The report on the conference was released on February 12. Congratulatory cables flooded in from friends and enemies alike. Said the Republican ex-president Herbert Hoover, “It will offer a great hope to the world”; William L. Shirer called it “a landmark in human history.” Even Arthur Vandenberg, Michigan’s isolationist Republican senator, was moved to state that the conference “reaffirms basic principles of justice and undertakes for the first time to complement them by direct action.” The American press was generally wildly enthusiastic. Time magazine wrote, “All doubts about the Big Three’s ability to cooperate in peace as well as in war seem now to have been swept away.” The Christian Science Monitor editorialized, “The Crimea Conference stands out from previous conferences because of its mood of decision…The meeting at Yalta was plainly dominated by a desire, willingness and determination to reach solid decisions.” The New York Herald Tribune also hailed it as a positive accomplishment: “The conference has produced another great proof of Allied unity, strength and power of decision.” The Washington Post joined in the praise: “The President is to be congratulated on his part in this all-encompassing agreement.”
Meanwhile, FDR was returning home on the Quincy, arriving back in Newport News, Virginia, the last day of February. The sixteen-day ocean voyage was designed to give FDR time to rest and recover from the conference, but Harry Hopkins, again extremely ill, had to leave the Quincy to check into a hospital. And FDR’s loyal friend, military aide, and appointment secretary, General Edwin “Pa” Watson, who had suffered a stroke, was in a coma aboard the ship. FDR had company to distract him: his daughter, Anna, and Leahy were aboard, as well as his doctor, Ross McIntire, and his naval aide, Admiral Brown, but to liven things up and get some work done, FDR, always media conscious, summoned the speechwriter Sam Rosenman, on a mission in London, to travel with him and work on the speech he would give to Congress, plus his three favorite White House correspondents, Merriman Smith, Douglas Cornell, and Robert G. Nixon. The four came aboard at Algiers on February 18.
Although the Quincy was heavily guarded by two cruisers, seven destroyers, and a canopy of warplanes, when it passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, a group of P-38s and a blimp were added, and the ship was preceded by a minesweeper: two Allied ships had been sunk the previous day in the area, possibly by enemy submarines. The minesweeper picked up a sonar signal, dropped a depth charge, but saw no evidence of a kill. Two days later Watson died. Observed Rosenman, “It was plain to all of us how deeply affected he was.” FDR spent the days resting and reading, sitting on deck when the sun shone, lunching in his cabin with Leahy, Rosenman, and Anna. Cocktail time was the usual, with FDR mixing the cocktails, as he so enjoyed doing, the drinks usually accompanied with liberal amounts of the caviar FDR had received from Stalin. In the evenings, on a screen set up in Admiral Leahy’s cabin, there were movies. FDR watched every evening except the last, when he and Rosenman worked on his speech. As the Quincy crossed the Atlantic, the precaution of zigzagging during the day and running darkened at night continued.
On February 23, FDR held a press conference for the three correspondents. His first thoughts were of the United Nations.
Q: Do you conscientiously believe that the Conference can be the foundation of world peace for more than the generation of the men who are building that peace?
THE PRESIDENT: I can answer that question if you can tell me who your descendants will be in the year 2057.
Q: Can we look forward?
THE PRESIDENT: We can look as far ahead as humanity believes in this sort of thing. The United Nations will evolve into the best method ever devised for stopping war, and it will also be the beginning of something else to go with it.
His balanced view of his two allies was very much in evidence: Indochina, now Vietnam, was on his mind, as was Hong Kong, which he had discussed with Stalin. What seemed to bother him, however, was Churchill’s imperial mind-set: he decided it was time to give it another shaking. What Churchill thought when he read FDR’s comments has never been recorded: perhaps the prime minister’s aides succeeded in keeping them from him. FDR was devastating on the subject of Churchill. In talking with the journalists about the Pacific, he said Indochina had been worrying him for two years: it wasn’t ready for independence—it should not be given back to the French—it should be under a trusteeship until it was ready, although the British wouldn’t like that because Burma might be next. “It might bust up their empire,” FDR said.
He answered the questions the three threw at him.
Q:…All [that] territory out there, he [Churchill] wants them all back just the way they were?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, he is mid-Victorian on all things like that.
Q: This idea of Churchill’s seems inconsistent with the policy of self-determination?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that is true.
Q: He seems to undercut the Atlantic Charter. He made a statement the other day that it was not a rule, just a guide.
THE PRESIDENT: The Atlantic Charter is a beautiful idea. When it was drawn up, the situation was that England was about to lose the war. They needed hope.
It was not until a few days before the Quincy reached Hampton Roads, Virginia, that FDR began serious work on the speech with Rosenman. “None too soon,” according to an impatient Rosenman, barely satisfied with a completed third draft before they docked. (In all there would be six drafts.)
A healthier Harry Hopkins was waiting for FDR the day he got back and present at both lunch and dinner. FDR spoke to a packed joint session of Congress on March 1. For the first time ever he spoke from his wheelchair, asking the audience for forgiveness with such a sure touch that no one gave it a second thought, particularly because he spoke for an hour with energy, wit, and incisiveness. The speech was generally well received, even by discerning journalists such as Arthur Krock of The New York Times, who wrote, “He made it so promptly and in such good temper he visibly and favorably impressed the auditors at the joint session. This was evident in their faces, in the volume and placement of their applause.”
