Stalin's Secret Agents

The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government

M. Stanton Evans, Herbert Romerstein

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781439155547
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Until now, many sinister events that transpired in the clash of the world's superpowers at the close of World War II and the ensuing Cold War era have been ignored, distorted, and kept hidden from the public. Through a meticulous examination of primary sources and disclosure of formerly secret records, this riveting account of the widespread infiltration of the federal government by Stalin's "agents of influence" and the damage they inflicted will shock readers. Focusing on the wartime conferences of Teheran and Yalta, veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans and intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein, the former head of the U.S. Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation, draw upon years of research and a meticulous examination of primary sources to trace the vast deception that kept Stalin's henchmen on the federal payroll and sabotaged policy overseas in favor of the Soviet Union. While FDR's health and mental capacities weakened, aides such as Lauchlin Currie and Harry Hopkins exerted pro-Red influence on U.S. policy—leading to massive breaches of internal security and the betrayal of free-world interests. Along with revealing the extent to which the Soviet threat was obfuscated or denied, this in-depth analysis exposes the rigging of at least two grand juries and the subsequent multilayered cover-up to protect those who let the infiltration happen. Countless officials of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations turned a blind eye to the penetration problem. The documents and facts presented in this thoroughly researched exposé indict in historical retrospect the people responsible for these corruptions of justice.

1.

EVEN IF MY ALLY IS A FOOL

It was, said Prime Minister Winston Churchill, “the greatest concentration of earthly power that had ever been seen in the history of mankind.”¹

Britain’s inspirational wartime leader was referring to the Teheran conference of late November 1943, where he met with American president Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, his allies in the deadly struggle that was being waged against the Nazi Wehrmacht and (by the United States and Britain, though not by Russia) against Japan’s Imperial legions. It was an accurate summary of conditions then prevailing. The allies at Teheran commanded land and naval forces more formidable than those deployed in any other conflict, before or after. Among them they controlled vast stretches of the earth and its major seaways, and were rapidly conquering others.

While Churchill’s reference was to Teheran, it would be as valid, in fact a good deal more so, slightly over a year thereafter, when the three leaders met again near the Black Sea resort city of Yalta, in what was then the Soviet Union. By the time of Yalta, not only was the combined might of the Big Three even more prodigious; it was obvious that the Germans and Japanese were soon going to be defeated. At that point the victorious allies could together rule the world in toto, as there would be no other state or group of states remotely able to oppose them. Supremacy on such a scale was unprecedented in the annals of global warfare.

With such great power went huge responsibilities, opportunities, and problems. The superpowers held in their hands the fate of millions who had survived the ravages of war and would now dig out from beneath the rubble. These bewildered and battered peoples would be desperately seeking to put their lives back together in some semblance of peace and order. What the Big Three decided at the wartime summits would dictate their ability to do so, with impact that would last for decades.

Given all of the above, some understanding of what happened at these meetings would seem essential to an informed assessment of late-twentieth-century history and the further mortal combat that filled its pages. Yet, in standard treatments of the era, such understanding is hard to come by. Many of these are by-the-book accounts of campaigns and battles, Allied advances and reverses, steps taken to mobilize American forces, U.S.-British joint endeavors, and other facets of the military struggle. Others might be described as court histories, written on behalf of the people wielding power and meant to justify their actions. All, as noted, have been limited in that relevant data were long held back, ignored, or censored, and in some instances still aren’t available for viewing. The net result of all these factors is that a complete and accurate record of what was done at these meetings in terms of geopolitical outcomes is still waiting to be written.

While making no pretensions to completeness, what follows is an attempt to fill in some historical blanks—to retrieve some of the missing data reflecting what happened at the wartime summits, and in the intervals between them, why it happened, and what resulted from the decisions taken. The principal focus is not on battles, generals, or naval forces, but on things occurring behind the scenes, as revealed by formerly secret records, memoirs of political and military figures, and confidential security archives now made public. In particular, we seek to trace the doings of certain shadowy figures in the background whose activities had significant influence on the decisions made and the Cold War policies that followed.

Briefly at Teheran, and more extensively at Yalta, discussions would be held among the Big Three powers about the shape of the postwar world, how its nations should be governed, and how to keep the peace among them. There was at Yalta specifically talk of a supranational body that would prevent outbreaks of future warfare and ensure the universal reign of justice.^† This was a chief preoccupation of FDR, who in emulation of Woodrow Wilson before him thought the founding of such an agency would be his great legacy to the future.

