While this agitated clash of opinions on the subject became more heated
and pointed, it grew more obvious that the Roosevelt regime had made up
its mind in favor of sustained and substantial material and military aid
to Soviet Russia. The creep in that direction became a lope by mid-August
1941, a short time before the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting. The first dramatic
signal was the attention given to the flight to Moscow from London by Harry
Hopkins, much scrambled by the pro-New Deal press but ultimately admitted
to have been in the interests of seeking out Stalin's advice on how U.S.
goods might be expedited to the Soviet.(58) It took place at about
the same time Soviet Ambassador Oumansky led a Soviet military mission to
an audience with FDR on the same subject, presumably with the behind-the-scenes
guidance of Welles, the subject of a Time cover story on August 11, and
credited with having virtually assured Oumansky that his Red regime could
depend on a substantial supply of military assistance from America, "in
its struggle against armed aggression."(59)
Time's lead story a week later, "Aid to Russia," pinpointed FDR
as responsible for the expediting of arms and planes to Stalin, presumably
responding impulsively to a horror story of Russian desperation from his
"analysts in the White House." The account was graced by pictures
of such Roosevelt confidants as Sam Rosenman and Treasury Secretary Henry
Morgenthau.(60)
David Lawrence's U.S. News presented a somewhat similar story of the President's
personal initiative in forwarding substance to Stalin, as well as draping
the Hopkins mission to Moscow in even more colorful and romantic prose than
others.(61) Though addressing himself to U.S. businessmen, Lawrence
demonstrated utter unconcern over Communism or Communists, saw nothing to
worry about should Stalin win in Eastern Europe, and apparently thought
the latter would retire modestly behind the Curzon Line once having repelled
Hitler, to allow a joint- Franco-British politico-military experiment once
more to mismanage Central Europe and the Balkans.
U.S. News August 8 featured a genial portrait of FDR and summarized his
press conference, less than 24 hours after Oumansky "had led a Russian
military mission to his desk." The article went on to say: "The
President in his press conference authorized reporters to quote him as saying
with regard to Russian resistance:
'It is magnificent and frankly better than any military expert in Germany
thought it would be.'" As to the payment problem, Roosevelt was quoted
as saying that Russia was "on a strictly cash basis" with American
suppliers, and that there was no sign that this would change, when he was
questioned as to Russian qualification for Lend Lease largess. On the subject
of how Hopkins got from London to Moscow, however, FDR was not talking to
reporters.
For Hopkins the U.S. News saved special space a week later, exclaiming to
its readers that his perambulations from Washington to London, then to Moscow
and back once more to London, were part of an assignment to bring about
a five-power "iron ring" around Germany, consisting of staggering
population and resources preponderance. "U.S. collaboration with Russia"
was already a fact, and Hopkins had gone there to extend it. The latter's
sensational rise from an obscure social worker to a world figure was explained
as a consequence of Roosevelt's "unusual confidence" in him.(63)
U.S. News acted as a mere entity floating on this approved "wave of
the future." In its sampling of press editorials around the country
it found already a "large majority of the editors favoring U.S. aid
to Russia." In its reproduction of nine major newspaper editorial turnarounds
an Russian policy in less then two months in Lawrence's businessman-oriented
weekly, it could be seen that not one even imagined the possibility of Red
victory. None looked a particle beyond victory over the Germans, or had
the faintest idea of what might follow, nor did any imagine what kind of
regime they expected to follow what they wanted to destroy. The nearest
one could discern was some kind of sentiment that a vast desert of suspended
animation would prevail indefinitely among the defeated nations and the
numerous areas sure to be "liberated" from their control and influence.(64)
And in its extended spread on the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting a week after,
on August 22, U.S. News called attention to the tidbit in the proceedings
redounding to Stalin's welfare, though he was not there, his contribution
being brought there from Moscow by Hopkins. It was divined by Lawrence and
his editorial assistants that American businessmen could expect American
"large-scale help" to the Soviets, supplied "on the advice
of the British Government." Stalin was supposed to have been notified
of this by letter at the conclusion of the Atlantic Charter meeting at sea.
They were assured that there would be no problem of payment. Russia had
$40 million on deposit in the U.S. and of course had "a large annual
gold production which she can use in international trade."(65) The
cash registers were ringing in the ears of all putative American suppliers
to this unnamed Operation Life Raft for the salvation of Russian Communism
by the more than two-decades- execrated "capitalists." It promised
to serve a similar purpose to segments of major American industrial and
commercial enterprise, beginning to emerge from over a decade of economic
slough under the aegis of a national government which was abandoning saving
the domestic scene and about to embark on the far more exciting and encompassing
task of saving the world. It was not long however before U.S. News amended
its earlier advice on Russian payment procedure as furnished by the Administration
to let its business subscribers know that the Soviet Union had been made
the beneficiary of a $50 million "initial fund" provided by the
Defense Supply Corporation under the U.S. Commerce Department." In
September and October 1941 a succession of stories im- pressed all concerned
that the Reds were all that prevented the Germans from sweeping over the
world, and they were in the field only if "U.S. and British supplies
come."(67) The change in emphasis on the part of the spokesmen
for intervention in the first two to three months of the war in Eastern
Europe was quite spectacular, in view of the essentially Anglophile substance
of what had preceded it for several years.
The partisanship in behalf of Stalinist Russia not only added a new dimension
to pro-war propaganda, it intruded into the American scene a competing loyalty
which served to disturb the tenor of the war sentiment once the U.S.A. became
a belligerent, and added an ingredient which soured and alienated the various
"Allies" to such a degree that when they fell out almost upon
achieving "victory," the situation never did right itself.
A good example of events overtaking established positions was laid out in
Time's monthly cousin in the publishing empire of Henry Luce, Fortune. As
a releasing point for combinations of the materialistic and the messianic-moral,
it was a source which was almost impossible to top. It was the ultimate
organ expressing the view that the future belonged to an Anglo-American
combine, with the major decision-making power sure to lodge in the hands
of the latter of this team. The Soviet as a major factor in a world victorious
over the Germans and Japanese was unmentioned even as a dim possibility.
Even in the pretentious and portentous position paper by Russell W. Davenport
finally published in August, "This Would Be Victory,"(68)
with its talk of a grandiose world "Area of Freedom" dominated
by an "International Party," the possibility of having to come
to terms with the world Communist apparat was airily dismissed. Once the
adversaries East and West were overcome (Davenport assumed U.S. entry into
the war was inevitable and would soon occur), this "International Party"
would "make common cause with all peoples willing and able to be free,"
and "The advent of the USSR to our side, and other irrationalities
of the European Walpurgisnacht, do not alter this essential principle."
Davenport believed the correct course was just to proceed serenely as if
it had not happened.
The version of this vision intended for the common citizen was that of Hopkins
the previous month in the four-million-circulation American Magazine, a
breezy and confident outline of eventual British victory, with the help
of America and with two-thirds of the rest of the world also helping out.
In this rather extended account, Hopkins managed to mention the Soviet Union
only once, as a likely puppet of Hitler should the latter succeed in defeating
the British.(69)
In his next American Magazine article, December 1941, Hopkins expatiated
on his new job as Lend-Lease Administrator and his personal encounter with
Stalin in Moscow. His narrative was an unbroken account of praise of Communist
correctness, faithfulness and dependability. He described how Britain became
Stalin's partner in June in this way:(70)
With the courage that is Churchill's, he pledged Britain to Russia's cause. And he did it boldly, without consulting anybody, without stopping to consider any possible political consequences. At Chequers [Churchill's estate] he told me of it.
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