The speech was a careful description of what had gone on at the conference, and in his statement of the failed diplomacy the United Nations would replace, it specifically repudiated Churchill’s “percentages agreement” with Stalin:
The Crimea Conference was a successful effort by the three leading Nations to find a common ground for peace. It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join.
FDR himself was happily relieved at what they had accomplished at Yalta. He told Daisy that “the conference turned out better than he dared hope for.”
In Russia comments bordered on euphoria, and because the press was virtually an extension of Stalin, it reflected Stalin’s sense of accomplishment, his feeling that the Soviet Union had accomplished its goals. The description of FDR’s speech took up two-thirds of the foreign news pages of Russian morning newspapers the day following the speech. Pravda editorialized that the alliance of the Big Three has “not only its historical yesterday and its victorious today, but its great tomorrow as well…It saw each decision by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin contributing to a speedier victory and a more stable peace.” Izvestia described the conference as “the biggest political event of current times—an event that will enter in history as a new example of coordinated solutions of complicated questions in the interest of peace and democracy” and informed its readers of the “deep and firm impression that the three leaders left this time better friends than ever before. Not the slightest sign of friction developed at any time during the meeting.”
Soviet factory workers held “spontaneous” meetings, spurred on by radio announcements of the conference—impromptu speakers making such comments as “We’ll be in Berlin soon…The hour of retribution has arrived.” Reference to the UN organization to maintain peace and security very evidently touched a nerve throughout the Soviet Union: many Russians, remembering their prewar pariah status, believed this powerful new organization, of which their country would be a founding member, would protect them from German aggression.
Stalin told General Zhukov that he was “very pleased” with what had transpired at Yalta; “Roosevelt had been most friendly,” he said. Molotov spread the word to Soviet ambassadors that the Soviet Union was happy with the Yalta decisions. “The general atmosphere at the conference was very friendly. We consider the conference as a positive development on the whole and specifically on Poland, Yugoslavia, and reparations,” he told them in case they were in doubt.
There seemed to be general agreement that the measures hammered out at the conference were such that all three leaders could live with them. On voting in the Security Council, where the power of the United Nations would rest, in the face of FDR’s insistence, Stalin had dropped the power to control the agenda. Poland had been a compromise for all. In dealing with Poland, FDR had his hands tied because the Red Army was in command of Poland, but he had drawn Stalin into public promises of an amazing nature. Stalin had signed a document that stated that the Polish government would not be the one imposed by the Red Army but would instead be reorganized on a broader democratic basis, that it would include democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad, and, astoundingly, that it would oversee the holding of “free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot.”
As Churchill told the War Cabinet later in February, “If the terms of the communiqué agreed with Premier Stalin were carried out in good faith, all would be well. If, on the other hand, effective reality were not given to those undertakings, our engagement would be altered.”
Stalin had even signed the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which specified as a Big Three aim the democratization of all of Europe:
(c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people; and (d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.
One major reason Stalin went along with Roosevelt on these stirring words, as the historian Geoffrey Roberts has pointed out, is that he expected that Communists were going to win leadership roles in free and open elections in the newly liberated countries: he thought the populace would embrace not just the Red Army, which had freed them, but a Soviet-dominated government. And some of the actions of the Lublin government in Poland, such as long-overdue land reform, were well received. In addition, the Moscow press announced shortly after Yalta that Russia would assist in the reconstruction of Warsaw: it would provide technical assistance and pay 50 percent of the cost.
Stalin had no idea how unpopular the strong-arm manner of Russian governance was. He thought, in fact, that with care, the Communist parties in the Slavic countries were going to grow in strength. As he said in April to Georgi Dimitrov, head of the Bulgarian Communist Party, “There should be no rush to hold elections…Issues have to be found on which the peasants could be won over to the Communist Party.”
So why not stay allied with FDR? America was the most powerful country in the world.
Another reason given for Stalin’s agreement with the Yalta documents, clearly antithetical to Soviet-style government, is a widely cited statement Molotov made that in effect implies Stalin never intended to honor the words he had signed on to. “Do not worry,” Molotov asserts Stalin told him, “work it out. We can deal with it in our own way later. The point is the correlation of forces.” This is quite clear, but these sentences were followed by another thought, added by Molotov, that is also obvious—and usually these next sentences are left out: “It was to our benefit to stay allied with America. It was important.” In other words, both Stalin and Molotov, in their own way, were admitting that alliance with America was crucial for them: devastated by Germany, Russia needed American help, needed America’s hand to help it rebuild. In February 1945, they expected that help would be forthcoming. Also, being pragmatists, Stalin and Molotov definitely didn’t want to antagonize the most powerful country in the world.
Stalin made a speech on February 23 celebrating the Red Army on its twenty-seventh anniversary and marking how close it was to victory:
The Red Army completely liberated Poland and a large part of Czechoslovakia, occupied Budapest and knocked out of the war Germany’s last ally in Europe, Hungary, captured the major part of East Prussia and German Silesia, and hewed a road for itself to Brandenburg and Pomerania, the approaches to Berlin.
The Hitlerites boasted that no enemy soldier had set foot on German soil for over a hundred years and that the German army had fought and would fight only on foreign soil. An end has now been put to this German boastfulness.
