Epilogue
Two key figures in the Poltava story, George Fischer and Franklyn Holzman, renewed their acquaintance at Harvard, where in the 1950s they pursued doctoral degrees in Soviet studies. For both, although in different measure, the wartime experience in Poltava turned out to be an important stepping stone to their academic careers. Surprisingly none of them decided to draw on those experiences for their research and teaching Oneagendas.
Holzman remembered that when he asked Fischer during their encounters at Harvard whether he was going to write his thesis on wartime Poltava, Fischer, who as noted eventually wrote a doctoral dissertation and a book on Russian collaborators with the Nazis, answered in the negative. The reason he gave Holzman was that he was not sure exactly what had happened there. Holzman, who had told one of his fellow GIs at Myrhorod that he was going to write a book about Operation Frantic, was equally reluctant to commit his wartime experiences to paper and never produced the book he had wanted to write as a youth. These two accomplished scholars of the Soviet Union left it to others to write the history of the American experience at Poltava.1
The official histories of the different stages of the American shuttle-bombing operations in the Soviet Union written by James Parton, Albert Lepawsky, and William Kaluta bore all the hallmarks of military reports of the period, were often technical in nature, and remained sealed from the general public for decades to come. However, there was one military officer with full access to the official documents, who was eager to let the world know of what happened at the Poltava bases during the war years. This was John Deane. In 1947, by that time retired from the military service, he published his war memoirs under a title that summarized his view: The Strange Alliance. One of the nineteen chapters, “Shuttle Bombing,” was concerned exclusively with setting up and then running the Ukrainian bases, while other chapters, notably “Repatriation of Prisoners of War,” dealt directly or indirectly with aspects of the Poltava story.
Although Deane endured numerous setbacks and difficulties and bore many emotional scars as a result of Soviet handling of the Poltava-area bases, he believed that the whole effort had been worthwhile. Disappointed in his original high hopes for the future of the Grand Alliance, Deane nevertheless wrote that the Poltava-based air operations were “of immeasurable value to the United States,” as they had made possible “eighteen strong attacks on important strategic targets in Germany, which would otherwise have been immune.” “More important than that,” he continued, “it must have had a shattering effect on the morale of the Germans. … To see Russia let down the bars and permit American operations on her soil must have destroyed the last hope the Germans may have had of dividing her enemies and concluding a separate peace with one or another.”
About the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the bases after the end of shuttle-bombing operations and the subsequent closure of the Poltava base, Deane remarked: “The truth was that the presence of the Americans in the Soviet Union, and particularly the Ukraine, which is an area of questionable loyalty, was no longer desired. The true attitude of the Communist party leaders toward foreigners could no longer be concealed, especially since there was no operational necessity for their presence.” He was relieved to learn about the decision of USSTAF to close the base in April 1945. His hopes for the bright future of American-Russian relations were relegated to the past. Deane was, however, glad to discover the “vast difference in the attitude toward Americans that exists between the rank and file Russian people and their leaders.” He probably had in mind the Soviets in general and, when it came to the civil population, the Ukrainians more than the Russians.2
Deane was convinced that the Bolshevik thinking about the capitalist West was among the main reasons for the problems experienced by the Grand Alliance. Stalin and his lieutenants never envisioned the Grand Alliance as anything more than a temporary agreement to facilitate military operations on separate fronts against a common enemy. Close cooperation on the ground, especially opening military bases on Soviet territory, was regarded as wholly undesirable—little more than a capitalist plot to undermine socialism and seize territory. Communist ideology was reinforced in this regard by Bolshevik phobia rooted not in Marxism but in the foreign interventions during the Russian Revolution, when American, British, and French expeditionary forces occupied Russian and Ukrainian ports from Murmansk to Odesa to Vladivostok and moved into the hinterland.
