The Accidental President

by A. J. Baime

  When Byrnes asked Molotov if the Soviet authorities were removing German equipment and materials, even household goods, for transport to the USSR, Molotov did not deny it. “Yes,” he said, “this is the case.”

  As for the $10 billion payout, it was not practical, Byrnes explained to Molotov. Germany was in a shambles; hundreds of thousands were starving, in desperate need of water and shelter. The only way Germany would be able to pay out $10 billion was through loans from the United States, which would likely never be paid back. The American government had made that mistake before, after World War I, and the American people would not stand for it again. Byrnes had come up with a different course of action—“namely, that each country would obtain its reparations from its own zone [of occupation] and would exchange goods between the zones,” Byrnes said.

  Molotov wanted clarification. Did this mean that each of the four nations now occupying its own zone of Germany “would have a free hand in their own zones [to extract reparations] and would act entirely independently of the others?”

  According to the meeting minutes: “The Secretary [Byrnes] said that was true in substance but he had in mind working out arrangements for the exchange of needed products between the zones.” The Russian zone grew the most food but had less industry; the British zone had the most manufacturing but would need to import food. The economic complexities would require trade, and meanwhile, each occupying nation could extract reparations from its own zone. Byrnes’s plan was an attempt to create a mechanism for a peaceful occupied Germany that would eventually reunify. It sought to avoid future conflict between the United States and the USSR, and thus the dividing of Germany between west and east.

  “The Secretary said that he felt that without some such arrangement the difficulties would be insurmountable and would be a continued source of disagreement and trouble between our countries,” Bohlen recorded in his notes.

  Molotov refused to let go of the issue, repeating that the Americans were breaking a promise made at Yalta over this $10 billion. The meeting ended where it had started, with no agreement. Already, the hope for a peaceful reunification of Germany was slipping away.

  ///

  By the morning of July 28, Truman was suffering emotional exhaustion. He had been away from Washington now for twenty-two days. He was able to call Bess on a transatlantic telephone, but hearing her voice made him “terribly homesick.” He wrote his mother and his sister a letter. “Well,” the missive began, “here another week has gone and I’m still in this godforsaken country awaiting the return of a new British Prime Minister.”

  Throughout his journey to Europe, he had followed closely the argument in the Senate over the UN Charter. Early on the twenty-eighth, Truman received word that the Senate was set to vote. Edward Stettinius cabled the president: “The debate on the United Nations Charter has gone smoothly. Approximately forty members of the Senate have spoken during the week. No difficulties have arisen. Every indication now [is] that the Senate will vote on the Charter this afternoon and adjourn tonight.” Hours later Stettinius cabled again to let Truman know that the Senate had ratified the UN Charter. It was a bright moment in a dark time.

  Truman gave a statement to Charlie Ross, who cabled it to the White House for release at 6 p.m. Washington time: “It is deeply gratifying that the Senate has ratified the United Nations Charter by a virtually unanimous vote. The action of the Senate substantially advances the cause of world peace.” Truman must have thought of Roosevelt on this occasion. The question remained whether the UN would be able to do its job or soon be made obsolete by World War III.

  On the same day the Senate ratified the UN Charter, Japan responded officially to the Potsdam Declaration. Tokyo was rejecting it. The Japanese government “does not consider [the Potsdam Declaration] of great importance,” Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki said in a press conference. “We must mokusatsu it.” When the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service translated the word mokusatsu, it used the word ignore. In reality, the word meant “to kill with silence”—a vague notion. Another report from a Japanese news agency quoted the Japanese reaction to the ultimatum, saying Japan would “prosecute the war of Great East Asia to the bitter end.”

  The enemy’s intentions were made clear by its actions: suicide attacks. On July 29, the day after Tokyo rejected the Potsdam ultimatum, kamikazes swarmed American ships. One plunged into the destroyer USS Callaghan, sending it to the bottom of the Pacific with forty-seven men still aboard. (The Callaghan would be the last American destroyer sunk in World War II.) “Japs . . . used several planes simultaneously,” reported a top-secret military update cabled from Washington to Truman’s villa on July 30. The “flimsy” kamikaze planes were built “using wood and fabric with some plywood,” the report pointed out. These planes were built for one-way trips, and the Americans could only infer that the enemy intended indeed to fight to the end of its resources and to the last man.