ARRANGEMENTS AMONG THE BRITISH, the American, and the Russian staffs had been in the discussion stage for months before Yalta regarding treatment of released prisoners of war of their three countries. At Yalta, although there had been no discussion at the Big Three level, measures had been finalized and documents signed specifying how each country would handle released prisoners of war:
Each ally will provide food, clothing, medical attention and other needs…until transport is available for repatriation. In caring for British subjects and American citizens the Soviet government will be assisted by British and American officers. Soviet officers will assist British and American authorities in their task of caring for Soviet citizens liberated by the British and American forces, during such time as they are on the continent of Europe or in the United Kingdom, awaiting transport…
We are pledged to give every assistance consistent with operational requirements to help to ensure that all these prisoners of war and civilians are speedily repatriated.
However, an American soldier and a Russian soldier were looked upon and treated differently by their respective countries. An American soldier was an individual with family ties, a member of a community, a voter, a citizen. A Soviet soldier was a cog in a machine, an expendable individual who served the state. This led to serious differences in the way each government treated its soldiers. Beyond this was the incontrovertible fact that the Russian nation was desperately poor and Russians were used to primitive conditions brought on by the war while Americans were used to the niceties of life. Hundreds of thousands—indeed literally millions—of Russians, made homeless by the war, were on the move, crowding roads and trains, overwhelming transportation facilities, taking shelter anywhere they could. As Russian prisoners of war came stumbling out of German prison camps, in most cases the Russian government expected them to make their own way to wherever they were going. As American prisoners of war, many of them injured aviators, stumbled out of the camps, the American government sought to provide them with immediate medical aid, new clothes, American food, clean beds, and transportation to speed their journey home: it was hard for the Russians to understand this. The idea, expressed at Yalta, that “we are pledged to give every assistance” simply had a different meaning to the Russians. They ordinarily transported POWs and sometimes their own troops in boxcars with no heat or sanitary arrangements. Harriman seemed to think it “unbelievable” that in at least one Russian camp, the freed Americans were mixed in with civilians; food, consisting of barley soup, bread, potatoes, tea, and coffee, was served only twice a day; and there were no delousing facilities. (He was conveniently forgetting that bedbugs and other vermin were a fact of life in Russia: that just before FDR had arrived at the Livadia Palace, the American staff, who thought they had scoured every inch of the palace, at the last minute had to spray it liberally with DDT.) Deane wanted to send in medical and other support staff to care for the freed soldiers: Molotov balked, fearing that Americans were using caring for their prisoners merely as a pretext to send in spies to report on Polish conditions. Also, as Molotov told Harriman, his people should be dealing with the Polish Provisional Government. General Deane had made careful, indeed elaborate plans to succor the released prisoners: a U.S. ship waited offshore with food, medical supplies, and clothes; small contact teams were ready and waiting to enter the POW camps. One team consisting of an American doctor and an officer chosen by Deane were permitted to go to Lublin with a load of supplies to care for the prisoners; however, they were not permitted to travel, and, most upsetting to Deane, no further personnel were permitted to enter. Instead, the Russians urged all American POWs to make their way to Odessa in the Ukraine: from there they would be flown out to Moscow.
Roosevelt and Stalin exchanged messages on the subject. FDR’s first message, basically written by Stimson along the lines requested by General Deane and sent March 3, mentioned “the difficulties which are being encountered in collecting, supplying and evacuating American ex-prisoners of war and American aircraft crews who are stranded east of the Russian lines.” FDR dictated the closing sentence to Stimson to put the message on a personal level: “In view of your disapproval of the plan we submitted what do you suggest in place of it?”
Stalin answered promptly that he had consulted “our local representatives…On the territory of Poland and in other places liberated by the Red Army, there are no groups of American prisoners of war, as all of them, except the single sick persons who are in the hospitals, have been sent to the gathering point in Odessa, where 1,200 American prisoners of war have already arrived and the arrival of the rest is expected in the nearest future.”
General Deane was sure there were still stray Americans in Poland and wanted permission to look for them: permission was denied. He appealed up the chain of command, and Deane was sufficiently powerful and sufficiently angry to engage FDR in his cause.
Another message went out over FDR’s signature containing some very strong words:
With reference to the question of evacuation of American prisoners from Poland I have been informed that the arrangement for General Deane with a Soviet Army officer…has been cancelled…I have information that I consider positive and reliable that there are a very considerable number of sick and injured Americans in hospitals in Poland and also numbers of liberated U.S. prisoners in good health who are awaiting entrainment…to transit camps in Odessa…I cannot understand your reluctance to permit American officers means to assist their own people.
FDR’s criticism didn’t make Stalin change policy, but it did sting him into an explanation. Stalin replied, making corrections in his own hand (Stalin’s handwritten changes shown in italics), in a message that went out on March 22. The exceptional care he took with this message might have been grounded in another event. On March 20, American fighter planes attacked clearly marked Soviet planes over territory held by Soviet troops in Germany. Although, according to the U.S. military mission report, the Soviet pilots tried to avoid an air battle, U.S. fighters pursued and shot down six Soviet planes, killed two Soviet pilots, and seriously wounded a third. This was the second instance of an attack by American fighters on Soviet planes over territory occupied by Soviet troops. Stalin chose not to bring the matter up with FDR:
In regard to the information which you have about a seemingly great number of sick and wounded Americans who are in Poland, and also those who are waiting for departure for Odessa or who did not get in touch with Soviet authorities, I must say that that information is not exact. In reality, on the territory of Poland by March 16 there were only 17 sick Americans, except a number of Americans who are on the way to Odessa. Today I have received a report that very soon they (17 persons) will be taken to Odessa by planes…
… The matter concerns the interests of the Soviet armies at the front and Soviet commanders, who do not want to have extra officers with them, having no relation to military operations but at the same time requiring care for their accommodation, for the organization of meetings and all kinds of connections for them, for their guard from possible diversions on the part of German agents who have not yet been caught…
Our commanders pay with their lives for the state of matters at the front and in the immediate rear…
In addition to this I have to say that former American prisoners of war liberated by the Red Army are in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps in good conditions, at any rate in better conditions than former Soviet prisoners of war in American camps where they have been partially placed together with German prisoners of war…
In a rare moment of reflection, Harriman had admitted to Washington on March 10 that if it hadn’t been for Russian soldiers, many Allied POWs wouldn’t even have been rescued: “The war prisoners say that as the Red Army advanced the Hitlerites took energetic steps to evacuate the camps where the Americans, English and Frenchmen were concentrated to the interior of Germany. Only the quick movement of the Soviet troops westward made possible the freeing of the war prisoners from captivity.”