George Fischer got hold of Deane’s book almost immediately and reviewed it for the July1947 issue of Far Eastern Survey, a journal that a few years later, in the McCarthy era, would be attacked as procommunist. Fischer was generally positive about the book, noting the thoughtfulness of the author’s observations and the wealth of his “inside” information. He was not at ease, however, with Deane’s readiness to explain the difficulties in American-Soviet relations as rooted in the Soviet leaders’ ideological animosity toward the capitalist West. The book, wrote Fischer, was rich in “authoritative facts intermingled with controversial personal conclusions.” Nor did he approve of Deane’s occasional mockery of the Soviets and their behavior. Even so, Fischer preferred to defend Deane rather than condemn him and other disillusioned participants in the wartime encounter. “The often far from abstractly judicious bias and emotion of these Americans about the Russian experiences should not be hastily condemned or disregarded,” wrote Fischer, “but rather considered as an important prevalent byproduct of the ever problematic close contacts of our officials with the Soviets.”3
Fischer was right. The experiences of the Americans involved in the Poltava story are of course essential to understanding their attitudes toward the Soviets. The American rationale for opening the bases was primarily strategic, but also involved high and largely unrealistic hopes of future friendship with the Soviets. For the Americans, the military alliance meant close cooperation on the ground and in the air, unencumbered by ideological, political, economic, or cultural insecurities. If anything, the opposite was the case. Given their numbers, technological dominance, and economic power, the Americans felt themselves superior to their Soviet partners. Their expectations ran high, and their subsequent disappointment was deep and long-lasting.
The American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, a prominent figure in this book, was among the first to be disappointed. His initial optimism about relations with the Soviets gave way to distrust, leading him to adopt a quid pro quo attitude in his dealings with them. A key factor in Harriman’s evolution was Stalin’s refusal to allow the Americans to use the Poltava-area bases to resupply the Warsaw insurgents in the summer of 1944. He would become an early promoter of the Cold War. The same trajectory was followed by another key player in the Poltava enterprise, General Robert L. Walsh, who took active part in the postwar struggle for West Berlin.4
The attitude to the Soviet regime and its war effort for most American servicemen on the Poltava-area bases evolved from friendly to hostile. Beginning with sincere admiration of the Soviet people and, to a lesser degree, of representatives of the Stalin regime for their resilience, sacrifice, and bravery in fighting Nazi Germany, they became disillusioned. Soviet political culture and everyday life repelled the Americans, irrespective of the policies implemented by the Soviet command. That was true of Colonel Thomas Hampton, Major Michael Kowal, and First Lieutenant William Kaluta.
To more or less the same category belonged Private Palmer Myhra, who was probably inspired to write the story of his wartime experiences by the dream that Holzman shared with him in Ukraine. In his self-published memoir, A Frantic Saga (2008), Myhra wrote that his experience at Myrhorod had turned him into a lifelong adversary of the Soviet system. A believer in electoral democracy, he overcame numerous hurdles to vote in the US presidential election of 1944 while posted overseas; in the Soviet Union he saw complete disregard for democratic principles. “They voted alright,” wrote Myhra with reference to Soviet citizens, “but had no choice of candidates.” He continued, “After what I had seen in the Soviet Union I had no interest in socialist or liberal political tendencies. So all my life I have been a conservative Republican. I saw good reasons to be that.”5
Those Americans who visited the bases for brief periods and were not affected by the Soviet espionage agencies there maintained their positive attitudes toward the Soviets long after their tours of duty at Poltava. The same was true of those in the permanent contingent at the bases who held leftist convictions that inspired sympathy toward the Soviet Union, its social experiment, and especially its war effort. Holzman certainly belonged to that category. “I always felt that my father had a sense of himself as part of the Soviet war effort,” recalled Thomas Holzman, Franklyn’s son.
