The Accidental President

by A. J. Baime

  The communication concluded: “If today, when we are still maintaining our strength, the Anglo-Americans were to have regard for Japan’s honor and existence, they could save humanity by bringing the war to an end. If, however, they insist unrelentingly upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese are unanimous in their resolve to wage a thorough-going war.”

  By “Japan’s honor and existence,” the communication clearly referred to the emperor. If the emperor was permitted to remain in power, the Japanese would bring “the war to an end.” If not, the Japanese would continue to kill and be killed. This communiqué noted that Japan was “still maintaining our strength,” suggesting to the Americans that the enemy could keep fighting for a long time to come. Years after the war, Truman confirmed that he had read Magic intercepts while at Potsdam, so he knew of these discussions.

  Many of the president’s top aides, including Stimson and Leahy, agreed that the Allies should drop unconditional surrender. Leahy believed that the Japanese decision to surrender lay in the hands of the emperor, so any statement or action that threatened the emperor would make surrender more difficult for Japan. Even Churchill had come to this conclusion. “I felt that there would be no rigid insistence upon ‘unconditional surrender,’” he wrote in his memoirs.

  Others disagreed. Byrnes had sought the advice of Cordell Hull, who had been Roosevelt’s deeply respected secretary of state for most of the war, and who had resigned due to ill health in 1944. (Hull had been a major force behind the original planning of the United Nations, and would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for these efforts.) Hull responded that if the Americans agreed to allow the emperor to remain in power, “terrible political repercussions would follow in the United States.” Hull noted that he was thinking of how “the general public will doubtless construe” the matter. Byrnes agreed with Hull; he thought the American people would “crucify” the president if he accepted anything less than unconditional surrender. Truman would be responsible for the final decision, but Byrnes had become his most influential advisor.

  The second critical issue facing the Anglo-Americans was the USSR’s commitment to joining the war against Japan. Now that the United States had the bomb, was Russian participation in the Pacific war necessary? The American and British leaders feared that, with Stalin’s soldiers marching into China and Korea and eventually Japan itself, the Red Army would spread the Soviets’ totalitarian brand of communism like a disease into the Far East. Byrnes later said, “I cannot speak for others but it was ever present in my mind that it was important that we should have an end to the war before the Russians came in.” However, Truman still supported the idea of the Red Army joining the war. As he wrote Bess as late as July 20: “I have to make it perfectly plain to them at least once a day that my first interest is U.S.A., then I want the Jap War won and I want ’em both [the UK and USSR] in it.”

  Whichever way opinion fell among the American delegation, Stalin was intent on joining the Pacific war. The only way to stop him from pushing his armies east was to end the war before he could do so.

  ///

  Just hours after tempers boiled over at the negotiating table for the first time, the Americans hosted the first of the Potsdam tripartite dinners, at the Little White House. The cold glares of rigorous diplomacy gave way to smiles, some of them genuine. Dinner that night had to be the most elaborate served anywhere in Europe in years: pâté de foie gras, caviar on toast, cream of tomato soup, olives, perch sauté meunière, filet mignon, mushroom gravy, shoestring potatoes, peas and carrots, tomato salad with French dressing, Roca cheese, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, the ice cream flown in from the USS Augusta in Antwerp. The wines included a chilled German white called Niersteiner from 1937; a fine Bordeaux, Mouton d’Armailhac; Champagne, 1934 Pommery; plus coffee, cigars, cigarettes, port, cognac, and vodka.

  “Had Churchill on my right, Stalin on my left,” Truman wrote Bess. The first toast was to President Roosevelt. They toasted to Churchill, then to Stalin, then Truman wanted to toast both Churchill and Stalin together. “That gives us two drinks,” Truman announced, and Stalin replied, “That pays.” Churchill even toasted to his political opponent, Clement Attlee, sitting quietly across the table: “I raise my glass to the leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition.” Churchill’s biting sarcasm was not lost on Attlee, who had thus far said very little at Potsdam.

  From the American side, James F. Byrnes made quite an impression. “Jim Byrnes was in unusually good form,” recalled one ambassador present. “His stories were good, and told with both Irish and southern charm.” Leahy, meanwhile, took some ribbing from the others for his alcohol abstinence.

  Truman drank bourbon during the toasts, while Churchill had brandy, and Stalin appeared to be drinking vodka. Even the pianist was toasted. Staff Sergeant Eugene List was a concert musician from Manhattan serving in Berlin with the GI Orchestra when, out of nowhere, he got orders: “Better spruce up. You’re playing for the president tonight.” List had his pants pressed, shaved out of his army helmet, and jumped into a car, which sped him to the Little White House. He performed brilliantly as the headliner for the show, topping it off with the “Missouri Waltz” for the president. At one point, after List played a piece by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky, Stalin jumped to his feet and shouted in Russian. All nervously awaited the translator Pavlov, who said, “A toast to the pianist!”

  At one point Truman asked the crowd, “Where will the next conference be?”

