by Conrad Black
It is possible that had Eisenhower known that Stalin was already violating the Yalta agreements and his spheres-of-influence agreement with Churchill, and snuffing out any independence in the territories occupied by the Red Army, and had he known of the imminent testing of atomic weapons, he might have given a different opinion. But the opinion he did give was the view of the Joint Chiefs (Marshall, King, Arnold of the Army Air Force, and Leahy), as they didn’t want to alienate the Russians unless they knew the atomic bomb would work and that they would not need the Russians to take up to half of the million casualties anticipated in subduing Japan. Taking Berlin and holding it would have been an act of brinkmanship, and Stalin had three times as big an army as Eisenhower. American and British domestic opinion would not have accepted a show-down confrontation with Stalin, whom they had been conditioned by the successes of the Red Army and the apparently satisfactory meetings at Tehran and Yalta to regard positively, if warily. Roosevelt needed the United Nations established and the United States firmly installed in it, while Allied unity was intact, so that he could complete the rout of the isolationists and sell his argument to his countrymen that the world was no longer as sinister a place as it had been, and that American involvement in the world was necessary to keep it so.
Roosevelt had already put on hold the $6.5 billion economic aid package he had dangled before Stalin, pending Soviet compliance with the Yalta Declarations on Poland and on Liberated Europe. And the permanent demilitarization of Germany, which even without Berlin would be 75 percent in the hands of the West, thus could be easily reversed and Germany put back on its feet and tied in with de Gaulle’s France, Churchill’s Britain, a post-Fascist, non-communist Italy, even Franco’s Spain, and the always Russophobic Turks as, with American assistance, a counterweight to Russia—an American-led and infinitely more powerful revival of the German and Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact.
As the Reich was overrun, death camps were liberated and the proportions of Nazi infamies—12 million people murdered in the camps, half of them Jews—horrified the world. Eisenhower ordered that all the camps liberated in the West be filmed, that the world not be inherited by Holocaust-deniers. He wrote that the most moving experience of his life was when he visited the Buchenwald death camp and human skeletons, seeing his five-star insignia as supreme commander of the Allied armies, bravely saluted him. (He came to attention and crisply returned the salute.)
Trying to escape Italy in a German army truck, wearing a German army uniform, Mussolini, whom the Roman crowds had cheered with adulation for nearly 20 year, was apprehended by partisans and shot with his companion, Clara Petacci on April 28. Their corpses were hoisted, upside down, in a Milan square, and mutilated and desecrated by a mob. Hitler, taking note of the Duce’s inelegant end, remained in his bunker in Berlin until the Russians were almost overhead, and having ordered that his corpse and that of his just-married wife, Eva Braun, be burned, committed suicide with a handgun on April 30. Most of the rest of the Nazi leadership committed suicide, except for Ribbentrop, who was executed for war crimes, along with a number of others after the Nuremberg trials, which had been envisioned at the Potsdam Conference. Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz was designated by Hitler in his will as his heir, and set up a government in Flensburg, near the Danish border. They held cabinet meetings for a few days, in which the ministers for policy areas that were now completely esoteric, such as agriculture, spoke as if there were still anything left to govern. Doenitz’s only interest was to permit as many as possible of his fellow German servicemen to surrender to the Western Allies, and he ordered all units to surrender on May 8. The European war was over.
If it was going to be necessary to turn American opinion against Russia, it would take a little while for comprehensive demonization of the Kremlin and its chief occupant, and a grievance more worrisome to Americans than the treatment of former pro-fascist dictatorships like Romania and Hungary, or the formerly corrupt and anti-Semitic dictatorship of Poland. Most of the criticism of the Yalta agreements is a chorus of otherwise discordant anti-American elements, echoed by anti-Roosevelt Americans. This frequently grotesque canard suited disgruntled British imperialists, anti-Anglo-Saxon Gaullists, liberal Western appeasers of Russia of the Brandt-Trudeau variety, Eastern Europeans claiming an American obligation to risk war for them, as the British and French had for Poland, and in the United States the oft-defeated Republicans and those who made a career in the fifties of peddling one version or another of the Red Scare.
