On Monday morning, Churchill woke desperate to speak privately with FDR. After the disastrous meeting the previous day, he wanted to be sure they were on the same side. He sent a message requesting that they have lunch together. He was rebuffed.
Roosevelt sent Harriman to explain to the prime minister why he did not want a private meeting that would make Stalin feel slighted. But knowing that Roosevelt had already had such a meeting with Stalin, it was Churchill who felt slighted. Harriman also expressed a concern over bugging. FDR didn’t want the Russians to pick up a private conversation between him and the prime minister. (Sergo Beria, the son of Lavrentiy Beria, one of Stalin’s chief enforcers, attended the conference and later confirmed that his job had been to translate the bugged conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill as well as the president’s meetings with his advisers. Stalin was stunned when he reviewed the transcripts. Surely the president knew he was being bugged, yet he spoke so openly. “It’s bizarre,” Stalin told Sergo. “They say everything, in fullest detail!” However, FDR had cleverly avoided being overheard talking to Churchill, and it’s likely that he deliberately said what he wanted Stalin to hear.)
Churchill said to Harriman, “I shall insist on one thing: that I be host at dinner tomorrow eve. I think I have one or two claims to precedent. To begin with, I come first both in seniority and alphabetically. In the second place, I represent the longest established of the three governments. And in the third place, tomorrow happens to be my birthday.”
To make matters worse, after lunch and before the second plenary session began, FDR sat down with Stalin and Molotov for a second meeting. Churchill might have felt ignored, but according to Molotov, Roosevelt quoted Churchill as saying, “I get up in the morning and pray that Stalin is alive and well. Only Stalin can save the peace.” True or not, believable or not, FDR hoped this would mollify Stalin. He urged Stalin to join the war against Japan—one of FDR’s primary goals for the meeting—and Stalin assured him he would—one day. Stalin believed that no promises could be made until Hitler was defeated.
Taking Stalin into his confidence, FDR said he wanted to discuss the future of the world after the war. He shared an idea for three governing bodies that would ensure the peace. One would be an assembly of United Nations members. A second would be a type of executive committee, composed of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, plus representatives of two European nations, one South American, one Middle Eastern, and one British dominion. That body would address nonmilitary issues.
Finally, there would be a third body, what FDR called the “Four Policemen,” composed of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China. It would be an enforcement body to deal with breaches of the peace anywhere in the world.
Stalin immediately balked at the notion of the Four Policemen. In addition to his contention that China had no place in such an august body, he said he thought that smaller nations would never support it. He suggested an alternative—dividing the authority between one Western (European) committee and one Far East committee. The Americans could be a part of the European committee. Roosevelt replied that Congress would never allow the United States to join a European organization.
FDR would continue to push for his plan. At one point, he drew by hand three circles in a row and labeled them: on the left, “40 U.N.,” representing the general assembly; in the middle, “Exec Com,” for the Executive Committee; on the right, “4 Police.” Underneath the left-hand circle, he wrote “ILO—Health—Agric-Food.” He then scribbled, “By FDR at Teheran, Nov. 30, 1943.”
A special event was planned for 3:30 in the afternoon, before the second conference. Members of the three delegations gathered in a large conference room for a ceremony, where Churchill presented the “Sword of Stalingrad” to Stalin in the name of King George VI to honor the victory at Stalingrad. An honor guard was organized for the ceremony, with British and Soviet soldiers and a Soviet army band, which played both the Soviet and the British national anthems.
Presenting the sword to Stalin, Churchill read a prepared statement:
I have been commanded by His Majesty King George VI to present to you for transmission to the City of Stalingrad, this sword of honor, the design of which His Majesty has chosen and approved. The sword of honor was made by English craftsmen whose ancestors have been employed in swordmaking for generations. The blade of the sword bears the inscription: “To the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad, a gift from King George VI as a token of the homage of the British people.”
Stalin took the sword and kissed the scabbard before passing it to Voroshilov, who grabbed it nervously and, not expecting its heft, dropped it. Stalin glowered at him and clenched his fists as Voroshilov quickly recovered the sword. Then Stalin gave it to FDR for his inspection. Everyone agreed it was a very fine sword.
IF THE CEREMONY WAS intended to ease the tensions between Churchill and Stalin, it didn’t have much effect. The second meeting was more contentious than the first.
At the start of the plenary session, the military staff presented a report from their morning meeting, which basically resolved nothing, as they essentially parroted their leaders’ arguments from the first day. Leahy later wrote that he had been particularly frustrated by the Russian attitude that Overlord could be launched without further delay. He thought Voroshilov was just as inflexible as Stalin, noting:
. . . like all the Russians that we met, he did not understand the difficulties of transporting an army and its supplies across a 3,000-mile ocean. Navies had never played a major role in Russian history, with the possible exception of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, when such a navy as they had was sunk by the Japanese. In our conversations the Russians would insist that their armies could cross rivers, but they did not understand the difference between a river and an ocean. They sounded like Army or Air Force officers trying to understand naval operations.