The condition of the Soviet camps where American soldiers were being held—“sleeping on the floor, utterly no sanitary and washing facilities,” the lack of doctors—drove Harriman, from Moscow, to suggest retaliation to FDR in the form of limiting the movements of Russian contact agents in France caring for released Soviet citizens. FDR refused, answering that it didn’t appear “appropriate” for him to even send Stalin another letter on the subject.
Eventually, all the American and British POWs in Poland were found or made their own way to Odessa. Most reported helpful, grateful Russians; the worst stories were tales of stolen watches. From Odessa all the soldiers were flown out and repatriated. In a short time the matter had resolved itself.
POW tales of all sorts reached Washington. Henry Stimson records the more balanced Washington view of the Polish prisoner-of-war situation, writing in his diary of
two boys he had talked with, a [U.S.] captain and a lieutenant, loud in their praise of the basic kindness of Russian troops. They had seen a great many on this long trek which they had made on foot and had been treated with uniform kindness. They described the Russians as rough and the fare which the Russians were able to give them as very poor fare compared with the rations we are accustomed to…They found that the Russians uniformly had a very high opinion of the United States as the one country they wished to get along with.
FDR regarded these clashes with a different eye than did his staff on the front line. He refused to view them as anything other than minor, momentary disputes, and, by so doing, rendered them as such. When Mackenzie King came to visit the White House on March 9 for several days, FDR described the Crimea Conference and never mentioned the POW exchange of messages. He told King as they had tea the first afternoon that Stalin “had a good deal of humor, that he…liked him, found him very direct.” FDR was consistently upbeat: he didn’t think “there was anything to fear particularly from Stalin in the future—he had a big program himself to deal with.” After dinner with Eleanor and their daughter, Anna, FDR took King upstairs to his oval study, where the prime minister settled into a chair opposite FDR, who sat as usual on his leather couch. There FDR filled him in in more detail. He spoke of Churchill doing 80 percent of the talking at Yalta and again stressed Stalin’s sense of humor. Once, when Churchill was making a long speech, said FDR, “Stalin put up his hand to the side of his face…and winked one of his eyes as much as to say: there he is talking again.”
He told King that he felt “before the end of April, as far as Europe was concerned, it should be over…Once Europe was over, Japan would collapse very soon thereafter…possibly three months.” (For FDR to give such a short time frame for Japan’s collapse meant he knew the bomb was almost ready.) He also volunteered that quite possibly the war in Europe would be over before the San Francisco Conference was finished. The conversation between them went on until 11:45: King actually suggested breaking it off earlier, worried he was tiring FDR, but the president wouldn’t hear of it.
So upbeat was FDR that he confided to the Canadian prime minister his plans to make a triumphal European tour. He had been invited by the king and queen of England to visit in May, after Germany surrendered, but that seemed too soon he said, he expected it would be June. (By which time Churchill’s wife, on a Red Cross tour of Russia, would be back in England, Churchill had assured him.)
FDR’s plans were precise and elegant, he told King: “to go from the ship to Buckingham Palace and stay there, and then to drive with the King through the streets of London, and at the weekend, spend time with Churchill at Chequers. Also giving an address before the Houses of Parliament and get the freedom of the city of London…He would also like to pay a visit to Queen Wilhelmina in Holland, stay at the Hague. From there, he would perhaps pay a visit to Paris but would not say anything about that till the moment came.”
King concluded, “He and Churchill have worked out plans quite clearly contemplating that the war will be over before June…A sort of triumphal close to the war itself.”
FDR also confided to King that Stalin was waiting until he could bring all his divisions up to the front near Manchuria and would then break off relations with Japan.
But following the prisoner-of-war exchange of messages, which worked out to the satisfaction of both countries, there occurred another, larger problem. It came about through the resurgence of the Russians’ fears that their allies might make a separate peace with Germany. According to Stimson, it was precipitated by Churchill. Stimson laid it to what he characterized as the prime minister’s “erraticness.”
The Russians were always on the watch for signs of treachery, and occasionally their concern was justified. In April of the previous year Pravda ran a story from “reliable Greek and Yugoslav sources” that Ribbentrop had met with two British officials in a seacoast town in the Pyrenees “to find out the conditions of a separate peace with the Germans. It is understood that the meeting did not remain without results,” the article stated darkly.
On March 9, Alexander Kirk, ex-ambassador to Egypt, now political adviser to Field Marshal Harold Alexander, notified Stettinius that the SS general Karl Wolff, Germany’s highest-ranking officer in Italy, had arrived in Lugano, Switzerland, near the Italian border, with a small staff to negotiate the “definite surrender” of the German army in Italy. Kirk’s cable from Caserta stated that the information had been preceded by ten days of indefinite rumors and reports and appeared to be reliable.
