There is no way of knowing whether or not Stalin ever forced himself to acknowledge it, but this almost incomprehensible toll of monstrous destruction might very well have been avoided if Stalin had not made the insidious mistake of deliberately signing the pact with Hitler in 1939 which triggered the opening campaign of World War II. There are leading political authorities who now state that if Hitler had been forced to delay his campaign into Poland because of a threat from Russia, it would have given the Western Nations sufficient time to build up their forces, and by restoring a balance power in Europe the entire saga of World War II might have occurred.
U.S. Policy of Coexistence Enters the Fourth Stage
During World War II the President of the United States received two different interpretations of Communist policy and two different recommendations as how best to deal with the Communist leaders. One group of advisers took the historical approach, accepted the Communists as the world revolutionists which they described themselves to be, and assumed that their past conduct was the safest criterion of how they might be expected to act in the future. A second group of advisers presented a much more idealistic view of the Communist leaders. They wanted people to forget the past; to look upon Communist boorishness as nothing more than political immaturity, something which could be changed by patient endurance and expansive generosity.
To this second group, there rapidly gravitated not only theoretical idealists, but men and women who were later found to be deeply involved in outright subversion against the United States government.3 Historians now find it difficult to define just where idealism left off and subversion took over. In any event this was the group which dominated the Lend-Lease program and set the stage for policies which controlled U.S. relations with Russia for approximately fifteen years.
This was also the group of presidential advisers who acclaimed with the greatest enthusiasm the slightest suggestion that the Communists were "changing." For example, when the Communist International was disbanded May 22, 1943, this group hailed the announcement as incontrovertible evidence that the Communist leaders had renounced world conquest. Others suspected that this was merely a propaganda device. The latter proved to be the case, as Igor Gouzenko, the former Russian code clerk, testified: "The announcement of the dissolution of the Comintern (Communist International) was probably the greatest farce of the Communists in recent years. Only the name was liquidated, with the object of reassuring public opinion in the democratic countries. Actually the Comintern exists and continues its work, because the Soviet leaders have never relinquished the idea of establishing a Communist dictatorship."4
When many high officials of the President's own party saw the dangerous direction in which U.S. policy was moving, they hastened to warn him. One interesting conversation took place during the war between the President and his good friend, William C. Bullitt, whom the President had sent to Russia as the first U.S. ambassador in 1933. Mr. Bullitt had just finished outlining to the President many of his personal experiences with Joseph Stalin, and had warned the President to keep up his guard when dealing with the Communist leaders.
"Bill," replied the President, "I don't dispute your facts; they are accurate. I don't dispute the logic of your reasoning. I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. Harry (Hopkins) says he's not, and that he doesn't want anything but security for his country. And I think that if I give him everything that I can, and ask nothing from him in return ... he won't try to annex anything, and will work with me for a world peace and democracy."5
The philosophy reflected in this statement is the keynote to an understanding of the conferences held by the "Big Three" toward the close of the war. By that time the diplomatic strategy of the United States (which began with simple co-existence in 1933) had passed into its fourth phase -- the complete acceptance of the Russian Communists as full partners the plans for preserving future world peace.
Creation of the United Nations
During August and September 1944, the representatives of Britain, China, Russia and the United States, met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. At this conference the constitutional foundation for the United Nations was laid. In it Russia was not only made a full partner, but a dominant stockholder. A most significant development was the fact that, while other nations objected, Russia insisted on the right to exercise the veto power even if she were a party to the dispute. This violated the very foundation of international jurisprudence but the democracies consented. They were ready to pay almost any price to get Russia to participate.
By December 28, 1944, the American Ambassador to Russia began to express misgivings about U.S.-Soviet relations and the part Russia would play in the post-war period: "The Soviets have definite objectives in their future foreign policy, all of which we do not as yet fully understand.... From Soviet actions so far, the terms 'friendly' and 'independent' appear to mean something quite different from our own interpretation."6
Once the tide of war had turned, there was an increased arrogance in Soviet treatment of U.S. officials. General Deane wrote to Washington about Lend-Lease and said: "Even our giving is viewed with suspicion.... The party of the second part (the U.S.) is either a shrewd trader to be admired or a sucker to be despised.... I have yet to see the inside of a Russian home. Officials dare not become too friendly with us, and others are persecuted for this offense."7
By the following April the Prime Minister of England was becoming fed up with the whole Russian picture. He appealed to President Roosevelt: "I deem it of the highest importance that a firm and blunt stand should be made at this juncture by our two countries in order that the air may be cleared and they (the Russians) realize that there is a point beyond which we will not tolerate insult."8
There is some evidence that the President of the United States was also beginning to awaken to the realities of the situation, but one week after this message was written, President Roosevelt died. The monumental task of finishing the war and building the United Nations fell into the hands of those who still insisted that the Russians were being misunderstood and that a successful partnership could be definitely achieved.
