The political situation facing Roosevelt's war party was far more complicated
and troublesome, there being no formal state of hostilities with anyone,
and with a long campaign to provide "aid" to England just concluded,
and with its opponents anything but happy over the state of affairs resulting.
Adding Stalin to the candidates for assistance was a more formidable proposition.
Major newspaper lineup on the issue continued approximately the same. The
Hearst papers, typified by the New York Journal American, and the McCormick-Patterson
interests, of which the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, and
the New York Daily News represented the principal voice, could be counted
on to oppose flatly any material gestures toward Soviet Russia. But the
New York Herald Tribune, the patrician voice of Eastern interventionist
Republicanism, while managing to carry a sizable freight consisting of thinly
disguised Stalinist spokesmen, suddenly discovered that objections to an
alliance with Communist Russia to beat Hitler were based on "moralistic
follies," while its chief columnist spokesman, Walter Lippmann, the
closest thing to Jove on the American journalistic scene, loosed some of
his rumbling thunder on the subject, cautioning critics of aid to Stalin
against releasing excessive "vaporings about democracy."
America's tiny Communist press could not come up with material as good as
this. With spokesmen as far apart as the Chicago Tribune and the New York
Herald Tribune, there was no sense to allegations by Republicans that the
Democrats were the "war" party; a large number of both were on
Roosevelt's pro-war team. World War Two homogenized American politics. It
put foreign policy more or less off the agenda thereafter, resulting in
the "bi-partisanship" which prevailed regardless of the winners
in the quadrennial elections. The war really created two new parties, supporting
pro-involvement or anti-involvement in global international activities,
and vastly disparate in size progressively after Pearl Harbor. What passed
for "debate" among the world interventionist majority for thirty
years descended to the level of whether five or seven units of artillery
or one or two aircraft carriers should be sent to some distant land. There
has been nothing in American history to match what has happened since 1942
in demonstrating dramatically the function of foreign policy as a reflection
of domestic policy, and the essential control of the latter by the former.
With the entry of Communist Russia into the war against the Germans, most
of America's liberals and non-Communist Left took another ludicrous and
wrenching opinion lurch. The venom behind the "Communazi" epithet
quickly was neutralized in the warm flow of sympathy which was promptly
forthcoming. They were aided by many self-recruited newcomers who joined
them and helped build the big wave of pro-Stalinist sentiment which was
still washing over the land when the falling-out occurred five years later.
It might be said that not as many liberals and leftists were against aid
to Russia as there were conservatives and rightists for such aid. The anti-aid
liberals were grouped around the Keep America out of War Congress, and additional
figures such as Norman Thomas and Eugene Lyons represented other factions
hostile to pro-Soviet support. But other left organizations, such as the
Legion for American Unity, the Union for Democratic Action, the Council
on Soviet Relations and the Socialist Workers' Party were examples of elements
quick to back an aid program for Soviet Russia.
On the operational side, two of the principal interventionist pressure groups,
ostensibly buttressed by influential conservatives, the Committee to Defend
America by Aiding the Allies, and the Fight for Freedom Committee, both
responded promptly to the Russo-German war by urging U.S. aid to the Communists.
The former dropped "by Aiding the Allies" from its name, while
stipulating that aid be given Stalin "without relaxing opposition to
Communism." The FFF soft-pedaled that approach and attacked the most
formidable anti-interventionist group, the America First Committee, while
posing to the latter a bogus choice, "Would you rather have the Nazis
looking across the Bering Strait or Alaska?"(13) This was reminiscent
of the ingeniously clever questions invented by George Gallup, head of the
American Institute of Public Opinion, and an ardent pro-war activist, one
of which was whether it was more important to defeat Hitler or to stay out
of the war. When put this way, 70% supported the first clause, but when
the same people were quizzed on a declaration of war, a larger percentage,
80%, flatly said no.(l4) Pollsters persisted in putting people on
the spot this way by presenting two-part propositions, the first of which
was ethical and the second practical politics, which introduced serious
popular confusion between ends and means, insofar as these same pollsters
stated the issues and allowed decisions based on these limitations. Thus
either large interest group, for or against involvement, was equally free
to quote the public response, and both were right. But the chips came down
only when the interventionists quietly inserted the matter of aiding the
Reds as part of the pro-war proposition. This invariably drew a formidable
vote against involvement. As for the Communist Party, 145 delegates from
48 states met in New York City the last weekend of June 1941 to prepare
a "peoples' program," which included a wild call for all-out aid.