Alexander explained to the Combined Chiefs of Staff that Wolff stated that the German commander Albert Kesselring had been contacted but was not yet won over to the plan and that he—Wolff—was planning to convince him it was the only way to avoid further German bloodshed in a cause that was hopeless. Further, it was so secret that Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and Wolff’s boss, was unaware of the plan. As evidence of his good faith, Wolff had been pressed to release and produce the leader of the Italian underground resistance movement, which he had done. Alexander further informed headquarters that he intended to send General Lyman Lemnitzer, U.S. deputy chief of staff, and General Terence Airey, British chief of intelligence, to Bern.
On March 12, Alexander informed Molotov of the possible negotiations in much the same language as his cable to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He told him that his representatives were preparing to go to Switzerland “in order to handle the situation,” that if the German representatives seemed genuine, they must fulfill certain expectations: they must have written evidence that they have Kesselring’s authorization; they will meet with the OSS at night at either the American or the British legation; Lemnitzer and Airey will be present.
Molotov informed Harriman that the Soviet government did not object to negotiations in Bern, but it wanted General V. N. Dragun, chief of the Soviet Mission on War Prisoners in France, General Ivan Susloparov, chief of the military mission in France, plus another unnamed officer to take part in the conversations.
General Deane thought the presence of any Russians a terrible idea, as he wrote to General Marshall: “The success of the mission might be jeopardized.” Harriman felt the same: such a mission “has no justification…It is not a capitulation of a Government as in the case of Bulgaria or Rumania.” So did Clark Kerr: “It is not intended that any terms of surrender should be discussed at Berne.”
As FDR would find out from Henry Stimson on the eleventh, Molotov assumed that Soviet representation would be accepted at this meeting mainly because Churchill had raised his expectations. Stimson wrote about the matter in his diary two days running: As a result of Churchill’s interference, the British chiefs of staff, instead of notifying the Soviet Union about these preliminary Bern discussions, had asked for their agreement. Stimson saw FDR on the eleventh. The next day the secretary of war wrote,
Apparently Churchill…overruled the arrangement of the two staffs, namely that we should notify the Russians but not ask their assent. He has instructed the British staff to defer final action until we get the Russians’ assent. This I think is a grave mistake. It adds delay to a movement which must be conducted rapidly.
On the thirteenth, as Russian anger escalated, Stimson wrote of the prime minister,
Somehow or other the English papers fell into the hands of Churchill and he overruled his staff and sent a note inviting the Russians to come and did this after our people had sent off their letter which simply notified the Russians.
FDR was bothered enough by the contretemps to give Mackenzie King, who was visiting him at the White House, an earful. King wrote in his diary on March 13,
The President was agreeable to having this [the Bern meeting] done in a way which would see that the Army surrendered and were properly treated and that Kesselring might himself have his men saved. If this were done, he believed it would help to speedily end the war. He had cabled Churchill about it, but Churchill, without communicating back with him, had communicated with Russia to ask if Russia was agreeable. Russia took the position that she wanted three Generals present. The President said Russia really had nothing to do with the Italian campaign. He was afraid Winston had acted too suddenly and they had made the situation very difficult.
Two days later FDR had General Donovan in for a meeting, presumably because he was head of the OSS and could give the president an update on what was actually happening in Bern.
In the discussion related to what the British and Americans involved considered the outrageous behavior of Molotov and Stalin, no one—not FDR, not Stimson, not Harriman, not Alexander—took into account the Russians’ basic fear of a double cross: the fear their Western allies might either be selling them out or, as a result of the proposed surrender of German troops in Italy, allow Hitler to concentrate his remaining forces against the Red Army on the eastern front. It is understandable, in view of their concentration on saving American lives, but it did not endear them to the Soviets in charge.
Certainly Molotov’s anger was palpable. Molotov had always been less certain of Russia’s new allies than Stalin. A worried Molotov had cautioned Stalin in 1944, “Germany will try to make peace with Churchill and Roosevelt.” “Right,” Stalin had answered, “but Roosevelt and Churchill won’t agree.” Now Stalin wasn’t so sure. Now, suddenly, he too was furious. Probably it was the combination of the Polish situation and the Bern talks that made Stalin do something he knew would seriously affect his relationship with FDR: under pressure from Molotov the marshal announced that Gromyko, not Molotov, would represent the Soviet Union at the San Francisco Conference. FDR was devastated. He wrote two messages to Stalin, both dated March 24:
Recalling the friendly and fruitful cooperation at Yalta between Mr. Molotov, Mr. Eden, and Mr. Stettinius, I know the Secretary of State has been looking forward to continuing the joint work…for the eventual realization of our mutual goal, the establishment of an effective international organization to insure a secure and peaceful world. Without the presence of Mr. Molotov the Conference will be deprived of a very great asset…I am afraid that Mr. Molotov’s absence will be construed all over the world as a lack of comparable interest on the part of the Soviet Government in the great objectives of the Conference.
FDR’s second message to Stalin dealt with the surrender negotiations (the words in italics were added in FDR’s hand):
The facts are as follows:…unconfirmed information was received in Switzerland that some German officers were considering the possibility of arranging for the surrender of German troops in Italy…When this information reached Washington, Field Marshal Alexander was authorized to send officers…to Switzerland to ascertain the accuracy of the report, and if it appeared to be of sufficient promise to arrange…for a conference at his headquarters in Italy to discuss the surrender. Soviet representatives would, of course, be present if such a meeting could be arranged… Soviet officers to be present at Field Marshal Alexander’s meeting with German officers when and if such a meeting is finally arranged in Berne to discuss details of a surrender at Caserta…It is in the same category as would be the sending of a flag of truce to your general at Koenigsberg or Danzig.