  In the days following Tokyo’s rejection of the Potsdam Declaration, the American newspapers reported the snub, as well as vivid accounts of the suicide bombings. The New York Times’s front page: JAPANESE CABINET WEIGHS ULTIMATUM . . . EMPIRE WILL FIGHT TO THE END.

  ///

  The new prime minister appeared at the Little White House at 9:15 p.m. on July 28. Clement Attlee had the look of an aging university professor—a bald dome ringed with hair, balanced on thin shoulders, lips curled around an ever-present pipe. He was an Oxford man with a conventional middle-class upbringing who had risen to the ranks of national power in Britain quietly, serving for the last three years as deputy prime minister. Unlike Churchill, Attlee seemed without ego or charisma. The American delegation found it hard to fathom that the British citizenry had elected this man to take charge of His Majesty’s government at this critical moment. The Soviets seemed to feel the same way. As Admiral Leahy chronicled, “Although [Churchill] was their antagonist at almost every turn, Stalin and his top advisors appeared to have had a high personal regard for Churchill. There was a noticeable coolness in their attitude after Attlee took over.”

  Now two of the Big Three leaders were rookies. Like Truman, Attlee was suddenly a figure of international curiosity. Unlike Truman, Attlee had been elected by his people as their leader.

  Nevertheless, here was a new prime minister with his hand reached out to Truman. Attlee had brought with him a new foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, who spoke with a cockney accent and weighed some 250 pounds. With Byrnes and Leahy present, they dug immediately into the confounding problem of finding agreement with the Soviets, on anything. Roughly an hour later, at 10:30 p.m., the Big Three returned to the negotiating table at Cecilienhof Palace and resumed their work. Stalin asked to make a statement.

  “The Russian delegation was given a copy of the Anglo-American declaration to the Japanese people,” he said. “We think it our duty to keep each other informed.” His tone suggested betrayal on the part of the Americans and British, but then he left the issue aside, as if he was holding on to it for when he needed it later. Then Stalin relayed startling news. The Japanese had reached out through diplomatic channels in Moscow again, attempting to get the Soviets to act as an intermediary in peace discussions.

  “I received another communication informing me more precisely of the desire of the Emperor to send a peace mission headed by Prince Konoye, who was stated to have great influence in the Palace,” Stalin said. “It was indicated that it was the personal desire of the Emperor to avoid further bloodshed. In this document there is nothing new except the emphasis on the Japanese desire to collaborate with the Soviets. Our answer of course will be negative.”

  The Americans had given the enemy the opportunity to surrender. The Japanese had refused. The peace feeler in Moscow could only mean that the Japanese wanted to negotiate the terms, which would violate the spirit of unconditional surrender. (What seems most interesting about this conversation at Potsdam is not what was said about this peace feeler but what wasn’t: Truman had the bomb, an
d so he did not need to make any concessions; Stalin wanted the war to continue, so he could spread his power into the Far East, on the boot treads of the Red Army.)

  Truman responded, “I appreciate very much what the Marshal has said.” Then he asked that the conference move ahead to the evening’s agenda.

  The president knew at this point that the Russians and the Americans had probably come together as far as they could. And the absence of Winston Churchill had deflated the mood in the negotiating chamber. All that was left was to fight out the final issues and sail for home.

  ///

  On the island of Tinian, the 509th was ready to fly. The Little Boy bomb was nearing the end of its journey. Weighing 9,700 pounds, 10 feet long, and 28 inches in diameter, it was the ultimate expression of modernity’s defining ambition: to harness power. The bomb was set to usher in a new epoch, and destiny had made Harry Truman its midwife. He awoke in his villa on the morning of Tuesday, July 31, to a cable from the secretary of war, who was already back in Washington. “The time schedule on Groves’ project,” it read, “is progressing so rapidly that it is essential that statement for release by you be available not later than Wednesday, August 1.”