Churchill and the CPUSA were of one voice by July 4, 1941, whatever may
have been their disparate objectives.
Such an alignment was purely coincidental to forces such as Churchill represented.
Time, which in magazine journalism stood for what the Herald Tribune did
among the dailies, set the tone by simultaneously uttering huzzas for Stalin
and Russia while The Pro-Red Orchestra in the U.S.A. (15).... displaying
nothing but contempt for domestic Stalinists. The German attack was ill-timed
for the American newsweeklies, taking place on a Sunday. As a result, the
issues of June 23 were already being distributed and could have nothing
on this electrifying event, one of the half-dozen most important dates of
the entire war. Therefore, the first comment was delayed until the issues
of June 30. By that date Time was able to make a deeper assessment of what
was taking place, and thought the message written by Undersecretary of State
Sumner Welles and read to the press, obviously with Pres. Roosevelt's approval,
not only amounted to a pledge to Stalin but used the language of a committed
belligerent, regardless of the state of diplomatic realities. It did not
bother Time that Welles filled the statement with verbiage such as "Hitler's
treacherous attack upon Soviet Russia," and using such choice derogations
as "dishonorable," "deceitful," "hostile,"
"murderous," "brutal," "desperate," and the
like; as they concluded with satisfaction, "When the U.S. could officially
use such terms" in describing the German action, "the U.S. was
certainly at War. (16) A further article asserted that all of Washington
was of the view that Communist Russia now had become at least technically
a beneficiary of FDR's $7 billion fund "to aid the allies of democracy,"
while noting that Churchill had immediately sprung to Stalin's defense.
A minor problem existed here, since Churchill had become a recipient of
U.S. military assistance only about three months before when the Administration's
hotly-contested Lend-Lease legislation was enacted. Therefore if this was
now to become a "Lenin-Lease" program, it suggested to some that
anything Churchill contributed to Stalin's cause might first have to be
derived from Roosevelt, in which case the U.S. would probably be the original
source of all "aid" supplied to Communist Russia. (17)
There is little doubt but that the involvement of Stalinist Russia in the
war in the summer of 1941 put a substantial crimp in the interventionist
propaganda line that the war was an unsullied conflict between "tyranny,"
represented by Germany, and "freedom," by its British adversaries.
This was essentially the contention of the American Anglophiles, which to
their embarrassment was now tirelessly mouthed by the Communists. It no
longer was an imperialist war, and global materialist factors quickly vanished.
Though Soviet Russia itself represented one of the most impressive feats
of imperialism, the word had not been applied to the USSR by Reds or their
allies since before Lenin's deaths Now that they were a party to the conflict,
all description of the war as a contest for mainly tangible objectives ceased,
and the taking on of the moralistic terminology of the pro-British opinion-makers
irked the latter substantially.
Time on July 7 in its article "The New Party Line" was anything
but conciliatory to the CPUSA, though in a parallel piece had kind words
to say about the sudden resurrection of Soviet diplomat Constantine Oumansky
to respectability. The magazine thought the CP leader William Z. Foster
grotesque in declaring that "A victory for Russia will enormously strengthen
democracy throughout the world," while concluding that a Russian victory
would primarily "strengthen U.S. Communists.'' (l8) The job
of Time and all the other agents of traditional British affiliations and
sympathies was to get on with a war in which the assistance of Russia against
Germany could be effected with as little reward or gain redounding to the
Russians at its conclusion as possible. So, even at this early stage it
was hands-across-the-Volga, but with a grimace of distaste. The wartime
partnership between the U.S.A. and the USSR lay more than five months in
the future, but its psychic consequences were apparent from the moment people
and politicians began to talk of supporting Stalin in June 1941. Ultimately
it gave this country the most uneasy and morally disturbing experience it
has ever known in the history of her foreign affairs. With the exception
of a few high-flying months in 1943 it must have been apparent to the respective
contingents of pro-Stalinists of all social backgrounds and economic levels
in this country that they were engaged in the salesmanship of a doomed product.