Stalin’s reply three days later dealt only with Molotov’s absence from the San Francisco Conference. “I and Mr. Molotov regret it extremely but the convening…of a sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR where the presence of Mr. Molotov is absolutely necessary, is excluding the possibility of his participation …” (It wouldn’t be until Roo sevelt died and Stalin ordered him to go to San Francisco that Harriman would discover that it was Molotov who elected not to go to San Francisco: he didn’t want to miss the meeting of the Supreme Soviet.)
It wasn’t until March 29 that Stalin dealt with the issues FDR had raised.
The Soviet Government could not have given a different answer…I agree to negotiations with the enemy on such matter only in the case when…there will be excluded a possibility for the Germans to maneuver and to use these negotiations for shifting of their troops to other sections of the front and, first of all, to the Soviet front…I cannot understand why representatives of the Soviet Command were refused participation in these negotiations and in what way could they cause inconvenience…For your information I have to tell you that the Germans have already made use of the negotiations with the Allied Command and during this period succeeded in shifting three divisions from Northern Italy to Soviet front.
The task of coordinated operations…announced at the Crimea Conference is to bind the troops of the enemy to the place of their location and not to give the enemy any possibility to maneuver and shift troops…This is being violated…
As a military man you write me you will understand that it is necessary to act quickly…It is regretted that an analogy does not suit this case. German troops at Koenigsberg and Danzig are surrounded. If they surrender they will do it in order to avoid annihilation…The German troops in Northern Italy are not surrounded and they do not face annihilation.
FDR in turn was furious. The cable as much as accused the Anglo-American military command, as Stalin called it, of colluding with the enemy. Harriman was asked to ascertain whether this was Stalin’s thinking or the thinking of someone else in the Politburo. Harriman answered that the words and reasoning were Stalin’s.
FDR called in as advisers Stettinius, Sumner Welles, Assistant Secretary of State Archibald MacLeish, and Bohlen to discuss the situation and draft a reply. Wrote Bohlen of their meeting with FDR in the White House, “It was one of the few times that I saw him angry. He was seated at his desk at the White House, his eyes flashing, his face flushed, outraged that he should be accused of dealing with the Germans behind Stalin’s back.” FDR’s strong cable in reply to Stalin touched on troop movements:
There is no question of negotiating with the Germans in any way which would permit them to transfer elsewhere forces from the Italian front…We intend to do everything within the capacity of our available resources to prevent any withdrawal of the German forces now in Italy…
… Your information about the time of the movements of German troops from Italy is in error. Our best information is that three German divisions have left Italy since the first of the year, two of which have gone to the Eastern front. The last division of the three started moving about February 25, more than two weeks before anybody heard of any possibility of a surrender.
Another message went out from FDR to Stalin that same day on the subject of Poland, but Stalin, furious at FDR’s cables about the Bern negotiations and the fact that the Soviet Union had been excluded, chose to ignore it and blast back his anger at FDR.
There is no doubt he was terribly upset. There was no way for anyone outside Stalin’s immediate circle to know it, but his cable was not only handwritten by him but heavily self-edited. It also showed that those around him, probably Molotov, were exacerbating his fears of betrayal. There was no doubt the Bern conversations had hit all the wrong buttons:
I have received your message on the question of negotiations in Bern. You are absolutely right that in connection with the affair…“has developed an atmosphere of fear and distrust deserving regrets.”
You insist there have been no negotiations yet.
It may be assumed that you have not been fully informed. As regards my military colleagues, they, on the basis of data which they have on hand, do not have any doubts that the negotiations have taken place and that they have ended in agreement with the Germans…
I think my colleagues are close to truth…
I understand that there are certain advantages for the Anglo-American troops as a result of these separate negotiations in Bern or in some other place since the Anglo-American troops get the possibility to advance into the heart of Germany almost without any resistance on the part of the Germans, but why was it necessary to conceal this from the Russians and why your Allies—the Russians, were not notified?
As a result of this at the present moment the Germans on the Western front in fact have ceased the war against England and the United States. At the same time the Germans continue the war with Russia, the Ally of England and the United States.
It was not necessary to know that Stalin had written this message in his own hand to detect the depth of his conviction that he was being double-crossed—it was obvious. So obvious that FDR responded to it with a deeply personal message of his own:
I have received with astonishment your message…containing an allegation that arrangements which were made between Field Marshals Alexander and Kesselring at Bern “permitted Anglo-American troops to advance to the East”…
I have told you that,
1) No negotiations were held at Bern;
2) That the meeting had no political implications whatever;
3) That in any surrender of the enemy army in Italy there could be no violation of our agreed principle of unconditional surrender;
4) That Soviet officers would be welcomed at any meeting that might be arranged to discuss surrender.
I must continue to assume that you have the same high confidence in my truthfulness and reliability that I have always had in yours.
I have also a full appreciation of the effect your gallant army had had in making possible a crossing of the Rhine by the forces under General Eisenhower…
I have complete confidence in General Eisenhower and know that he would certainly inform me before entering into any agreement with the Germans…
I am certain that there were no negotiations in Bern at any time, and I feel that your information to that effect must have come from German sources which have made persistent efforts to create dissension between us in order to escape in some measure for responsibility for their war crimes. If that was Wolff’s purpose in Bern your message proves that he has had some success.
