2.George C. Marshall and George V. Strong merged military intelligence.
3.The FBI and the CIA and British security services decided to cooperate.
4.American military and civilian specialists went to Britain to teach military technology.
5.The government transferred the U.S. Atlantic Fleet from the Pacific to guard the sea-lanes in the Western Atlantic to relieve the British Navy of a large area of responsibility.
6.They devised plans for the U.S. occupation of Greenland, Iceland, the Azores and Martinique.
7.They repaired damaged British warships in United States shipyards.
8.They trained RAF pilots and aircrews in the United States.
9.They developed the exact strategy for American entry into the war.
Germany had not threatened the United States so war was irrelevant to American citizens. German admirals, Erich Raeder and Karl Doenitz, agreed that an armed invasion of America was as plausible as an invasion of the moon. Entrance into a European conflict only benefitted those who profited financially. A Gallup Poll, of June 3, 1941, indicated that eighty-three percent of the American population opposed United States entry in the war. 1179
In late July, Hopkins returned to Britain, and then went to visit Stalin, after Hitler had preemptively invaded the Soviet Union, to discuss the proposed meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill, which they tentatively scheduled for August 8-10 at Argentia Harbor in Newfoundland. Churchill planned to sail from Scotland on August 4. Admiral Dudley Pound, General John Dill, Air Marshal Wilfrid Freeman, Alexander Cadogan and Hopkins would accompany him. FDR notified Churchill that Admiral Stark, General Marshall, General Henry H. Arnold, Sumner Welles, and W. Averell Harriman would accompany him. Harriman had just returned from London where FDR had previously dispatched him to promote and expedite the Lend-Lease program. 1180
The conference produced the Atlantic Charter, which Roosevelt and Churchill signed on August 14, 1941. In 1942 and 1943, Roosevelt also took Hopkins to Cairo, Tehran and Casablanca and in 1945, Hopkins accompanied FDR to Yalta as an advisor. Hopkins approved of Lend-Lease for China, which had previously received military aid from the United States in exchange for other benefits before they initiated the Lend-Lease program. Hopkins would become the administrator of what became the $50 billion Lend-Lease program. Harriman, Ambassador to Britain, also encouraged Lend-Lease, a matter of wartime life or death to Britain, according to Churchill. Harriman reported directly to Hopkins through naval communications in order to avoid State Department channels and bypass Hull.
Harriman made certain that American technology and manufactured commodities made their way safely to the Soviet Union without any hitches. According to the information within the Lend-Lease records, these politicians and bankers broke numerous United States laws. The Lend-Lease Act stipulated that the United States would only ship military essentials to the Soviet Union. Yet, records show that the corporations favored by American politicians, sent huge amounts of industrial equipment to the Soviets. Officials also sent U.S. Treasury currency plates in order to allow the Soviets to print an unlimited amount of American dollars. Following World War II, up to the beginning of the Cold War, the United States continued to share the latest technology with the Soviet Union. 1181
Hopkins identified potential leaders, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who embraced a particular internationalist worldview. Hopkins, as chief advocate of Lend-Lease, wanted to include the Soviets in that program. With that in mind, when Hopkins visited Stalin in Moscow in July 1941, he quickly persuaded Stalin, with all of that technological bribery, to accept Roosevelt’s objectives. FDR approved $1 billion in Lend-lease aid to the Soviets on October 30, 1941. Hopkins would continue to function as the chief delegate to the Soviets, especially during World War II. FDR had recognized the Soviet government in 1933, supposedly in exchange for the Kremlin’s agreement to discontinue their subversion in America as part of the Soviet plan for world revolution. However, they never abandoned those activities and I suspect, given the composition of FDR’s administration, it was just a ruse for the benefit of the American public. 1182
Lend-Lease propelled America into international involvement and further increased the burgeoning military industrial apparatus while greatly enhancing presidential power. Lend-Lease allowed the president to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” weapons and materials to defend other nations considered vital to United States security. The program provided Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France and other allies with war-related materials during World War II. There were no stipulations regarding postwar repayments. The United States traded the huge amounts of military supplies in exchange for land upon which to construct military bases.