The schizoids of Time, with their continuous rebuffs of and sneers at the
U.S. Communists (19) while glowing with favorable sentiment toward
the Russian Reds, were symptomatic of other sectors of bedeviled American
opinion makers. It was embarrassing to have to support the Soviet Union
and simultaneously to have to suffer local Communists. From the propaganda
point of view, what was to eventuate resulted in a unique war for the United
States. While Time presumed that there was no need to bring the populace
into the picture, the issue involved being of stratospheric foreign affairs
well beyond the limited capacities of the common citizenry to understand,
the other two newsweeklies made a gesture at trying to determine what a
sector of the general public thought about it all, even if they overwhelmingly
sought the views of persons of some prominence while doing it. The First
Polls of American Political Personalities on the Pros and Cons of Aiding
the Soviet Union The United States News (it did not add World Report until
1950) exclaimed, "With Germany and Russia at grips along a vast frontier,
and with the Administration's announcement that any opposition to Hitler,
no matter what its source, is of benefit to our own defense, this country
faces a new problem in international relations." It faced a new problem
in internal relations, too: What did the people in general think of this
loud huzza to Stalinist Russia from the Roosevelt regime? U.S. News sought
to find out at least partially by polling public figures on the question
"Should the U.S. aid Russia as a part of the American policy of aiding
Great Britain?"
Wealthy Joseph E. Davies, late ambassador to Soviet Russia and the launching
pad of more pro-Stalinist mischief than the entire Communist apparati in
the U.S.A. combined were ever to achieve, responded, "My answer to
your query is unqualifiedly, yes." Senator Gerald P. Nye, famous for
having conducted the investigation into the material profiteers from World
War I five years earlier, replied in the negative as abruptly as Davies
had in the positive: Nye believed that Roosevelt should "draw the line"
against this further involvement.
Rep. Melvin J. Maas (R.-Minn.), minority member of the House of Representatives
Committee on Naval Affairs, declared, "I do not believe that we should
aid Russia. When you help one burglar to beat another, you are bound to
be robbed yourself in the end anyway. Stalin and Communism are as great
a menace as Hitler and Nazism. A shortsighted policy of expediency of the
moment, such as aiding Stalin, may be the tragedy of tomorrow, loosing a
greater destructive force in the world than that which now threatens us."
The prophetic quality of Rep. Maas's contribution was rarely bettered by
others, though it was something pro-Stalinist figures abominated, and tried
to make believe had never happened when the latter zealots for the Soviet
were circling about, a little over four years later, trying to mobilize
the land in the global Cold War against Stalin which Rep. Maas accurately
predicted.
But there were far more to be put on the record by the U.S. News reportorial
pollsters. Rep. A.J. May (D.-Ky.), Chairman of the House Military Affairs
Committee, sounded the case of the reluctantly repelled among the Administration's
supporters: "The complete crushing of Hitler and his regime is today's
paramount issue, and while the Communism of Russia is unthinkable and the
enemy of human liberty, it is a stealthy force not yet turned loose in such
vicious form and with such objectives of conquest as that of Nazism under
Hitler. Therefore I am persuaded that first problems should come first,
and we should aid Russia by aiding Britain."
Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, the Royal Oak, Michigan, Catholic priest who had
been a burr in Pres. Roosevelt's hide for eight years with his radio orations
and publications, confined himself to quoting Pope Pius XI, " 'Communism
is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization
may collaborate with it in any manner whatsoever,'" and Cardinal Hinsley
of England, " 'Britain must not, cannot, ally herself to an atheistic
dictatorship.' " Norman Thomas, four times Socialist Party candidate
for President of the U.S.A., but an implacable political adversary of domestic
and foreign Communism, expressed his sympathy with the Russian people but
demurred from coming to Stalin's succor: "I want no American boy to
die to decide which of two cruel and perfidious dictators shall temporarily
rule the European continent," Thomas forcefully responded; "Therefore
I want no attempt to send aid to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
at great cost to ourselves."
But Rev. L.M. Birkhead, Director of the fiercely pro- interventionist Friends
of Democracy, thought the fear of future Communist advancement a trivial
thing: "The United States should give every possible aid to Russia
in the present crisis," while confidently predicting that after the
defeat of Hitler, "the threat of Communism" "would no longer
exist," "for Russia will be exhausted by this war, win or lose."
No one polled the citizens of the twelve European capitals in the hands
of the Red Army on the breezy confidence of Rev. Birkhead four years later,
nor was it done while they still lay in the grips of Soviet Communism nearly
forty years later. But in 1941 one of the "friends" of "democracy,"
in the view of Rev. Birkhead and his front, was Stalinist Communism.
Some were evasive. Paul Hutchinson, editor of the very influential Protestant
weekly Christian Century, thought that aid should be extended to Stalin
only after an American defense force had been fully built up, while Ralph
Barton Perry, the Harvard University philosopher who chaired the Harvard
Group on National Defense, stepped aside and was willing to let the Roosevelt
regime decide on the matter. Another of the formidable Eastern figures behind
the Anglophile impulse, Frederic R. Coudert, also evaded the question.
As far as its press survey, the U.S. News thought the nation's newspaper
editors supported the idea the U.S. should aid the USSR, but of the 14 papers
it quoted, only the New York Times was for immediate and limitless aid to
the Reds regardless of consequences. It was noted however that the majority
of the papers had a very restrained admiration of the Bolshevik regime,
and tended to speak of helping "Russia," not its political masters.
(20)
Things moved so fast, and the overrunning of Soviet-held Poland and entry
into Western Russia by the German forces in the three weeks after June 22,
1941 was so rapid, that hysteria among Stalin's friends in the U.S.A. swelled
dramatically, and the question of American aid to Russian Communism in its
travails grew more prominently among those who charted public opinion. U.S.
News continued its poll another week in July, soliciting positive and negative
responses from another collection of the country's notables, which managed
to explore other dimensions of the issue and its likely results.
Speaking favorably in behalf of pro-Communist aid against Germany were Rev.
Dr. St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church
in the U.S., Rt. Rev. Joseph L. O'Brien, Pastor of St. Patrick's Church
in Charleston, S.C., Clark L. Eichelberger, Acting Chairman of the most
powerful pro-war pressure group in the country, The Committee to Defend
America by Aiding the Allies, and Major General John F. O'Ryan, Commander
of the 27th Division in World War I and sponsor of the equally interventionist
Fight for Freedom Committee. In addition to these were Rev. Dr. Henry W.
Hobson, Bishop for Southern Ohio for the Protestant Episcopal Church and
Chairman of the FFF Committee, Rev. Owen A. Knox, Chairman of the National
Federation for Constitutional Liberties, Estelle M. Sternberger, Executive
Director of World Peaceways, and James H. Sheldon, Chairman of the Board
of Directors of the Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi League, another deeply committed
band of civilian warriors.
Rev. Dr. Tucker asserted, "It would seem to me a very wise and proper
thing to do. As a matter of fact, I think our Government has already decided
on this course. Father O'Brien was more explicit and saw principled virtue
in aiding Stalin: "In the choice between Germany and Russia, the democracies
are safe if they throw their full power and influence on the side of Russian
ignorance and superstition to crush German intellectual materialism."