The second plenary session was, in Brooke’s view, “bad from beginning to end. Winston was not good and Roosevelt even worse.” Stalin kept the pressure on for a cross-Channel invasion no later than May 1, 1944. At the meeting, he came right out with the big question: “Who will command Overlord?” He wouldn’t trust that an operation was really being planned until a commander was named. FDR might have been tempted to say “Marshall” and put the matter to rest. All indications were that Marshall would be selected, and his wife had even started moving their possessions out of the chief of staff’s residence in Washington. Still, FDR held back.
Harriman was frustrated by FDR’s reluctance to name Marshall. In his view, Marshall was the only choice. He didn’t think that Eisenhower could hold a candle to the great general, and “I felt we should put the first team in the field.” But FDR wasn’t yet sure, and he said so.
“In that case,” Stalin countered, “nothing will come of Overlord. Who bears the moral and military responsibility for the preparation and execution of Operation Overlord? If that is unknown, then Operation Overlord is just so much talk.”
FDR ignored the insult and replied calmly, “We know the men who will take part in carrying out Operation Overlord, with the exception of the commander-in-chief.” He leaned over and whispered to Leahy, who was seated next to him, “That old Bolshevik is trying to force me to give him the name of our supreme commander. I just can’t tell him because I have not yet made up my mind.” Leahy, who believed the appointment would ultimately go to Marshall, thought FDR was right not to give in to Stalin’s pressure. For although Stalin felt free to make whatever demands he wanted, he was less supportive when FDR was asking for Soviet help. Faced with specific requests for cooperation, he repeatedly demurred, saying he would have to wait until he returned to Moscow before agreeing. “Mr. President,” he said slyly, “you tell me you frequently have to consult with your government before making decisions. You must remember that I also have a government and cannot always act without reference to Moscow.”
Churchill then began a long-winded explanation of the broader strategy, which included winning in other territories in the Mediterranean and bringing Turkey into the war. Though the Mediterranean was certainly crucial, many in the US and Soviet delegations thought Churchill was simply opposed to any cross-Channel assault—ever. Churchill later wrote that he’d never been against Overlord. But that seemed to be his position.
Stalin quickly dismissed Churchill’s wider concerns and demanded that the focus remain on Overlord. He emphasized the importance of avoiding diversions that would detract from the primary operation. Only the southern France operation had value because it would directly support Overlord.
FDR interjected that they should discuss the timing of Overlord. The date set in Quebec had been May 1, 1944, and he thought they should stick with that, at least within two weeks.
Churchill bluntly said that he could not agree to that date—although he’d been a participant in setting it. Once again, he insisted that they consider the Mediterranean operations before firmly committing to an Overlord date.
They’re diversions, Stalin said again.
Churchill heatedly disagreed.
Finally, Stalin gave Churchill a hard look across the table. “I wish to pose a very direct question to the Prime Minister about Overlord. Do the Prime Minister and the British Staff really believe in Overlord?”
Silence fell over the room. Churchill narrowed his eyes at Stalin and bit down hard on his cigar. In his rumbling voice, he replied, “Provided the conditions previously stated for Overlord are established when the time comes, it will be our stern duty to hurl across the Channel against the Germans every sinew of our strength.”
FDR, wanting to wrap things up, said they had a very good dinner—hosted by Stalin—awaiting them in an hour and people would be very hungry. He suggested that the military committee meet the following morning to work through the details. Stalin found the notion absurd. “Why do that?” he asked. “We are the chiefs of government. We know what we want to do. Why turn the matter over to some subordinates to advise us?” (That taunt would be echoed in 1988 by Mikhail Gorbachev, who was angered when President Reagan took the advice of his aides in a point of contention at the Moscow conference. “Quit listening to all your aides around you, Mr. President, and think for yourself,” he shouted.) The Soviets never understood the Western concept of having informed advisers who didn’t merely parrot the will of their leader.
It was high drama. Sherwood wrote, “The official records of these meetings were written with so much circumspection that the informal drama was largely obscured; but it was far too big to be totally disguised. One cannot read these deliberately dry and guarded accounts without the feeling that here were Titans determining the future course of the entire planet.”
Brooke was so discouraged by the meeting that he wrote in his diary, “I have little hope of any form of agreement in discussions. After listening to the arguments put forward during the last 2 days I feel more like entering a lunatic asylum or a nursing home than continuing with my present job. . . . May God help us in the future prosecution of this war; we have every hope of making an unholy mess of it and of being defeated yet!”
When he returned to his suite before dinner, Roosevelt looked tired. Elliott suggested he lie down for a nap, but Roosevelt was too keyed up. Rubbing his eyes and lighting a cigarette, he said of Stalin, “He gets things done, that man. He really keeps his eye on the ball he’s aiming for.”
“Overlord?” asked Elliott.
“That’s what he was talking about. And what we were talking about.” He described Churchill’s losing battle to fight the timeline: “Marshall has got to the point where he just looks at the P.M. as if he can’t believe his ears.”