It is generally reckoned, by Bohlen and others, that Roosevelt, because of his immense prestige in the world, and his unfaltering leadership of American opinion, would have succeeded more quickly than Truman did in stirring American opinion to resist and contain Russia. But Truman and his successors—initially the strategic team recruited by Roosevelt, including Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Acheson, Kennan, Bohlen, and others—did adopt and execute the containment strategy, which secured the ultimate completion of the World War II: victory in the Cold War and the defeat of international communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
It must be recorded that Stalin’s decision to initiate the Cold War by violating almost every clause of the Yalta agreements was, next to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (Chapter 11) and Wilhelm II’s recourse to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 (Chapter 9), the most catastrophic strategic error of the twentieth century. If he had finessed the occupation of Eastern Europe, at least until American forces had departed Europe and he had the American aid package, and the Soviet Union, too, had atomic weapons; and if his successors had had the intelligence of the Chinese Communists, to abandon economic communism but retain authoritarianism, Russia could have been a durable rival to the United States, though certainly an underdog.
Considering where the poor world was gasping in the summer of 1940, with Germany, Japan, Italy, and France all in undemocratic hands and hostile to the British and the Americans, it was an astounding feat to bring all those countries into, or back into, the West as flourishing democratic allies, while Stalin, who took over 90 percent of the casualties for disposing of Hitler, gained only a fleeting domination of a poor and hostile patch of Eastern Europe. At the end of World War II, Roosevelt and Churchill played their cards well; the appalling errors were made by Stalin. The Soviet Union barely survived the Nazi-Soviet Pact; it would not survive the Cold War, which Stalin soon insouciantly began.
President Truman journeyed by ship to Europe to meet with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam, near Berlin, in July 1945. In flying from Antwerp to Berlin, Truman was struck by the terrible devastation of Germany, with almost all roads, bridges, and towns smashed and most fields razed and scarred. Truman had allowed Stettinius to attend the organizing conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in late April and May, but eased him out as secretary of state in June and made him first U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He was replaced as head of the State Department by James F. Byrnes, former civilian director of war mobilization and industry and, prior to that, United States senator from South Carolina and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Truman and Churchill met for the first time on the morning of July 16, for two hours, and got on very well. Truman wrote that he was suspicious of Churchill’s “soft soap” about how much he had liked Roosevelt and admired America, but considered the British leader “a most charming and very clever person.”130 Truman toured the shattered wreckage of Berlin, but declined to visit Hitler’s bunker, as he did not wish the Germans to think he was gloating in victory. Truman was somewhat depressed by the horrible devastation of what had been, after Tokyo, London, and New York, the fourth-largest city in the world, though, as he said to Byrnes and Leahy, who accompanied him, the Germans “had brought it on themselves.” While Truman was touring Berlin, as he learned that night, the atomic bomb had been successfully tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, producing “a light not of this world.” The 77-year-old war secretary, World War I artiller
y colonel Henry Stimson, personally delivered the coded top-secret message to Truman, as soon as it arrived. The implications of it were instantly clear to both doughty veterans of the Western Front of 1917 and 1918.