On April 25, 1945, 1,400 representatives from 46 nations met in San Francisco, and after due deliberation agreed upon a United Nations Charter.
Anyone familiar with the Communist Constitution of Russia will recognize in the United Nations Charter a similar format. It is characterized by a fervent declaration of democratic principles which are sound and desirable; this is then followed by a constitutional restriction or procedural limitation which completely nullifies the principles just announced. For example, the Russian Constitution provides for universal suffrage and voting by secret ballot. Then, in Article 126, it provides for a single political party (the Communist Party) which will furnish the voters with a single roster of candidates. This, of course renders completely meaningless all the high-flown phrases dealing with universal suffrage and secret ballots. Freedom of the press is likewise guaranteed, and then wiped out by the provision that all writings must be "in the interest of the workers."
In precisely this same way the United Nations Charter provides for "the sovereign equality of all its members" (Article 1) and then sets up a Security Council which is dominated by five permanent members (Britain, Russia, China, France and the United States) any one of which can nullify the expressed desires of all other member nations by the simple device of exercising the veto power.
The Charter allows each member nation to have one vote in the General Assembly. This sounds like democracy, but then it provides that the General Assembly can do nothing more than make recommendations, and must refer all of its suggestions to the Security Council for action! (Articles 11-14). This makes the Security Council the only legally binding legislative body in the U.N. To make this absolutely crystal clear the Charter provides in Article 24 that any nation which joins the U.N. must "agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council."
This means that in spite of
the bold declaration that the U.N. is "based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples" the cold fact is that the members are all committed to obey the will of a handful of nations in the Security Council. As the next ten years dramatically demonstrated, all members of the U.N. -- particularly the little nations -- could be subjected to the choke-hold which the USSR had provided for herself by holding membership in the Security Council and dominating that body through the frequent use of the veto power.
The Charter further provides that membership in the U.N. shall be restricted to "peace-loving" states (Article 4). This was thoroughly discussed at San Francisco, and Secretary John Foster Dulles has emphasized that the U.N. was designed to be a collective organization of friendly nations to preserve peace rather than an assemblage of all the nations in the world. In other words, the United Nations was built on the premise that its members would only include those nations which had had a demonstrated history of being "peace-loving." Eight years after the adoption of the U.N. Charter, Secretary lies explained to the American Bar Association why the United Nations had failed to preserve the peace: "Now we see the inadequacy of an organization whose effective functioning depends upon cooperation with a nation which is dominated by international party seeking world dominion."9
As some authorities have since pointed out, the U.N. provided for a world-wide police commission and then made the top international gangster a member of that commission. It was like setting up a fire department to put out the conflagration of war and then putting the world-community's foremost firebug on the department. From the point of view of the little nations, it was like promising to provide a good shepherd to protect the small, weak countries, and then appointing the wolf and all her pups to protect the flock.
All this became apparent during the "decade of disillusionment" which immediately followed. In 1945, however, a war-weary, hopeful free world felt the United Nations was all it purported to be -- an organization for collective security designed to stand like a bastion against aggressor nations.
Communist Attitudes at the Close of World War II
A clear indication of what the United States could expect from post-war Communism came on May 24, 1945, when the leading French Communist, Jacques Duclos, wrote a letter on behalf of his Russian superiors demanding that the Communists in the United States be required to immediately abandon their policy of friendly collaboration with capitalism and return to their historic mission of world revolution. Back in 1940 the Communist Party of America had formally withdrawn from the Third International to avoid having to register as a foreign agent under the Voorhis Act. Later the Communist Party of America was dissolved in an attempt to attach the Communist membership to one of the major U.S. political parties. For this purpose they called themselves the Communist Political Association.
All of this twisting and turning was in complete harmony with Soviet policy until 1945. After World War II, the announced policy reverted to traditional Marxism. To justify the complete switch in policy, Earl Browder, the American Communist leader, was accused of being personally responsible for the "errors" of the former policy. He was expelled from the party.