  The president suggested Washington, and Churchill threw out London. Stalin responded slyly, “Well, you know there are also palaces in Japan.”

  It was likely at this dinner where Truman famously introduced his old friend Fred Canfil to Stalin. Canfil had traveled with Truman as part of security detail.

  “Marshal Stalin,” Truman said to the Soviet dictator, “I want you to meet Marshal Canfil.” (Canfil was a U.S. marshal in Kansas City.) Stalin sized up the strange-looking Missourian with the giant head and the ever-present cigarette. After this meeting, Canfil was treated with great respect and deference by all the Soviet delegation.

  “The ambassadors and Jim Byrnes said the party was a success,” Truman wrote Bess. “I’m sick of the whole business. But we’ll bring home the bacon.”

  The next morning General Eisenhower called on the president at the Little White House, along with General Omar Bradley. After a quick lunch, the group left by open car for the American sector in Berlin. Here again was the odor of death and destruction, and the miserable procession of German citizens in rags, pushing what few belongings they had through the rubble. “You never saw as completely ruined a city,” Truman recorded. The scene was quite a contrast from the dinner the night before.

  In a courtyard of a building that was formerly the Nazi Air Defense Command—run by Hermann Göring, chief architect of the Luftwaffe—Truman watched as soldiers raised the Stars and Stripes up a flagpole. Honors were accorded by an honor guard from the Forty-First Infantry. This flag now flying over Berlin was the same flag that flew atop the White House at the time of Pearl Harbor and on the day the United States declared war on Nazi Germany. The army had raised this very flag over Rome when that city fell, and over Paris too when the Allies liberated the City of Lights. Truman made some extemporaneous remarks, as the flag rippled in the breeze:

  General Eisenhower, officers, and men: This is an historic occasion . . . We are here today to raise the flag of victory over the capital of our greatest adversary . . . Let’s not forget that we are fighting for peace and for the welfare of mankind. We are not fighting for conquest. There is not one piece of territory or one thing of monetary nature that we want out of this war. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole . . . If we can put this tremendous machine of ours, which has made this victory possible, to work for peace, we could look forward to the greatest age in the history of mankind. That is what we propose to do.

  After the ceremony Truman wrote in his diary, “Fl
ag was on the White House when Pearl Harbor happened. Will be raised over Tokyo.”

  ///

  Over the next days, fatigue set in. Evening plenary meetings, daytime meetings of the foreign ministers, meetings of an economic subcommittee and the Combined Chiefs of Staff—the negotiations began to wear the delegations down. Britain’s chief of Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, spoke for all when he wrote in his diary, “It all feels flat and empty. I am feeling very, very tired and worn out.”

  The complexity of the issues kept agreements out of reach, time and again. The Americans and the British favored welcoming Italy into the UN, but Stalin capitalized, arguing that if so, the Anglo-Americans should also recognize the governments of Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria—all clearly Sovietized.

  Russian troops had amassed on the Turkish border. Turkey was strategically imperative for Stalin, because it controlled the Black Sea straits. Was Turkey to be annihilated by the Red Army?

  Stalin clashed bitterly with Churchill and Truman over Poland’s western frontier. The Soviets believed that a broad section of eastern Germany should be given to the Poles.* As an important source of coal, it was valuable territory. Polish leaders came to Potsdam and argued that they were entitled to it, as “an expression of historical justice,” since “the Germans had attempted to destroy the Polish population and ruin Polish culture.” Truman and Churchill refused to agree to allow Poland’s border to be pushed so deeply into Germany. The Polish government had reorganized, but it still was in Soviet control. Pushing the border west meant pushing Stalin’s power west.

  “There were many other matters on which it was right to confront the Soviet Government,” Churchill later wrote, “and also the Poles, who, gulping down immense chunks of German territory, had obviously become their [Russia’s] ardent puppets.” Besides, Churchill believed that nine million Germans were living in this part of Germany; what would become of them, if it were handed over to Poland?

  And what of Germany itself? Churchill and Truman wanted to destroy all hints of Nazism, then rebuild Germany, because only a strong, reunified Germany could provide security in Europe. Stalin disagreed. Twice in the span of his lifetime, his country had fought wars with Germany. A weak Germany was in his best interest.

  For all three leaders, economics complicated the negotiations. The UK and the USSR were desperate for money and resources, and both countries were counting on loans from the United States after the war. Truman, on the other hand, needed to protect American taxpayers. Truman now worried that all the ailing countries of Europe—millions and millions of war victims—would be dependent on the United States for food and aid. There would be intense pressure on him to make sure American taxpayers were not about to write what Senator Arthur Vandenberg called “the most colossal blank check in history.”

  “The United States can not, moreover, pour out its resources without prospective return,” Truman argued at the negotiating table. “I will not sanction the continued handing out of funds to nations which should be self-supporting. We want to help these nations to become self-supporting.”