The next morning, Truman was sitting at his desk in the house allotted to him when he looked up to see Joseph Stalin at the doorway, with Molotov and the interpreter, Pavlov. Truman got up and approached, shook hands heartily, and later declared himself surprised that Stalin, at five feet, five inches, was “a little bit of a squirt.” Truman was joined by Byrnes and Bohlen. After a taciturn start, the two leaders got on well. Stalin said he was sure Hitler had escaped to Spain or Argentina, and promised again to enter the war against Japan (which had asked Stalin through its ambassador in Moscow to broker a peace with the Allies) by August 15. Truman spontaneously invited Stalin and his party to stay for lunch, and it became quite convivial, Stalin warmly praising the California wine. Like Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle, Truman found Stalin courteous, equable, direct, “honest—but smart as hell.” He concluded, “I can deal with Stalin.”131
The first plenary session began later that day, with Truman accompanied, in addition to Byrnes, Leahy, and Bohlen, by the Stalin sycophant and former ambassador to Moscow Joseph Davies, a seriously unfortunate choice. (George Kennan judged Davies and Joseph Kennedy in London the two most disastrous appointments in the history of the U.S. diplomatic service.) As with Roosevelt, Truman was the only head of state present, and was elected chairman of the conference. Truman was well-prepared and started into a detailed agenda, quickly arriving at the point that the “obligations” under the Yalta Declarations on Poland and on Liberated Europe “have not been carried out.” He called for the immediate inclusion of Italy in the United Nations. Churchill objected, invoked Roosevelt’s reference to Mussolini’s “stab in the back,” and pointed out that his country had been fighting the Italians for two years before the Americans arrived in Africa.
Truman responded to Churchill’s complaints of moving too quickly with a self-effacing statement of reverence for Roosevelt and determination to maintain the good relationship with America’s allies, and this theme was taken up by Churchill and Stalin. The first session showed the American and Soviet leaders to be businesslike and incisive, where Churchill, who had been rather discursive, loved conferences as only a parliamentarian could and as Truman and Stalin, who were executives and not legislators (though Truman had been a senator for 10 years, he had not been a particularly active debater), could not. Churchill and Stalin objected to China having anything to do with the peace of Europe, and Stalin ominously said he wanted assurance of adequate reparations from Germany, and wanted to discuss the future of Poland, as well as three subjects that had not been raised in previous conferences: taking half of what was left of the German navy, Russia’s share of colonial trusteeships, and the status of Franco’s Spain. (The last two were completely out of the question, and came as bolts from the blue. Giving Stalin a couple of African colonial trusteeships might have made it more difficult for the postwar communists to romance what became the Third World.)
On July 18, Truman had a very cordial meeting with Churchill, after which Churchill wrote that the new president “seems a man of exceptional character.” Truman went on to a second lunch with Stalin, replete with Russian toasts, and Stalin told Truman of the Japanese peace overture (of which the Americans were, by intercepts and decryptions, already aware, but Truman was impressed by Stalin’s openness). But at the session later that day, Stalin bluntly said, “We cannot get away from the results of the war.” He was referring to the advance of the Red Army. Churchill made both Truman and Stalin impatient by his loquacity on the subjects of Poland and Germany. Truman was not prepared to discuss dividing up what little was left of the German navy until Japan had been defeated, and he was not prepared to talk about Spain, saying that he had no affinity for Franco but that he didn’t want to take part in another war in Spain. “There have been enough wars in Europe.”132 It had not been a good session, but Truman held a very jaunty party that evening for the other leaders.
Truman met with Eisenhower and Bradley. Eisenhower was opposed to continuing to try to entice the Russians into the war against Japan, although he realized they would enter it as soon as they could, whatever the U.S. wanted, to gain territory. Eisenhower also opposed using the atomic bomb, for moral reasons, as he thought Japan already defeated. Bradley made no recommendation. Truman abruptly offered to help elect Eisenhower president. The general declined interest. Full reports now arrived of the power of the atomic bomb. Truman sent Stimson to tell Churchill, who called it “the Second Coming in Wrath.”133 At the July 21 session, Stalin asked diplomatic recognition for Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland, and Truman replied that “We will not recognize these governments until they are set up on a satisfactory basis.” Truman demanded that the severance of a chunk of Germany to Poland, as had been agreed at Tehran, but that was part of the Russian occupation zone under the EAC agreement, did not justify Soviet violation of the Yalta Declaration on Poland, and should be taken into account in any thought of reparations. His strong stance, prompted in part by the atomic news, greatly pleased and impressed Churchill.