FDR sighed wearily and asked Elliott to run him a bath and make him a weak old-fashioned. He sat drinking and ruminating for a while. “Elliott, our chiefs of staff are convinced of one thing. The way to kill the most Germans, with the least loss of American soldiers, is to mount one great big invasion and then slam ’em with everything we’ve got. It makes sense to me. It makes sense to Uncle Joe. It makes sense to all our generals . . . It’s the quickest way to win the war.” The problem was, Churchill disagreed. Roosevelt thought that Churchill’s resistance and desire to expand into the Balkans were a way of calculating the Russian strength after the war more than a true strategic plan to win the war. “Trouble is, the P.M. is thinking too much of the postwar and where England will be. He’s scared of letting the Russians get too strong.”
If that was Churchill’s concern, he had a point. None of the Westerners wanted to address the elephant in the room: Stalin’s true ambitions. It was easier to see themselves as having a common cause and to leave it at that, as long as the true goal was winning the war more quickly.
At the lavish dinner hosted by Stalin, the toasts went on endlessly, in the Soviet manner. The toasting process itself was quite a workout, as everyone was required to rise (except Roosevelt, of course) with each toast. FDR would describe it in a press conference after his return home: “We had one banquet where we had dinner in the Russian style. Very good dinner, too. Russian style means a number of toasts, and I counted up to three hundred and sixty-five toasts. And we all went away sober. It’s a remarkable thing what you can do if you try.”
Noting the grand spread of many courses, Elliott had a theory: “The reason there are so many is that you don’t have too much opportunity to get a bite of any one of them; you’re on your feet too often . . .”
Stalin enjoyed Roosevelt’s bonhomie, even though he recognized it as a form of manipulation. Roosevelt “was a wilier comrade [than Hitler] in earlier days or Churchill,” Molotov said. “He drank with us, of course. Stalin nursed him along just right. He was very fond of Soviet champagne . . . Like Stalin.”
According to Bohlen, “The most notable feature of the dinner was the attitude of Marshal Stalin toward the Prime Minister. Marshal Stalin lost no opportunity to get in a dig at Mr. Churchill. Almost every remark that he addressed to the Prime Minister contained some sharp edge, although the Marshal’s manner was entirely friendly. He apparently desired to put and keep the Prime Minister on the defensive. At one occasion he told the Prime Minister that just because Russians are simple people, it was a mistake to believe that they were blind and could not see what was before their eyes.”
At times Roosevelt’s efforts to woo Stalin could go overboard and be downright embarrassing—especially when he joined Stalin in taunting Churchill. Referring to discussions they’d had that day in the plenary session, Stalin accused Churchill of wanting to go easy on Germany after the war, which was far from true but provoked a reliable explosion from Churchill. Then Stalin took the teasing a step further, presenting a proposal for how to handle the German General Staff in defeat. Rising from his seat he said, “I propose a salute to the swiftest possible justice for all Germany’s war criminals—justice before a firing squad. I drink to our unity in dispatching them as fast as we capture them, all of them, and there must be at least fifty thousand of them.” As Churchill turned red with rage, Roosevelt’s eyes glimmered. He knew it was a joke, and it had produced the expected result. Churchill furiously cried that he would have no part in such barbarism. “Clearly there must be some sort of compromise,” Roosevelt said, in on the joke. “Shall we say forty-nine thousand five hundred?”
Elliott, who was a little worse for wear having drunk many glasses of champagne, rose to enter the fray. “Isn’t the whole thing pretty academic?” he asked. “Look: when our armies start rolling in from the west and your armies are still coming in from the east, we’ll be solving the whole thing, won’t we? Russian, American and British soldiers will settle the issue for most of those fifty thousand in battle, and I hope that not only those fifty thousand war criminals will be taken care of, but many hundreds of thousands more Nazis as well.” Stalin rushed over to clap Elliott on the back, praising FDR’s son.
But Churchill was enraged. “How can you dare say such a thing?” he shouted, jabbing a finger at Elliott. It was all too much for him. Churchill heaved himself up from the table and stormed out of the room. He was standing outside when he felt a firm grip on his shoulders. He turned to find Stalin, with Molotov behind him. Stalin was grinning. “It was only a joke,” he insisted, and persuaded Churchill to rejoin them at the table.
Churchill reluctantly returned to dinner, but he clearly felt that the future of Germany was no joking matter. He stared mournfully at the president, the man who had been his closest partner, the one to whom he’d once written, “It’s fun to be in the same decade with you.” He had dreamed of the time after the war, when the United States and Great Britain would effectively be the Big Two in the world. Now he was faced with another vision that turned his stomach: the United States and the Soviet Union as the Big Two.
Feeling a need to soothe Churchill’s wounded pride, Hopkins visited him at the British compound after midnight. He found Churchill looking worn out and utterly discouraged. Hopkins urged him to let it go, to accept the time frame for Overlord. After Hopkins left, Churchill, taking a sip of brandy, observed morosely, “Stupendous issues are unfolding before our eyes and we are only specks of dust that have settled in the night on the map of the world. . . . I fancy sometimes that I am nearly spent.”
Gloomy thoughts for a man who had turned sixty-nine at the stroke of midnight.