speaking powers thereupon became the potential enemy. Western political leaders congratulated Stalin, at first not recognizing the full implications of the new situation. When the political dimensions were realized, they faced poor alter natives. 17

Moscow changed policy after Stalingrad to exploit the new military and political advantages. Military victory greatly increased Russian self-assurance, which manifested itself in diplomatic action. Stalin used the Katyn affair for severance of diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London (April 29, 1943),18 and Soviet policy was forcefully expressed during the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers (October 18-November 1, 1943) and, four weeks later, at the Teheran Conference.

Tripartite conferences began with a Moscow meeting of the foreign ministers: Secretary of State Hull, Foreign Secretary Eden, and Foreign Minister Molotov19 Unlike the unstructured Teheran and Yalta conference, the three delegations proposed carefully prepared agenda. Stalin and Molotovwere reassured about the imminence of an Anglo-American landing in France in May 1944. Since a major United States objective was the establishment of a United Nations organization before the end of the war, to continue Allied unity, it was a great satisfaction to Secretary Hull that the Russians accepted the American plan for general security, although they inserted some modifications to serve their interests.

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Eden submitted a proposal on "Joint Responsibility for Europe" which would have made possible the establishment of a federation or union of states in East and Central Europe. Molotovread a statement on the future of Poland and the Danubian and Balkan countries, criticizing schemes for federation, and stated that the Soviet government regarded encouragement of such schemes as premature and even harmful not only to small countries but to European stability. Molotovclaimed that Eden's plan reminded the Soviet people of the cordon sanitair directed in the past against the Soviet Union. He denied that the Soviet government would be interested in separate spheres of influence and guaranteed that there was no disposition on the part of the Soviet government to divide Europe into such zones. After short comments by Hull and Eden, Molotovsaid he understood that his suggestion had met no objection, and so Eden's proposal was buried . 20

The future policy of the Soviet Union manifested itself at the Moscow Conference in many ways. Molotovdeclared that Russia wanted an independent Poland, provided the future Polish govern- ment was "friendly to the Soviet Union," which meant a Communist dominated government. The declaration on Italy stated that the Italian government "should be made more democratic by the introduction of representatives of those sections of the Italian people who have always opposed Fascism." This formulation became a model for Soviet-sponsored regimes in Eastern Europe. The anti-Fascist coalition government in Italy showed how Communists might enter governments of liberated countries, even in Western Europe. Abandoning a long-standing British policy, Eden agreed to the prompt conclusion of an alliance between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and to President Eduard Benes's impending visit to the Soviet capital. A few weeks later Benes signed a treaty of mutual assistance in Moscow.21 With this alliance the Polish-Czechoslovak treaty of November 1942 lost its political value. This treaty intended to establish a federation in Eastern Europe.

In the Declaration on Austria the three governments agreed "that Austria, the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerte aggression shall be liberated from German domination." Since the Soviet Union did not participate in the Italian Armistice, the conference established an Advisory Council for matters relating to Italy, to be com- posed of representatives of the Big Three and the French Committee on National Liberation. Provision was made for the addition of representatives of Greece and Yugoslavia. In reality the council had little power.

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The conference decided to establish in London a tripartite European Advisory Commission (EAC) "for ensuring the closest cooperation between the three Governments in the examination of European questions arising as the war develops." The EAC's task was to study such questions and make joint recommendations to the three governments. 22

On November 1 the three participants issued declarations on Austria, Italy, and on German atrocities. A Four-Power Declaration on General Security, including China as a signatory, meant acceptance of the principle of a world organization. For Secretary Hull the establishment of the new world organization seemed a cure-all for international issues, and he made this point enthusiastically in an ad dress before Congress on November 18, 1943:

As the provisions of the four-nation declaration are carried into effect there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power . . . through which, in the unhappy past the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests.

In this middle period of the war, and with these remarkable agreements at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, it is clear that relations between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union were be ginning to fall into a pattern in which momentary and anticipated difficulties of a political nature were adjourned until a future peace conference. Meanwhile the Western Allies hoped the Soviet Union would conduct itself as other nation-states and behave itself. Lend Lease shipments to Russia increased. Fire power of the Soviet Army was mainly home produced, but nearly half a million American, British, and Canadian trucks and other vehicles greatly increased the mobility of the Soviet army, making possible the advance of the Russians into Danubian and Central Europe in 1944-4S.23 According to a presidential directive of March 7, 1942, material promised to the USSR enjoyed preferential treatment over requirements of other Allies, and even over those of the United States. Major General John R. Deane, the American Lend-Lease representative in Moscow, later suggested that "this was one of the most important decisions of the war . . . it was the beginning of a policy of appeasement of Russia.24 Deane's realistic recommendations failed to influence the overgenerous Lend-Lease program. Whenever Deane rejected a Soviet re quest in Moscow, the Russians usually obtained in Washington what ever they wanted. During a period when Russia needed American help, Deane experienced in Moscow suspicious, unresponsive, and Frequently offensive behavior. All the while the Soviets used their

Notes

STEPHEN D. KERTESZ - Between Russia and the West