The party leadership was immediately taken over by William Z. Foster. Foster, it will be recalled, had written an inflammatory book in 1932 called Toward Soviet America. Just before World War II he had testified before a Congressional Committee: "When a Communist heads a government of the United States, and that day will come just as surely as the sun rises, that government will not be a capitalistic government, but a Soviet government, and behind this government will stand the Red Army to enforce the dictatorship of the proletariat."10
It is no longer difficult to understand why Moscow wanted men like Foster at the head of its Communist parties throughout the world. We now know that the Russian leaders approached the conclusion of the world's greatest war with the conviction that World War III might be in the near offing. In their secret circles they hopefully speculated that this next war might be Communism's final death struggle with capitalism.
Igor Gouzenko states that after the armistice, he and the other employees in the Russian Embassy at Ottawa, Canada, were warned against an attitude of complacency. Colonel Zabotin gathered the employees together and then referred to the free-world democracies as follows: "Yesterday they were our allies, today they are our neighbors, tomorrow they will be our enemies!"11
Remarkable insight into the Communist mind during this Period can also be obtained from a speech delivered to an intimate circle of Communist leaders by Marshal Tito, head the party in Yugoslavia:
"The second capitalist war, in which Russia was attacked by her most dangerous and strongest fascist enemy, has ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet Union. But this does not mean that Marxism has won a final victory over capitalism.... Our collaboration with capitalism during the war which has recently ended, by no means signifies that we shall prolong our alliance with it in the future. On the contrary, the capitalist forces constitute our natural enemy despite the fact that they helped us to defeat their most dangerous representative. It may happen that we shall again decide to make use of their aid, but always with the sole aim of accelerating their final ruin....
"The atomic bomb is a new factor by means of which the capitalist forces wish to destroy the Soviet Union and the victorious prospects of the working class. It is their only remaining hope.... Our aims have not been realized in the desired form because the construction of the Atomic bomb was speeded up and perfected as early as 1945. But we are not far from the realization of our aims. We must gain a little more time for the reorganization of our ranks and the perfecting of our preparations in arms and munitions.
"Our present policy should, therefore, be to follow a moderate line, in order to gain time for the economic and industrial reconstruction of the Soviet Union and of the other states under our control. Then the moment will come when we can hurl ourselves into the battle for the final annihilation of reaction."12
Such were the reflections of Communist leaders as they emerged from World War II as the second greatest political power on earth. They felt Communism might have unprecedented possibilities as the "brave new world" entered the post-war period.
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1. This chapter in Stalin-Hitler relations is discussed by General Krivitsky in his book, In Stalin's Secret Service.
2. Speech of Harry Hopkins quoted in Roosevelt and Hopkins, by Robert E. Sherwood, p. 588.
3. A rather complete summary of Communist infiltration of the United States Government is contained in the book of James Burnham, The Web of Subversion, John Day Company, New York, 1954.
4. The Report of the Royal Canadian Commission, p. 663.
5. Life magazine, August 30, 1948, p. 94.
6. U.S. News & World Rreport, April 1, 1955, p. 41, in an article entitled: "U.S. Was Warned of Soviet Double Cross."
7. U.S. News & World Report, April 1, 1955, p. 40.
8. U.S. News & World Report, December 10, 1954, p. 29, in an article entitled: "Six Weeks That Shaped History."
9. The U.N. Today, H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1954, p. 198.
10. See the Report of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, January 3, 1939, pp. 18-21.
11. Report of the Royal Commission of Canada, p. 655.
12. Report by the Continental News Service, November 8, 1946, and quoted in The Communist Threat to Canada, Ottawa, 1947, pp. 10-11.
Chapter Nine
Communist Attacks on the Free World During the Post-War Period
Stalin's plan for the expansion of Communism after the war involved three techniques: the creation of pro-Communist puppet governments in occupied territory, the military conquest of new territory by satellite armies, and the further infiltration of free countries by Soviet espionage and propaganda organizations.
In this chapter we shall try to account for the phenomenal success of these three programs. It should provide the answers to th
ese questions:
Toward the last part of World War II did Allied leaders begin to suspect a Russian double cross? Why did Harry Hopkins make a special trip to Moscow a few months before he died?
How did the free world lose 100,000,000 people to the Iron Curtain through Soviet strategy?
How did the free world lose 450,000,000 more people through the conquest of China? What did the Wedemeyer Report reveal?
Do you think diplomatic blunders may have encouraged the attack on South Korea? What significance do you attach to Owen Lattimore's amazing statement in 1949: "The thing to do is let South Korea fall, but not to let it look as if we pushed her"?