Truman met with Churchill and the senior military figures of both countries on July 24, and it was agreed that the atomic bomb would be dropped within two weeks, and that the likeliest target was Hiroshima, the southern headquarters for Japan’s home defense forces. The plenary session that day was difficult and robust. Churchill and Truman demanded recognition of Italy but declined to recognize Romania, Hungary, or Bulgaria until, as Truman put it, “the satellite governments are reorganized along democratic lines as agreed at Yalta.” Stalin replied, crystallizing the problem, “If a government is not fascist, it is democratic.” Churchill was having none of it and contrasted Italy, a free society with a free press, with Romania, where the British embassy was like a prison. “All fairy tales,” said Stalin. Churchill demurred. Truman strongly supported Churchill, who expressed his gratitude to his inner circle.134
At the end of the plenary session on July 24, Truman walked around the conference table and said to Stalin and Pavlov that the U.S. “had a new weapon of unusual destructive force.” Stalin said he hoped it would be used with good effect on the Japanese. Churchill, Bohlen, and other senior Western delegates watched closely and, like Truman, were surprised that Stalin was indifferent and not at all curious, and did not raise the matter again in the conference. Already, in fact, Stalin knew what was afoot from his espionage network, especially from the scientist Klaus Fuchs, who was in New Mexico and feeding vital information to the Soviet Union’s nuclear program. That evening, Stalin ordered acceleration of the Soviet Union’s own nuclear program.135
Churchill left the conference on July 25, to receive the results of the British general election, taking Eden and Labour Party leader Clement Attlee (who made no impression on Stalin or Truman and went through the fierce July heat in a three-piece wool suit). Contrary to expectations, but not to Roosevelt’s warning at Tehran nor Churchill’s own forebodings at the end, Churchill was defeated. Stalin said, “Democracy must be a wretched system to replace a great man like Churchill with someone like Attlee.” Charles de Gaulle wrote of Churchill that he had “lost neither his glory not his popularity thereby; merely the adherence he had won as guide and symbol of the nation in peril. His nature, identified with a magnificent enterprise, his countenance, etched by the fires and frosts of great events, were no longer adequate to the era of mediocrity.”
The conference resumed, but nothing was accomplished. Truman had pushed a proposal for the opening of all seas, oceans, rivers, canals, and other waterways, but Stalin was opposed. Truman hoped that the next meeting would be in Washington. Stalin replied, in Russian, “God willing,” a rare invocation of the deity by the unsuccessful former seminary student. It was all very cordial, but Truman, though he had liked Stalin, thought him “that little son of a bitch,” and Stalin thought Truman �
��worthless.”136 They were not to meet again either. Truman had a very pleasant meeting in Plymouth harbor on his way home with King George VI, a sensible, unpretentious, and very popular monarch. Neither man sought or expected the great offices they held, but both acquitted them valiantly. The Cold War was about to break out, as soon as the existing war ended.
4. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE COLD WAR
There was a race between the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Japan and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, as the American military and civilian leaders, though certain Stalin would seize what had been conceded to him in the Far East at Yalta, no longer wished any Soviet presence in Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, one week after Japan rejected the Potsdam Conference’s demand for Japan’s surrender. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, and invaded Manchuria with almost a million men that Stalin had hastily moved back to the Far East after the surrender of Germany. Approximately 100,000 people were killed and 60,000 injured at Hiroshima, yet the Japanese were still not prepared to throw in the towel, so the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the naval port of Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 and injuring slightly fewer people than three days before, but leveling the city.
The next day, at the conclusion of what must rank as the most catastrophic week in the military history of any country, following Emperor Hirohito’s address to the nation stating that “Events have not gone altogether as we would have wished” and asking his subjects to “think the unthinkable and endure the unendurable,” Japan accepted to surrender unconditionally as long as the emperor retained the Chrysanthemum Throne. The United States accepted the Japanese surrender on August 14, and did so formally on Nimitz’s flagship, the battleship USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay on September 2. General Douglas MacArthur had been appointed military governor of Japan, and accepted the Japanese surrender on behalf of the United Nations. He subsequently informed the Russian representative that he would arrest and imprison any Soviet personnel whose presence in Japan he had not authorized, thus securing, with Germany, France, and Italy, the last great strategic national prize of the war for the West.