  Stimson was referring to a statement from the president that the White House would release to the press after the bomb’s detonation, not the release of the bomb itself. Truman turned this cable over and wrote on the back in big black penciled letters: “Suggestion approved. Release when ready but not sooner than August 2. HST.” He handed the communiqué to the Advance Map Room’s Lieutenant George Elsey, to send back to Washington.

  Over the next two days the Big Three hammered away in the Cecilienhof Palace, finalizing any agreements they could. Molotov made a strange request. He wanted the Americans to construct a document formally asking the USSR to join the war against Japan. Truman thought otherwise; instead he formulated a document pointing out the USSR’s duty under various agreements to assist in preserving world peace. The Soviets agreed to compromise on German reparations, and the Anglo-Americans agreed to compromise on Poland’s western frontier, allowing this border to move deeper into Germany, along the Oder and Neisse Rivers, where it exists today. The Big Three agreed to attempt a revision of the 1936 Montreux Convention, which gave Turkey the sole rights to control sea straits from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea—a victory for Stalin.

  Germany would be purged of Nazism, and the occupation would continue according to the zone borders already drawn. (Here the Americans made a mistake, failing to see the consequences of having Berlin deep inside and surrounded by Russian-occupied territory: that the Soviets would in the future blockade the Allies from Berlin. “This was not foreseen at all,” recalled the Map Room’s Elsey. “It was not foreseen by anybody, at least anybody on the United States–British side. The Russians may have been smart enough to have foreseen the implications.”)

  Truman had one pet issue he wanted to discuss, the internationalization of certain waterways, which he believed would lubricate trade and political relations in this newly imagined Europe. Stalin refused to even discuss the matter.

  “Marshal Stalin,” Truman said, “I have accepted a number of compromises during this conference . . . I make a personal request now that you yield on this point.” Truman was asking that this issue simply remain a subject of future discussion. Stalin yelled out, “Nyet!” Then he said in English, so there was no doubt: “No, I say no!”

  The president and the prime minister refused to acquiesce on Stalin’s insistence that the United Nations recognize the puppet regimes of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. And Stalin refused to negotiate any changes in these governments. Thus, at Potsdam, the Eastern Bloc crystallized. As Ambassador Harriman later noted, “There was no way we could have prevented these events in Eastern Europe without going to war against the Russians. A few American officers—and some of the French—talked of doing just that. But I cannot believe that the American people would have stood for it, even if the president had been willing, which he was not.”

  At the last plenary meeting on August 1, which began at the late hour of 10:30 p.m., all three delegations were prepared to sign off on the final wordings of the Potsdam accords—a contract spelling out the few agreements the three governments had achieved. Even the signing of this contract resulted in contretemps. Stalin felt that he should sign first, as it was his turn following the signings of agreements at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.

  “You can sign any time you want to,” Truman said. “I don’t care who signs first.”

  Attlee suggested that the signing go in alphabetical order. “That way,” he joked, “I would score over [the Russian delegation’s] Marshal Zhukov.”

  Stalin signed first, followed by Truman, then Attlee.

  The clock had just ticked past midnight when Truman said, “I declare the Berlin Conference adjourned—until our next meeting which, I hope, will be at Washington.”

  “God willing,” said Stalin. He added, “The Conference, I believe, can be considered a success.”

  Truman said, “I want to thank the other Foreign Ministers and all those who have helped us so much in our work.”

  “I join in the expression of these feelings in respect of our Foreign Ministers,” added Attlee.

  “I declare the Berlin Conference closed,” said Truman.

  After a formal good-bye, the president turned and made his way out of the palace with his entourage. He would never see Stalin in person again. Ten years would pass before American and Soviet leaders would meet face-to-face—President Dwight Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikolay Bulganin, and Soviet Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev, in Geneva in 1955.