America sent $50.1 billion ($647 billion today) worth of supplies: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and smaller sums to other Allies abandoning all pretenses of neutrality and non-interventionism in their war against Germany. 1183 The total lend-lease to the Soviets, according to another figure was $12.5 billion. Marshal Georgi Zhukov admitted privately that without the United States lend-lease, the Soviet’s triumph over the Wehrmacht would have been impossible. 1184 The government, at the expense of the taxpayers, sent other commodities, besides the military equipment, including 2.3 million tons of steel, 229,000 tons of aluminum, 2.6 million tons of petrol, 3.8 million tons of foodstuffs including tinned pork, sausages, butter, chocolate, and egg powder, 56,445 field telephones and 600,000 km of telephone wire and fifteen million pairs of army boots. The Soviets received the following amounts of individual vehicles, Bren Carriers—2336, M3 Halftracks—900, M3A1 Scout Cars—3092, M3A1 Stuart—1233, Valentine—3487, Churchill—258, M3A3 Lee/Grant—1200, Matilda—832, M4A2 75mm Sherman—1750, M4A2 76mm Sherman—1850, Half Tracks—820, Light Trucks—151,000, Heavy Trucks—200,000, Jeeps—51,000, and Tractors—8070. Further, the U.S. Government sent the Soviets 15,364 fighter planes of various models and 410 Anti-Tank guns and 6,390 Anti-Aircraft guns. 1185
In June 1944, Harriman reported to the State Department regarding a conversation he had with Stalin, “Stalin paid tribute to the assistance rendered by the United States to Soviet industry before and during the war. He said that about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance.” 1186
The Lend-Lease Act created the Office of Lend-Lease Administration. Roosevelt appointed Edward Stettinius Jr., (S&B, CFR), a steel executive as its director. He sold FDR’s Lend-Lease Administration policies to a skeptical Congress. His father, like so many other insiders, made a fortune as a purchasing agent for the Morgan banking house during World War I. When Hull became ill, he replaced him on December 1, 1944, the second youngest Secretary of State in the nation’s history. While in that position, he arbitrarily decided to return a codebook, discovered in Finland, to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, this hindered American efforts in decoding cables that included, as shown later, details about Soviet agents deeply imbedded in top State Department positions. He left the State Department on June 27, 1945 and became the U.S. representative to the UN Security Council. 1187 He appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on December 11, 1944.
Stettinius headed the United States delegation of the UN’s Conference on International Organization, and was instrumental in the UN’s formation. He glad-handed and influenced Latin American officials to support the UN. He was present at the official founding on June 26, 1945 and served as the first U.S. Ambassador to the UN. He developed provisional rules of procedure for the Security Council and achieved agreement on those rules when he went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt. His sister was the wife of Juan Trippe (S&B), a founder, with some fellow Bonesmen, of the Caribbean-based Pan American Airways Inc. Trippe had purchased China National Aviation Corporation in 1933. He was on the cover of Time Magazine
on July 31, 1933 and on March 28, 1949.
Lend-Lease guaranteed an Allied success in World War II and was a factor in that success even before the United States entered the war as both Britain and the Soviet Union received help before America engaged in combat. Lend-Lease associated corporations supplied approximately a fourth of all British munitions during 1943 and 1944. American corporations supplied Douglas C-47 transport aircraft, food, trucks, jeeps, landing craft, and ships and continued supplying the Allies throughout the war. The Axis countries decreased their production of other products in order to produce weapons, generating shortages of basic items required to wage war. The Soviets stopped producing locomotives and aircraft in order to produce armaments. Therefore, American corporations supplied 1,981 locomotives and 18,700 planes. American-based corporations also supplied the Soviets with thousands of trucks, telephone cable, aluminum and canned rations. On September 20, 1945, America terminated all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. Hitler cited that program when he declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941.