  Ultimately, the most heated friction between the Americans and the Soviets was ideological. While debating the fates of the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria, and other countries, one difference separated the two nations continuously. The United States wanted democratic nations and political stability for the world, for reasons of moral righteousness, peace, and economic gain. There was a quest for balance of power. The Soviets wanted instability, an imbalance of power, for reasons of survival. For the Soviets, strong nations were threats, while weak nations were not. This disparity would form the fabric of the Iron Curtain.

  ///

  Stalin hosted the Russian state dinner on the night of July 21, attempting to outdo the Americans in a contest of decadence. “Started with caviar and vodka . . .” Truman wrote Margie, “then smoked herring, then white fish and vegetables, then venison and vegetables, then duck and chicken and finally two desserts, ice cream and strawberries and a wind-up of sliced watermelon. White wine, red wine, champagne and cognac in liberal quantities.” At one point Truman asked the Man of Steel how he could drink so much vodka. Through an interpreter, Stalin said, “Tell the president it is French wine, because since my heart attack I can’t drink the way I used to.”

  Churchill promised he would “get even.” So when the prime minister hosted his dinner on July 23, he had the entire British Royal Air Force Orchestra playing. Stalin arrived at Churchill’s dinner in a bulletproof limousine with some fifty armed guards, while Truman showed up on foot with Byrnes, Leahy, and three secret service men.

  Meanwhile, major story lines of the conference were playing out behind closed doors, away from the plenary meetings and the lavish dinners. “Much is going on here that does not meet the eye,” Joseph Davies wrote in his diary.

  On July 21, Truman received possibly the most memorable memorandum he would ever read. Stimson arrived at the Little White House at 3:30 p.m., bearing a full description of Trinity from General Groves. “It was an immensely powerful document,” Stimson confided in his diary. Groves’s memorandum had arrived by a special courier who had traveled thousands of miles on airplanes to put this document in front of the president; it was so explosive, the general refused to cable it overseas due to security reasons. Behind closed doors in the Little White House, Stimson read the document aloud to Truman and Byrnes. It took some time, as it was fourteen pages double-spaced.

  At 530, 16 July 1945, in a remote section of the Alamogordo Air Base, New Mexico, the first full scale test was made of the implosion type atomic fission bomb. For the first time in history there was a nuclear explosion. And what an explosion! . . . The test was successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of anyone. Based on the data which it has been possible to work up to date, I estimate the energy generated to be in excess of the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT.

  The details of Groves’s report proved riveting. As Stimson read, he noted that Truman and Byrnes “were immensely pleased.” Groves continued in his memo:

  For a brief period there was a lighting effect within a radius of 20 miles equal to several suns in midday; a huge ball of fire was formed which lasted for several seconds. This ball mushroomed and rose to a height of over ten thousand feet before it dimmed. The light from the explosion was seen clearly at Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Silver City, El Paso and other points generally to about 180 miles away.

  Groves noted that windows were shattered by the blast as far off as 125 miles from ground zero. The steel tower from which the bomb dropped evaporated. The fireball climbed to 41,000 feet, while the mushroom cloud itself contained “huge concentrations of highly radioactive materials.” Groves quoted Thomas Farrell, chief of field operations at Los Alamos, regarding the scene at Trinity after the detonation: “As to the present war, there was a feeling that no matter what else might happen, we now had the means to insure its speedy conclusion and save thousands of American lives.”

  After reading the document, Stimson looked up at the president. Truman was “tremendously pepped up by it,” Stimson noted. “He said it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence.”

  Stimson then brought Groves’s memorandum to Churchill’s villa. The prime minister concluded: “Stimson, what was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. The atomic bomb is the second coming of wrath.”

  35

  JULY 24 THROUGH JULY 26 proved to be the critical days at Potsdam.

  In his villa the morning of July 24, the president gave the go-ahead to send the final draft of the ultimatum to Japan—the Potsdam Declaration—to the Map Room at the White House, for forwarding to the ambassador to China, Patrick Hurley, in Chungking. The plan was to have Hurley bring the document to the Chinese generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and get his approval on the wording, as the ultimatum was to be from all three nations that had declared war on Japan: the United States, Britain, and China. Truman a
nd Churchill had signed off on the document; once Chiang Kai-shek did the same, the ultimatum would be published around the world.

  For weeks, the State and War Departments had struggled with the emperor conundrum and the use of the term unconditional surrender. Having cracked the Japanese codes, the Americans were continuing to monitor enemy communications. In another intercepted, decoded, and translated Japanese communiqué, Foreign Minister Togo in Tokyo had written the following to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow: “With regard to unconditional surrender . . . we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatever. Even if the war drags on and it becomes clear that it will take much more bloodshed, the whole country as one man will pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Imperial will so long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender.”

  The ultimatum’s final draft did employ the term unconditional surrender. The draft included the following verbiage, however, which was meant to signify that the emperor would not be imprisoned or killed:

  The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives. We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation [author’s italics], but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established . . . The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.