To him, the Soviet Union was where the actual war was being fought and won at great cost, and he was proud to play a small role in that effort. When he spoke to me about the war, it was mostly about the brave defenders of Stalingrad and Leningrad, the heroism of the Red Army, and how impressive the Soviets stationed with him were. He also spoke movingly of the terrible, almost unbelievable sacrifices of the Soviet people. I recall him testifying before Congress about Lend-Lease debts, urging that they be forgiven in light of the Soviet sacrifices in the War. He was probably less critical of the Soviets and more sympathetic in many ways than others on the Frantic bases. When the Russian Federation awarded him the Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Medal for Participation in the Great Patriotic War, I think it meant an enormous amount to him because of the recognition it carried that he had been part of that effort.6
George Fischer shared Holzman’s fascination with the Soviet war effort, though he went much further in distinguishing the regime from the people. In his memoirs, written in 2000, Fischer recalled his Poltava experiences in terms of a contest between an old love and an old hatred. The love was for the country he called Russia; the hatred was for Stalin and his policies. “In my work I did not doubt what side I was on. My hate of Kremlin evil would not let me waver,” wrote Fischer. He died in 2005, loyal to his leftist beliefs and adamant in his opposition to Stalinism.7
Why did most of the Americans who spent considerable time at the bases or were of sufficiently high rank to have regular dealings with Soviet officials leave the Soviet Union in 1945 with a strong sense of resentment toward their hosts? In general, the factors contributing to their change of heart were not directly related to the ideological differences and opposing geostrategic agendas pursued by the two states. After all, the wartime geopolitical objectives—the defeat of Germany and Japan—were held in common by the two allies, and many Americans sympathized with socialism broadly defined. It was differences in political culture that proved decisive in alienating the two parties.
One example is the Soviet treatment of prisoners of war as traitors and criminals, and their refusal to allow American personnel in Eastern Europe to help American prisoners of war released from German camps to make their way home via the Poltava-area bases. Such treatment aroused, as we have seen, the ire of President Roosevelt himself. This was the most obvious manifestation of an attitude shared by Soviet officials, military officers, and rank-and-file soldiers that the American found appalling. For the Americans, there was no higher duty than saving their prisoners of war, who were regarded as heroes because of the hardships they had endured. As noted, the Soviet regime considered Red Army soldiers captured by the Germans as traitors at worst, and at best as second-rate citizens who did not deserve the same food and treatment as those serving in the ranks; indeed, they could be robbed with impunity.
Even more important was issue of relationships. The Americans were incensed by the efforts of the Soviet secret police to curtail personal relations with their Soviet counterparts and by the campaign of harassment against women who dated Americans. The latter problem was hardly new to American officers and servicemen, who had already encountered it in Britain and liberated France, where locals resented relatively better-off American soldiers and the women who dated them. In the Poltava region, however, attacks on women who developed relationships with Americans were more brutal, encouraged by the regime but led by the secret police. It seemed to the Americans that the locals welcomed them, the authorities did not. It was as if they had landed in a country occupied by a foreign regime at odds with the general population.
Thus the Americans came to sympathize with local inhabitants, such as Ukrainians in Poltava and Poles in Lviv, and resent the Soviet authorities, whom they called “Russians.” Most locals welcomed the arrival of the Americans and hoped that their presence would either free them from Soviet rule (an attitude widespread in Lviv) or liberalize the Soviet political system (as some in the Poltava region believed). Women who dated Americans were waging their own war against the regime: some of them came from families oppressed by the Soviets during the war, while others had had relationships with Germans and therefore found themselves on the secret police blacklists. Apart from romantic or material considerations, Ukrainian women who wanted to marry their American sweethearts dreamed of moving to the United States, which the Soviet authorities treated as the imperialist foe.
Soviet commanders, political commissars, and counterintelligence and secret-police officers regarded the Americans not as allies but as potential spies and agents of capitalist influence. Extremely insecure in economic and often in cultural terms, they took a fierce pride in the recent victories of the Red Army, contrasting them with the much more modest achievements of the Allies in Western Europe. The Soviet military and political authorities indoctrinated their subordinates and the local population accordingly, encouraging and often forcing them to spy on their American acquaintances. The Americans were aware of that and attributed most of the difficulties in dealing with the Soviets to the policies of individuals or of the regime in general, rarely blaming the population.
With very rare exceptions, the Americans rejected core elements of Soviet political culture: the cult of the leader; the party-run propaganda regime, which sought to inculcate officially approved views; and the police state, with its constant surveillance, intimidation, and restrictions on personal freedom. For most Americans, the Poltava experience with the Soviet authorities and their political culture was led to the rejection of both.