Lenin said in October 1919 and February 1920 “We are definitely in favor of economic deals with America, and with all countries but particularly with America… We will need American industrial commodities such as locomotives, automobiles, and so on more than the commodities from any other country.” 1188 In the 1920s, the Soviets received technical assistance from western multinationals, Ford Motor Company, Hercules Gear, IBM and others. Without that help, the USSR would never have been able to fight in World War II. The Soviets obtained critical components from American and Swiss watch making firms, components that were essential in manufacturing bomb and artillery shell fuses, aircraft timing gear, pinions, and other military apparatus. In 1929, the old Miemza factory, a former Czarist plant, purchased all of the equipment from the Ansonia Clock Company of New York, for $500,000. American and German engineers helped the Soviets to adapt this factory to manufacture military products. In 1920, the Deuber-Hampton Company transported its entire Canton, Ohio plant to the USSR and brought it into production with the assistance of forty American technicians. 1189
Regardless of political party, officials promoted “peaceful trade” with the Soviets beginning in 1918 with Woodrow Wilson before the Bolsheviks had gained complete physical control of Russia. Without this trade, communism in the Soviet Union would have collapsed. One of the biggest promoters of trade with the Soviets was Edwin Gay (CFR) a member of the U.S. War Trade Board and later the Dean of the Harvard School of Business. He claimed that if people experienced greater economic opportunities, achieved by trade with the United States, they would demand a change in their social and political structure. It was a contrived hypotheses designed to gain public support. 1190
America terminated the Lend-Lease program to Britain on September 2, 1945. In as much as Britain depended on United States assistance that was suddenly unavailable, the United States allowed Britain to purchase industrial products at fire sale prices, about ten cents on the dollar, through a fifty-year loan of $586 million, beginning in 1950, at two percent interest. Britain managed to eventually pay this debt in 2006 with a final payment of $83 million. However, they still owe millions from World War I. Britain made nominal payments until 1934, when the United States agreed to allow them a year without a payment. They never resumed payments. As of March 31, 2001, the principal of £243,573,154 ($346,287,953) was outstanding. 1191
Operation Barbarossa
Friedrich the Great, Prussia’s eighteenth Century monarch said “that in war, the real attacker is he who forces the enemy to fire the first shot.” 1192 On March 10, 1939, Stalin told attendees at the Eighteenth Communist Party Congress that World War II had already begun. 1193 We might wonder if the warfare against Germany actually ever stopped. Later, when Churchill was talking with Stalin, he said, “I regard this war (WWII) against German aggression on the whole as a thirty-year-war from 1914 onwards.” 1194
The Banking Interests that governed America and Russia, a powerful international combination, intended to destroy the European monarchies. They used the Paris Peace Conference treaties to continue the destruction of European governments so they could completely dominate Europe. On February 21, 1935, Stalin addressed the Political Bureau of the Communist International which then passed a resolution saying: “The Political Bureau is definitely convinced that a new world war is absolutely inevitable, but explains this as the obvious preparation for the world revolution. With the aim of self-preservation, and in the interests of the World Revolutionary Movement, the Soviet Government must do all possible to enter the camp of the States which build the strongest coalitions.” 1195
Hitler, as evidenced in Mein Kampf, recognized that the cause of military blunders resulted from internal rather than external weaknesses. His experience fighting in World War I was instrumental in his understanding and utter abhorrence of war. Many of the Third Reich’s military officers were from the Weimar Republic and did not share Hitler’s nationalist viewpoints. They were aristocrats, or political appointees, who followed the program as long as it did not alter the elite status quo. 1196 Hitler later wished that he had replaced them all.
Author Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) wrote, “If a novice player sits down to play cards with a pro, he usually makes one mistake: he picks up his cards. On August 11, 1939, British and French delegations arrived in Moscow for talks about joint action against Germany. The governments of Great Britain and France repeated the mistake of novice card players. They sat down at a table with Stalin’s pros, and lost the talks. Neither the British nor the French envoys understood Stalin’s intentions. Stalin’s plan, in fact, was very simple: force France and Britain to declare war on Germany, or push Hitler to actions that would prompt France and Britain to declare war on Germany.” 1197 France and Britain wanted an alliance with Stalin in order to encircle Germany with unfriendly powers.
Despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, large numbers of Soviet troops were moving west. The two countries agreed they would each be neutral if a third country attacked either country. This pact ensured the nonparticipation of the Soviet Union in a European War. It also separated Germany and Japan from creating a military alliance, which allowed Stalin to concentrate on Japan in the battles of Khalkhin Gol (May 11-September 16, 1939), part of a series of border conflicts between the Soviet Union and Japan which began in 1932, and which decimated the Japanese Sixth Army. As a result of the Japanese loss, Japan and the Soviet Union would sign a pact similar to the German-Soviet non-aggression pact.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Japan considered rescinding the Neutrality Pact it had with the Soviets. Instead, Japan made the critical decision to retain the pact and continue to move into Southeast Asia. Because of the defeat in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, Japanese officials opted not to fight with Germany against the Soviets, despite the fact that Japan and Germany were part of the Tripartite Pact. On April 5, 1945, the Soviets would denounce the neutrality pact and vow not to renew it when it expired on April 13, 1946. The timing was perfect. Between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviets would declare war on Japan, and then launch the invasion of Manchuria just an hour after it declared war.
According to Vyacheslav Molotov, there were twenty-two Soviet divisions in the Baltic States in the spring of 1940, allegedly at the request of the people who lived there. Stalin and his military aimed those troops at Germany, the actual target. The extent of the Soviet advance on Germany’s border grew ever more threatening. In August 1940, Hitler decided that he could not leave the eastern provinces without protection, exactly what the British and Soviets planned. German air forces were now busy in the east, which made it difficult for them to wage a war in the west. British diplomats also planned to comply with the Soviet’s intentions to prolong the war in order to weaken all of Europe. 1198
Stalin allegedly never imagined that another country would directly attack the USSR so he
did not plan a comprehensive defensive strategy. For this reason, the Soviets had not completely altered their infrastructure but rather had set it up to wage offensive warfare during their so-called “liberation” of Europe. They had already dismantled all of the land mines in the Soviet Union and had not laid new ones, as they were not thinking about defensive obstacles. The Red Army was only concerned about avoiding such hazards in enemy territory. Back on June 13, 1939, some Soviet experts made a secret expedition to the western frontier to evaluate the situation and then reported that they needed mine detectors, sappers and trawl equipment. The Soviets had experienced tragic consequences during their invasion of Finland and they were adamant about removing such obstacles in Germany. 1199
Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s closest allies, chairman of the Defence Committee, and later the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, had agreed to what they knew was only an interim pact with Germany, just long enough to continue rearmament. Voroshilov said, “The Germans must not have any inking that we are preparing to stab them in the back while they are busy fighting the French, otherwise they could change their general plan and attack us.” Hitler knew that he could not trust the Soviet government officials. Stalin planned an attack against Germany, scheduled for July 6, 1941. Obviously, the Soviets did not anticipate a German invasion.
On December 10, 1940, Hitler told Goebbels that the Soviets were “lurking in the wings” but that he was undaunted. He sent more troops to Romania, his only oil source, an essential component of warfare and domestic use. He did not want to risk men and have heavy casualties if possible. A little more than a week later, he signed the Barbarossa Decree, a directive to Germany’s generals to devise a short, decisive war against the Soviets. He did not tell Goebbels of this plan for four months. 1200 On December 18, Hitler signed Directive No. 21 to the leadership of the Wehrmacht, relative to implementing offensive warfare, in Operation Barbarossa, against the Soviets in the following year. He said in the document, “The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign even before the conclusion of the war against England. I shall order the concentration against Soviet Russia possibly eight weeks before the intended beginning of operations. Preparations requiring more time to get under way are to be started now—if this has not yet been done—and are to be completed by May 15, 1941.” 1201
The Ruling Elite Page 43