These lofty notions were in keeping with the stated purposes of the war, as set forth in official speeches and manifestos. In the widely heralded Atlantic Charter of August 1941, issued in the names of Roosevelt and Churchill, the two leaders had vowed their commitment to self-government, national independence, and political freedom. The Anglo-American powers, said the charter, “desire no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people.” It underscored the point by stressing “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they shall live.” These thoughts would be reprised at Yalta, with a few verbal changes, in a “Declaration on Liberated Europe,” agreed to by all of the Big Three allies.²

Of course, not all or even most discussions at Teheran and Yalta were conducted at this level. There were practical issues to be decided that were more immediate and pressing, and had to be settled while the war was still in progress. Among these was the destiny of the soon-to-be-conquered German nation, how its people should be dealt with, its assets distributed, and its lands divided. Also on the list of immediate topics were states of Eastern Europe that had initially been overrun by the Nazis and then captured by the Russians, whose prewar governments were in exile. How these countries would be governed, inside what borders and by whom, would be major objects of discussion.

On the agenda also, somewhat obliquely at Teheran, explicitly at Yalta, was the future of China, though at both meetings this enormous subject would be handled in sub rosa fashion. Not quite so large, but large enough, was the issue of “reparations” that the Germans owed the Allies, which in practice mainly meant the Russians.^† Added to these issues were questions involving refugees uprooted by the war, of whom there were several millions and whose plight affected all of Europe and much of Asia. All this compounded by the ravages of disease, hunger, and the mass destruction of industries, farms, and dwellings by saturation bombing and five-plus years of fighting.

In sum, just about everything imaginable was up for decision at these meetings, with Yalta in particular a veritable workshop for making over the world de novo, as so much of the preexisting global order had been demolished.

Of significance also, measured against the backdrop of the Atlantic Charter, was the way such matters would be handled. As things played out at Teheran and Yalta, the noble sentiments voiced in the charter amounted to little more than window dressing. In the vast majority of cases, the relevant choices would be made simply by the fiat of the Big Three powers: where borders would be drawn, what areas and assets belonged to whom, where populations would be moved because of such decisions. The three leaders would likewise decide, directly or indirectly, what political forces would prevail where and the forms of government to be installed in formerly captive nations, including those in alignment with the victors. No “freely expressed wishes of the people” about it.

Three prominent cases of this type were Yugoslavia, Poland, and China, all of which would be pulled into the vortex of Communist power when the war concluded. What the people of these countries thought about the decisions that shaped their destiny was immaterial, as they would have nothing effective to say about the subject. In these instances, governments would be imposed by top-down decree, intimidation, or outright violence. These results were both tragic and ironic, given the stated objects of the war, but especially so for Poland, as its independence had been the supposed casus belli of the conflict with the Nazis (as China was for the American war in Asia).

A similar fate would befall other nations of Eastern and Central Europe. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania would be absorbed into the Soviet empire as the war proceeded. Czechoslovakia would hold out a few years longer but also be subject to Red conquest, as was self-evidently the part of Germany to be controlled by Moscow. All this was prelude to half a century of Cold War struggle, with numerous outbreaks along the way of hot-war fighting, in every quarter of the planet.

Nor was the absence of peace the only tragedy of this tragic era. As the forces of Communism advanced, the practices that prevailed in Russia would be extended also. With few exceptions, where the Soviet armies came to rest, they or their surrogates stayed, and would stay for years to come. Poland, Hungary, East Germany, et al. would—in another famous phrase of Churchill—be sealed up behind an Iron Curtain of repression. Behind that impenetrable barrier, concealed from view and their voices strangled, untold numbers of helpless victims would be killed, tortured, and imprisoned, with no hope of rescue or outside assistance, and no certain knowledge in the West of what had happened to them.

In the years to follow, similar results would occur in Asia. Millions would be slaughtered in China once the Communists got control there, and millions more would perish in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Red police states would in due course extend from the Baltic to the Pacific, and later to Africa and Latin America, denying freedoms, shutting down religious institutions, locking up dissenters. And even where Communist systems did not prevail, authoritarian governments of one sort or another were the rule instead of the exception. The supposedly progressive twentieth century thus became a saturnalia of tyranny and violence, surpassing in this respect also all previous records of such horrors.

These developments were obviously light-years from the visions of peace and justice proclaimed by the Western leaders in World War II and in jarring contrast to the objects of the war expressed in the Atlantic Charter. Viewed from any angle, nothing could have been further from the oft-stated aims of Roosevelt and Churchill, who had announced a series of high objectives but somehow accomplished the reverse of what they said they wanted. Though the law of unintended consequences often rules in the affairs of nations, history affords few examples of such totally counterproductive action and catastrophic failure on such a colossal basis. Yet there were many factors in the wartime equation that, to a discerning eye, could have foretold these dismal outcomes.