With a confidence in your belief in my personal reliability and in my determination to bring about together with you an unconditional surrender of the Nazis, it is astonishing that a belief seems to have reached the Soviet Government that I have entered in an agreement with the enemy without first obtaining your full agreement.
Finally I would say this, it would be one of the great tragedies of history if at the very moment of victory now within our grasp, such distrust, such lack of faith should prejudice the entire undertaking after the colossal losses of life, matériel and treasure involved.
Frankly I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentation of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates.
No one could speak truth to Stalin and have it penetrate—except Roosevelt, as is shown by what happened next. As foreign minister, Molotov met with Naotake Satō, Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union from time to time. It was Satō’s job to keep track of Soviet intentions to honor the neutrality pact between their two countries, particularly sensitive as U.S. forces pushed them back toward their home islands. Molotov had been extremely careful to give no hint of a change in the Soviets’ attitude toward Japan, no hint that they were deeply involved in war plans against Japan with the United States. Satō had reported home, as late as after a February 22, 1945, meeting with Molotov, “Molotov as usual was amiable and smiling and I was conscious of the warmth of his personality throughout the interview.”
Now, on the afternoon of the day Stalin received FDR’s message, all that changed. Molotov called Satō into the Kremlin at 3:00 p.m. and declared that the Soviet Union wished to denounce its nonaggression pact. The reason given: “Japan, an ally of Germany, is helping the latter in her war against the USSR. Japan is fighting against the United States and Britain, which are allies of the Soviet Union.” The news was suddenly blared out on loudspeakers on Moscow’s cold, sleet-filled streets and all over the nation by radio.
In Japan, the cabinet fell. In America and England there was jubilation: doubts and worries about Stalin had begun to surface, particularly after it had been revealed that at Yalta Roosevelt had agreed to give the Soviet Union three votes in the proposed General Assembly; now there was a collective sigh of relief.
FDR by this time was in Warm Springs. He had boarded his railroad car, the Ferdinand Magellan, at 4:00 p.m. on the twenty-ninth, a few hours after the meeting with Stettinius, Bohlen, and MacLeish. Earlier in the day he had made it a point to talk to every member of his cabinet, according to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and had checked up on last-minute matters and given his opinion or his approval of their actions. Admiral Leahy walked with FDR as he got into his car and left the White House for the Bureau of Engraving, where the Magellan waited. “He was cheerful, as usual,” Leahy recalled, “and as he came to the door and got in his car, I remarked, ‘Mr. President, it’s very nice that you are leaving for a vacation. It is nice for us, too, because when you are away we have much more leisure than when you are here.’ Roosevelt laughed and replied, ‘That’s all right Bill, Have a good time while I’m gone because when I come back I’m going to unload a lot of stuff on you.’ ”
Traveling with him were Daisy Suckley and Laura Delano, known as Polly, his eccentric, entertaining, purple-haired, flamboyant (especially in contrast to Daisy) cousin who also lived in Rhinebeck. He was looking forward to days of rest, relaxation, and bathing in the Warm Springs pool filled with the restorative water that came from the mineral springs. His home there, the Little White House, which he had built in 1932, was a one-story white cottage of simple frame construction; Daisy, in her bedroom in the cottage, could hear (and report to Dr. Bruenn) every coughing spell he had during the night. Others of his group were in cottages close by. The healing waters were an attraction, certainly for the president, but also he was away from Eleanor, which meant he could have Lucy Rutherfurd come and visit and be totally relaxed about it.
Molotov’s announcement to Satō must have been a great relief for the president. At least one gamble was paying off. However, even though he had reset Stalin’s fears about their relationship, Stalin did not giveup on two points, as he wrote in his next message to FDR: “We Russians believe that in the present situation at the fronts when the enemy is confronted by the inevitability of capitulation, at any meeting with the Germans on the question of capitulation by representatives of one of the Allies, arrangements have to be made for the participation in this meeting of representatives of the other Ally.” And Stalin was still bothered by the great disparity between the resistance the German army was putting up between the eastern front and the western front: “They continue to fight savagely with the Russians for some unknown junction Zemlianitsa in Czechoslovakia which they need as much as a dead man needs poultices, but surrender without any resistance such important towns in Central Germany as Osnabruk, Mannheim, Kassel.” He also complained that some of the military information supplied his generals by Marshall “did not correspond to the actual course of events on the Eastern front in March” (while at the same time asking that Marshall continue to supply available data about the enemy).
And yet Stalin must have known that all Germans were in dread of the Red Army and were desperate to avoid surrendering to them. Hitler had deliberately instilled fear of Russians into the German people. In a message from Hitler read over the radio on February 24, he talked of the Jewish-Bolshevik plague and warned that if the Red Army triumphed, “the old men and children will be murdered, women and girls will be degraded as barracks whores. The remainder will march to Siberia.”
But it didn’t take Hitler to raise the awareness of German soldiers of what the Red Army had in store for them and their famous capital city. They knew that Red soldiers were looking forward to exacting revenge for the horrors they themselves had inflicted on Russians; they knew they had treated captured Russians—be they civilian or military—like scum. Red soldiers and civilians, having witnessed German atrocities—prisoners penned in open fields left to die, villages gutted, civilians torched and shot, cultural icons desecrated—were naturally filled with hatred for everything German.