Eichel- berger was strongly in the affirmative as well, "Not because
Communism is deserving of any sympathy, but because the German attack upon
Russia is part of the strategy of the Battle of Britain and part of Germany's
desire to dominate the world." The unwearied assertion of the alleged
German goal of world domination was a major aspect of the propaganda of
the Committee to Defend the Allies. Gen. O'Ryan enthusiastically supported
aid to Stalin, since the defeat of Hitler called for "the expedient
cooperation with any of his enemies who will hasten his defeat," an
end which did not seem imminent, with Russian forces flying in retreat in
Eastern Europe.
Dr. Hobson backed aid to the Soviet for a different reason, fearful of a
quick German victory which he was sure would be followed by a westward drive
by Hitler against America. Rev. Knox's reason for backing aid was the following:
"If we believe that democracy must be maintained by war and that England's
fight is our fight, there would appear to be little logic in doing anything
less than giving Russia full support," while Estelle Sternberger's
view was close to that of Rev. Dr. Tucker, that the Roosevelt regime was
obviously favoring this course anyway. Sheldon not only vigorously supported
aid to Stalin, claiming "the very life of democracy is at stake,"
but used his response to cover a sideswiping blow at two obviously opposed
public figures, the eminent aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and Senator Bennett
Champ Clark (D.-Mo.), both of whom he claimed had fallen into Hitler's "amazingly
efficient propaganda trap." Dr. Hobson had of course avoided all Stalinist
propaganda traps. J. Barnard Walter, Secretary of the Friends' General Conference,
issued an evasive generalization, declaring that "The one way the U.S.
can help is to propose the kind of peace in which all peoples can unite
with justice," a course a light year away from that which FDR was traveling.
The others were in the unqualified "no" category; Frederick J.
Libby, Executive Secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of
War, John Haynes Holmes, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American
Civil Liberties Union, pastor of the Community Church in New York City and
vice chairman of the Keep America Out of War Congress, Brig. Gen. Robert
E. Wood, Chairman of the Board of Sears Roebuck Co., and Rev. Edward Lodge
Curran, Pastor of St. Stephen's Church in Brooklyn and Director of the Anti-War
Crusade of the International Catholic Truth Society. Libby's flat negative
was followed by extensive explanation: Only a fleeting military expediency
would prompt the United States to support Churchill in the coalition he
has formed with the Communist dictator against the Nazi dictatorship. Such
a tieup strips the last shreds of idealism from the Allied side of the war.
After pointing out that Churchill had made an agreement to fight at Stalin's
side until Hitler was defeated, and that this meant that neither could negotiate
peace without the other's consent, Libby observed that "This means
that Stalin's war aims become Britain's war aims as well," concluding
with a harsh-tasting evaluation for interventionism: If America ever joined
this war now, we should be fighting, not for the "four freedoms,"
but to restore Soviet tyranny over such little nations as Finland, Estonia,
Lithuania and Latvia. Only the strictest neutrality is possible now for
the United States, if it is to maintain its loyalty to democratic ideals.
The hypocrisies of the [First] World War should not be repeated.
Rev. Holmes, a front rank member of America's most influential opinion makers,
was no less vehement: No, the United States should not aid Russia. Why should
we use our wealth and power to make the world safe for Communism? The idea
that this is a war for democracy and civilization is now revealed as the
perfect sham it has always been. It is a war for imperialistic power and
for the mastery of the world by any nation that can get it. General Wood,
a founder of the most implacable anti-interventionist group, the America
First Committee (though he was not identified with it in his statement),
simply responded in a single sentence, "I do not think the United States
should aid Russia as part of the American policy of aiding Great Britain,"
but Fr. Curran adamantly declared: "decent nations who still enjoy
the blessings of peace should lend no aid or comfort to the brawl."