  ///

  Truman took off from Gatow at 8:05 the next morning, bound for Britain, where he would confer with the king of England—“the Limey King,” as he wrote Bess. Time would tell how the American public would regard the Potsdam Conference. So much on the agenda had fallen by the wayside. Clearly the Soviets’ greatest defeat was the failure of Stalin to force Truman, Churchill, and Attlee to recognize the Sovietized governments of eastern Europe. And the greatest defeat for the Anglo-Americans was their inability to force Stalin to allow democratic elections in these countries.

  Of all those who sat at the negotiating table at Potsdam, Admiral Leahy summed up the conference the most eloquently. “My general feeling about the Potsdam Conference was one of frustration. Both Stalin and Truman suffered defeats . . . The Soviet Union emerged at this time as the unquestioned all-powerful influence in Europe . . . One effective factor was a decline of the power of the British Empire . . . With France grappling for a stability that she had not achieved even before the war, and the threat of a civil war hanging over China, it was inescapable that the only two major powers remaining in the world were the Soviet Union and the United States.”

  A new geopolitical age was being born. Leahy noted, “Potsdam had brought into sharp world focus the struggle of two great ideas—the Anglo-Saxon democratic principles of government and the aggressive and expansionist police-state tactics of Stalinist Russia. It was the beginning of the ‘cold war.’” As for the new president, not yet four months after the shock of Roosevelt’s death, Leahy concluded, “Truman had stood up to Stalin in a manner calculated to warm the heart of every patriotic American.”

  Humanity would be left with many questions following Potsdam, questions that could never be answered. Had Truman been too rigid in his negotiations? Would the Cold War have cast its shadow so darkly upon the world if FDR had not died?

  37

  “WELCOME TO MY COUNTRY,” said King George VI.

  Truman stood aboard the battle cruiser HMS Renown in the harbor at Plymouth, England, shaking the hand of George VI, just before 1 p.m. on Thursday, August 2. The British were particularly talented with pomp and circumstance, especially when it came to their sovereign—the famously stuttering king of Britain and its commonwealths. The president had come aboard the Renown amid full military honors, with
bugles blaring and thousands of sailors of both British and American colors standing at attention, their spines as straight as the Renown’s mainmast, upon which the American and British flags waved in the breeze.

  At lunch with the king, Truman had Leahy and Byrnes flanking him. The king wore an admiral’s uniform, while Truman was in civilian clothes. Truman found George VI to be amazingly well informed. During lunch the king brought up the atomic bomb, and in fact, as Byrnes later recalled, “most of our luncheon conversation was devoted to the bomb.” The king was excited about the postwar usefulness of atomic energy. Leahy was still sure the bomb was going to be a dud.

  “I do not think it will be as effective as is expected,” the admiral said. “It sounds like a professor’s dream to me!”

  The king leaned in and said, “Admiral, would you like to lay a little bet on that?”

  After lunch, the royal party visited Truman aboard his ship, the Augusta, again with full military honors. An orchestra played the American national anthem and “God Save the King.” The king asked Truman to autograph cards for his wife and daughters, which amused Truman terrifically. He signed his name on the cards, one of which went to the king’s daughter Elizabeth, later known as Queen Elizabeth II.

  Shortly after George VI departed, the Augusta’s engines throttled and the president began his journey home, to face the American people.

  The first night at sea, Truman’s party gathered at eight thirty in Secretary Byrnes’s cabin for a movie—Wonder Man, about a nightclub owner who gets murdered by gangsters and comes back as a ghost to haunt his killers. Truman did not show up for the film. He stayed in his cabin. No further record of his activities on this night survives, but one can imagine him staring at the ceiling of his quarters, exhausted from the strain of his trip, and tense from anticipation of an explosion that was about to change the world.

  Truman had told himself in his diary, days earlier, that “military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.” Surely he knew that this bomb, as technologically marvelous as it was, did not have the sentience to separate military individuals from civilians. He could only hope that it would serve its purpose: to end the war, to save lives.