Fairly obvious at the time, and even more so later, were the geostrategic consequences of the war, given the opposing lineups that developed early in the fighting. The inevitable main effect was to enhance the strength of the Soviet Union, as the war would destroy the two major powers, Germany and Japan, that had contained it on its borders. With these states demolished, there was no country in Europe strong enough to resist the further advance of Communist power, while in Asia the only sizable obstacle facing Moscow was the shaky regime of Nationalist China, which by 1949 would itself succumb to Communist revolution.

The looming European imbalance had been visible early on to the veteran geostrategist Churchill. Though he held mistaken notions of his own that contributed to the postwar debacle, he became increasingly concerned about the growth of Soviet power as the war unfolded. He saw clearly that, while the conflict was being fought to free Europe from a genocidal tyrant, it would end by placing the continent at the mercy of another. The great tragedy of the struggle, he would write, was that “after all the exertions and sacrifices of millions of people, and of victories of the Righteous cause, we will not have found peace and security and that we lie in the grip of even worse perils than we have surmounted.”³

Churchill’s conclusion from these reflections was that the West urgently needed to shore up its defenses against the expansion of Soviet power, which was what eventually did happen in Europe toward the end of the 1940s. The same wartime phenomenon, meanwhile, would be apparent also to some high-level American observers, but was viewed by them in an entirely different light, leading to sharply different conclusions. In these official U.S. precincts, the impending dominance of Soviet power in Europe was not something to be combated, deplored, or counterbalanced, but rather an outcome to be accommodated and assisted.

The most explicit and seemingly authoritative statement of this startling view was a policy paper carried to one of the wartime meetings^† by Roosevelt adviser Harry Hopkins. This document, among other things, asserted: “Russia’s post-war position in Europe will be a dominant one. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces. The conclusions from the foregoing are obvious. Since Russia is the decisive factor in the war, she must be given every assistance and every effort must be made to obtain her friendship.”⁴ (Emphasis added.)

Who drafted this astonishing statement is unknown, though Hopkins biographer Robert Sherwood tells us it came from a “very high level United States military strategic estimate.” More certain is that the thoughts expressed matched those of Hopkins himself and of his chieftain, FDR—presaging, as Sherwood notes, “the policy which guided the making of decisions at Teheran and, much later, at Yalta.”

Seeking Soviet “friendship” and giving Moscow “every assistance” indeed summed up American policy at Teheran and Yalta, and for some while before those meetings. The most vivid expression of Roosevelt’s ideas to this effect would be quoted by William Bullitt, a longtime confidant of the President, and his first envoy to Moscow. Bullitt recounted an episode early in the war in which he suggested to FDR that American Lend-Lease aid to Russia might provide some leverage with a balky Kremlin. To this, according to Bullitt, the President responded: “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for world democracy and peace.”⁵ (Emphasis added.) Bullitt, who had learned about Stalin the hard way in Russia, tried to dissuade the President from this view but was not successful.^†

This remarkable Roosevelt quote might seem implausible if there weren’t other statements on the record a good deal like it. In October 1942, for instance, the President wrote to Churchill: “I think there is nothing more important than that Stalin feel that we mean to support him without qualification and at great sacrifice”—which was pretty close to the Bullitt version. As for the noblesse oblige, FDR at Yalta would be recorded by British Field Marshal Alan Brooke as saying, “of one thing I am certain; Stalin is not an imperialist.” And at a post-Yalta meeting, the President observed to his presumably nonplussed cabinet that as Stalin early on had studied for the priesthood, “something entered into his nature of the way in which a Christian gentleman should behave.”⁶

When we recall that Stalin was one of the great mass murderers of all time, quite on a par with Hitler, these Roosevelt statements are most charitably described as surrealistic—less charitably, as irresponsible and dangerous nonsense. They were the more so as the President had at his beck experts on Soviet affairs including Bullitt, Loy Henderson, and George F. Kennan, all of whom had spent years in Moscow and knew much of the ghastly truth concerning Stalin. The President and his entourage, however, had no use for the counsel of such people, some of whom would in the 1930s and the war years be ousted from official posts because of their anti-Red opinions. (See chapter 19.)

Why Roosevelt believed the things he did concerning Stalin, or was willing to gamble the future of mankind on such “hunches,” doesn’t permit a definite answer. Undoubtedly a contributing factor was that he had close-in counselors who took a highly favorable view of Stalin and whose ideas trumped those of a Bullitt, Henderson, or Kennan. One such was Joseph Davies, who succeeded Bullitt as ambassador to Moscow and there became enamored of Stalin and the Soviet economic system. In a book about his experience in Russia, Davies would praise the Soviets in general, extenuate the bloody purge trials of the 1930s, and suggest that Stalin among his numerous virtues favored religious freedom and free elections (neither of which, despite some wartime gestures to placate U.S. opinion, ever existed in Stalin’s Russia).

As to the up-close-and-personal Stalin, Davies would write in a memorable passage: “He gives the impression of a strong mind which is...