He concluded: "The use of the Lend Lease law in favor or Communistic
Russia by the President of the United States will generate the prompt and
righteous indignation and opposition of all Godfearing, liberty-loving American
citizens who denounce both Nazi Germany and Communist Russia as kindred
branches of the same pagan stem."(21)
Four days earlier, Newsweek had added to the controversy by printing the
reactions of several opponents of aid or involvement, which were as sharply
hostile as those cited by U.S. News. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, (D.-Mont.),
one of the foremost opponents of the Roosevelt foreign policy as it veered
toward involvement in the war buildups in Europe and Asia since 1937, remarked:
"The death struggle between the armed Germany and Russia is a death
struggle between the armed might of Nazism and Communism, and not an American
war." This view was echoed by John T. Flynn, veteran columnist for
the liberal New Republic and feature writer for Collier's magazine: "It
never was our war, and it is less our war now than ever." Senator Walter
F. George (D.-Ga.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
expressed his "profound hope" that this country will not become
an active participant in the present war," a hope already dashed by
its considerable involvement indirectly as a result of the Lend Lease Act
of the previous March, though far from the shooting stage, to be sure. In
its roundup of no-help-to-Russia notables, Newsweek cited Sen. Clark as
asking a Brooklyn crowd rhetorically if they could imagine "American
boys being sent to their deaths singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' under
the bloody emblem of the Hammer and Sickle." The redoubtable Sen. Robert
A. Taft (R.-Ohio) was quoted in the same collection of statements as seeing
a positive aspect of allowing Stalin to go down: "The victory of Communism
in the world would be far more dangerous to the United States than a victory
of Fascism." Probably the most influential of the anti-aid figures
was former President Herbert C. Hoover, and both Newsweek and Time published
statements by him in their July 7, 1941 issues. In the former, Hoover noted,
"We now find ourselves promising aid to Stalin and his militant Communist
conspiracy against the democratic ideals of the world," an allusion
to the Administration's sympathetic moves in that direction beginning with
the publication of the Welles statement. "Collaboration between Britain
and Russia," concluded Hoover, "makes the whole argument of our
joining the war to bring the four freedoms to mankind a Gargantuan jest."
Time frontpaged this observation by FDR's immediate predecessor in the White
House and added his famous warning, "If we go further [than aid to
Stalin] and join the war and we win, then we have won for Stalin the grip
of Communism on Russia, and more opportunity for it to extend in the world."(23)
It has been a rare week in the over 40 years since Hoover uttered those
words that the world has not seen them supported by world events. Despite
the prominence given to the views of public figures hostile to additional
involvement in the war via aid to Russia in harmony with already announced
British policy to go all out in this direction, there were all kinds of
indicators that the Administration considered the spreading of the war advantageous
to its own cautious edging- into hostilities. At the end of July 1941, U.S.
News told its readers in tones just short of panic that "best informed
U.S. officials" were convinced the Germans would reach their objectives
in Russia by September 15.(24) To some this was over-kill in the
propaganda department, for should Hitler attain his goals that soon, then
there was little need to attempt aiding Stalin; the war in the East would
be over long before any assistance arrived at the war front. Others were
less disconcerted. Time, still looking for a formula by which it could express
its distaste for American Communists while hailing the Russian variety,
conceded that the Soviet Union was "the weaker of two well-hated dictatorships,"
yet denounced Hitler's "crusade against Communism," and backed
aiding Stalin in his struggle as a protection of "democracy."(25)
U.S. News also enjoyed the discomfiture the opening of the war between
the Germans and Russians caused to the Communist Party (CP) in America,
forcing it to abandon its nearly two-year position of neutrality overnight,
though there were signs that this abrupt turnaround was not unbearably painful,
and was being achieved with skill. As early as July 8, New Masses, easily
the most influential Communist journal in the U.S.A., printed a piece authored
by Rep. Adolph A. Sabath (D.-Ill.) urging aid to the Soviet as a matter
of concern to U.S. defenses In general the stress was upon this issue, and
not that of making the Russian Communist regime safe. From this point on
it was a contest between the liberals and Communists as to which could make
the most ringing appeal to American self-interest in saving Stalin.
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