Stalin made only token efforts to restrain his soldiers. He knew what he was about to unleash, as he told Milovan Djilas:
You have, of course, read Dostoevsky? Do you see what a complicated thing is man’s soul, man’s psyche? Well then, imagine a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade—over thousands of kilometers of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest ones! How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal. It is not ideal, nor can it be, even if it did not contain a certain percentage of criminals—we opened up our penitentiaries and stuck everybody in the army.
Soldiers of the Red Second Guards Tank Army, queried after the war wound down, supplied the information that 20 percent of them had relatives sent as slave labor to Germany and 90 percent had a relative killed or injured by German soldiers; they came from 2,430 villages the Germans had burned to the ground. The Germans, knowing the Red soldiers wanted revenge, dreaded the approaching Red Army, resisted them tooth and nail, and tried to lay down their arms to an American or British general. “The Germans had concentrated their forces against us as they prepared to surrender to the Americans and the British,” Stalin later told Khrushchev.
STALIN HAD SUMMONED his military commanders to Moscow on March 25 to finalize plans for taking Berlin. A force of 2.5 million men, 41,000 guns, 6,250 tanks, and 7,500 planes had been assembled. An event happened that pleased Stalin enormously. On the evening of March 31, General Deane and his British counterpart, Admiral Ernest Archer, together with Harriman and Clark Kerr, met with him in his office at the Kremlin to deliver a cable to him from General Eisenhower. In it Eisenhower informed Stalin that he intended to bypass Berlin and concentrate on encircling and isolating the industrial Ruhr—to strike first in the center and subsequently to effect a linkup with the Red Army in the Regensburg-Linz area with a view to neutralizing the redoubt, Hitler’s last line of defense. Eisenhower asked Stalin to cable back his intentions and let him know whether their plans meshed. Stalin, very pleased, answered that he agreed on all points: that Eisenhower’s plan of dividing German forces by uniting the Soviet and Allied armies fell in with the Soviet plan, that the principal Soviet blow would be about the second half of May, that enemy forces on the eastern front were being gradually increased by divisions from northern Italy and Norway. He also included a sentence that probably amused Eisenhower: “Berlin has lost its former strategic significance. Therefore the Soviet High Command is considering the assigning of second rank forces on the Berlin salient.” This was such a bald lie that Eisenhower probably didn’t believe it. But Eisenhower was intent on avoiding Berlin: General Omar Bradley had given him an estimate that taking Berlin would cost 100,000 American lives (the Berlin siege would cost the Russians 361,367 casualties). Why should he waste American lives when he knew Stalin was eager to get there first? Eisenhower had made no secret around SHAEF headquarters of his aversion to taking Berlin: Berlin is “no longer a particularly important objective…I regard it as militarily unsound at this stage…to make Berlin a major objective, particularly in view of the fact that it is only 35 miles from the Russians…The function of our forces must be to crush the German armies rather than to dissipate our own strength in the occupation of empty and ruined cities.” It didn’t make sense to Eisenhower to sacrifice American lives when the city was going to be a four-power island in the middle of the Soviet zone. This view fitted in perfectly with Roosevelt’s inclination, which was to let the Russians teach Germany its final lesson (“The German people as a whole must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization,” he had said to Stimson the previous summer), and with that of Marshall, who was very protective of American troops. Marshall was on record as saying, “Personally, and aside from all logistical, tactical or strategic implications I would be loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.”
Stalin not only didn’t put his second-string commanders in charge of the assault on Berlin; he initiated a competition for Berlin between General Rokossovsky and General Zhukov.
Stalin was ever after grateful to Eisenhower. Nikita Khrushchev recalled, “In conversations with his inner circle Stalin always stressed Eisenhower’s decency, generosity, and chivalry in his dealings with his allies. Stalin said that if it hadn’t been for Eisenhower, we wouldn’t have succeeded in capturing Berlin…Berlin would have been occupied by the Americans…in which case…the question of Germany might have been decided quite differently.”
Eisenhower had notified none of the people he should have before sending his cable to Stalin: not the Combined Chiefs of Staff, not his own deputy, Air Marshal Tedder. This unusual procedure, which essentially kept the prime minister out of the loop, was FDR’s way of stopping Churchill from interfering with the decision: it is pure Roosevelt. Allowing the Red Army to take Berlin had added attractions for FDR besides saving American lives. He had never gotten over the mistake the Allies had made after World War I of not making the Germans experience defeat: German soldiers returning home in 1918 had been greeted by cheering crowds; Berlin never saw a foreign soldier. The entrance of the Red Army into Berlin now—a ragtag, vengeful, undisciplined force—would ram home to Germans the folly of their ways. FDR thought the Russians deserved their revenge; it was their due.
When the prime minister learned of Eisenhower’s plan—which was immediately—he attempted to change it. He cabled a long, detailed message to FDR the next day that was all a buildup to the same subject—Berlin: “The fall of Berlin will be the supreme signal of defeat to the German people…The taking of Berlin by the Russians may lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties…[W]e should march as far east into Germany as possible and should Berlin be in our grasp we should certainly take it.” He accused FDR of changing plans they had agreed upon, a valid charge FDR never addressed. FDR’s answer—a long, soothing, evasive, detailed discussion of Allied military plans—was mainly drafted by Marshall, but FDR told Daisy that it was he, knowing what the plans were, who “sent an explanation to W.S.C. backing up Eisenhower.”
Three days after FDR died, Eisenhower ordered the U.S. Army to halt at the Elbe. “Where in the hell did you get this?” asked General William Simpson. “From Ike,” answered General Bradley.