While intellectuals like Fischer and Holzman remained ambivalent about the broader meaning of their experiences at Poltava, Myhra, a lifelong farmer from Wisconsin, had no such doubts. Frantic Saga offers perhaps the most astute assessment of the long-term significance of the Poltava story published by any participant. “I truly believe that we who were at these Soviet air bases in the 1944 days of the hot war really did witness the very beginning of the coming Cold War.” Myhra was gratified by the outcome of that conflict. “We were there and remember you as you remember us,” he wrote, addressing his old acquaintances in Myrhorod. “The Cold War has come and gone. … I never thought I would see the day when there was no more Soviet Union, and Ukraine to become a nation unto itself.”8
Myhra’s words resonated with the atmosphere that characterized the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Operation Frantic in September 1994. That month the friendship forged by rank-and-file airmen and soldiers of the Grand Alliance at the Poltava-area bases was marked with public festivities organized by the Poltava civic authorities. Ukraine, which had recently become independent, was glad to welcome both American and Russian veterans of the shuttle-bombing operations. The Ukrainian authorities opened the Poltava air base to American visitors, though it had served during the Soviet period as home to elite strategic bombers, including the supersonic Tupolev 160, whose targets were in the United States. The guests arrived in B-1B Lancer bombers from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and B-52N bombers from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. President Bill Clinton used the occasion to “congratulate the Ukrainian, American and Russian airmen who participated in the difficult air campaign over Europe fifty years ago and landed their planes at Poltava.”9
None of the major figures in this book was around or able to attend, but at least three American veterans of the shuttle-bombing operations took part. Among the three B-17 pilots who returned to Poltava in 1994 was Charlie Beecham of El Reno, Oklahoma. He came to Poltava and Myrhorod with pilots from the Barksdale base. “The celebration lasted three days,” wrote Beecham to the editor of the local newspaper, “and a beautiful monument was dedicated at the entrance to Poltava Air Base. Each of us was presented a silver medallion, three inches in diameter. The inscription reads: “For Memory about the Meeting of Ukrainian and American Pilots on Poltava’s Land.”10
It was the last time that veterans of the three nations jointly marked the anniversary of “Frantic.” Charlie Beecham died in 2012, soon after celebrating his ninetieth birthday. His obituary noted the five medals awarded him in the course of World War II as well as a sixth, one that he earned by delivering coal and other supplies during the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949.
It was not only the passing of veterans that accounted for the lack of enthusiasm in Ukraine for future tripartite celebrations of “Frantic” anniversaries.11 On the sixtieth anniversary in 2004, Ukraine was undergoing the turmoil of the Orange Revolution, having rejected the Russian-sponsored presidential candidate. On the seventieth anniversary in 2014, Ukraine was at war with Russia over its eastern territories in the Donbas.
Today, when part of the Poltava base has become a museum, one can visit the monument (mentioned by Charlie Beecham) to the American and Soviet airmen killed in the German attack on the base on June 22, 1944. But a visitor to the museum will also see the photographs of the Ukrainian officers and soldiers who lost their lives in ongoing war with Russia. Anyone approaching the monument will inevitably hear the roar of helicopters on the operational part of the base. It now serves as a training ground for Ukrainian helicopter pilots taking part in the Russo-Ukrainian war in eastern Ukraine. American planes and personnel are back in Ukraine, though not at Poltava. They are involved in training soldiers in western Ukraine for service in the east. The Soviet Union is long gone, and the United States now finds itself allied with one of its erstwhile partners against another. Even so, an essential continuity remains: as in World War II, the Americans are on the side of those who were wronged.
This is a continuation of the Poltava story that could hardly have been imagined in 1944, 1994, or even 2004. With the brief reconciliation between Cold War adversaries effectively over, and the winds of a new Cold War becoming chillier by the day, we need to look back at the American experience in Poltava in order to understand why the Grand Alliance disintegrated and to absorb the lessons for alliances yet to be formed. A fundamental lesson is that alliances can be sustained for some time by the need to fight a common enemy, but they can endure only on the basis of shared values. The Grand Alliance lacked that part.