“This man is your FRIEND. He fights for FREEDOM.”
Yeah, the Russians are great – but their leaders weren’t.
Read Kennan! And do analysis!
Temporal Control #11: Infinite Fronts
THE BLOCKADE
“At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. […] Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. […] The crisis started on June 24, 1948, when Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to Allied-controlled areas of Berlin.”
-- Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department
But… aren’t the Russians our friends?
***
TEMPORAL CONTROL IS HARD
When the individual chapters of Temporal Control were originally published in essay form in mid-2016, it got some rave reviews, and the number of subscribers to The Strategic Review grew every single week of it.
And yet, despite the fun/praise/growth, I found myself slightly unsatisfied.
Perhaps it could have been anticipated: with Temporal Control, I was attempting to lay out fundamental building blocks of how to navigate all of time and space in order to make outcomes happen.
In retrospect, that was a somewhat ambitious project to take on!
I have, no doubt, not fully succeeded. You do not, dear reader, know how to fully navigate all of time and space to make outcomes happen.
In fact, upon brief reflection, I myself do not know how to navigate all of time and space in order to make outcomes happen.
Alas! When does ambition turn to arrogance? But these are human words, too, as we covered in The Intersubjective. What’s a Turk, anyways? Before Kemal, there was no Turkishness. Words come and go.
Thus – I can’t help but feel, a little bit, like we just tried to swim from California to Japan.
Foolish! And yet, what are these sandy shores we’re standing upon? We have not drowned. We are very much alive. And this little island vantage we are standing upon looks, on a glance, like a paradise.
***
NO PARADISE: PRESIDENT TRUMAN IN ‘46
“The first practice is to ask what needs to be done. Note that the question is not "What do I want to do?" Asking what has to be done, and taking the question seriously, is crucial for managerial success. Failure to ask this question will render even the ablest executive ineffectual.
“When Truman became president in 1945, he knew exactly what he wanted to do: complete the economic and social reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal, which had been deferred by World War II. As soon as he asked what needed to be done, though, Truman realized that foreign affairs had absolute priority. He organized his working day so that it began with tutorials on foreign policy by the secretaries of state and defense. As a result, he became the most effective president in foreign affairs the United States has ever known. He contained Communism in both Europe and Asia and, with the Marshall Plan, triggered 50 years of worldwide economic growth.”
-- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive
Well, it all looks fine now, looking backwards.
Peter Drucker had the benefit of hindsight: he wrote his first edition of that classic work in 1967, when the immediate danger had largely passed.
Harry Truman’s Presidency looks even better with more hindsight, now, in 2016.
Truman did not have hindsight.
Never, ever, ever forget that.
If I could only impart one single non-obvious lesson to you, across all my writings, it would be that – those past great leaders didn’t have hindsight while they were living it.
Truman.
“At 5:30 pm, she greeted Vice President Harry Truman, who had not yet been told the news. A calm and quiet Eleanor said, “Harry, the president is dead.” He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
***
A MUDDY ROAD
We’re going to try to walk in Harry S. Truman’s shoes.
Please, actually try to imagine you are the man in 1944. Some context will help.
In Chapter #8, Machinations, we covered some of how the domestic and international scene had caused Harry Truman to be swapped in as Vice President for Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth term.
Truman and Roosevelt were not close friends.
Roosevelt did not seek Truman’s counsel.
No, Truman was a concession during the 1944 Presidential elections.
It was expected Roosevelt would win again, in a landslide. (He did.) The Vice President wasn’t not going to have much if any effect on that.
Truman had been serving the Democratic Party for 44 years when that election came about – he had served as a page in the 1900 Democratic National Convention.
Truman then commenced failing at almost everything he tried to do.
Wikipedia: Harry S. Truman: Early Life and Career –
“After graduating from Independence High School (now William Chrisman High School) in 1901, Truman enrolled in Spalding's Commercial College, a Kansas City business school, but left after one semester. He then worked as a timekeeper on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, sleeping in hobo camps near the rail lines. He worked at a series of clerical jobs, and was employed briefly in the mailroom of the Kansas City Star. Truman and his brother Vivian later worked as clerks at the National Bank of Commerce in Kansas City; one of their coworkers, who also lived at the same rooming house, was Arthur Eisenhower, the brother of Dwight and Milton. He returned to the Grandview farm in 1906, where he lived until entering the army in 1917 after the beginning of the Great War. During this period, he courted Bess Wallace; he proposed in 1911, but she turned him down. Truman later said that he intended to propose again, but when he did he wanted to be earning more money than a farmer did.”
Truman keeps failing –
“Truman is the most recent president who did not earn a college degree. In addition to having briefly attended business college, from 1923–25 he took night courses toward an LL.B. at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law), but dropped out after losing reelection as county judge.”
And fails some more –
“Truman had dreamed of going to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but he was refused an appointment because of poor eyesight”
Before finally having some success as a soldier in World War I –
“In mid-1918, about one million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces were in France. Truman was promoted to captain in July 1918 and became commander of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Artillery Brigade, 35th Division. It was known for its discipline problems, and Truman was initially unpopular because of his efforts to restore order. Despite initial attempts by the men to intimidate him into quitting, Truman succeeded by making his corporals and sergeants accountable for discipline; he promised to back them up if they performed capably, and reduce them to private and return them to the ranks if they didn't. In an event memorialized in battery lore as the "Battle of Who Run", his soldiers began to flee during a sudden attack by the Germans in the Vosges Mountains; Truman succeeded at ordering his men to stay and fight, using profanity that he had first heard while working on the Santa Fe railroad. The men were so surprised to hear Truman use such language that they immediately obeyed.”
A rare man, Truman. What a remarkable man. The military suited him –
“In other action during the Meuse-Argonne fighting, Truman's battery provided support for George S. Patton's tank brigade, and his battery fired some of the last shots of the war on November 11, 1918. Battery D did not lose a single man while under Truman's command in France; to show their appreciation of his leadership, his men presented him with a large loving cup upon their return to the United States after the war.”
But he then promptly gets back into the business of failing a lot –
“Shortly before the w
edding, [in 1919] Truman and Jacobson opened a haberdashery together at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. After brief initial success, the store went bankrupt during the recession of 1921.[14] Truman did not pay off the last of the debts from that venture until 1934, when he did so with the aid of a political supporter.”
This is the life of Harry Truman.
Between his failures in business and education, he has some success in politics, he has a good mind for administration, but is unable to put it all together.
Peter Drucker would later invoke him as an example of how you can be a successful leader without being charismatic –
“An effective executive does not need to be a leader in the sense that the term is now most commonly used. Harry Truman did not have one ounce of charisma, for example, yet he was among the most effective chief executives in U.S. history.”
Eventually Truman becomes Senator, almost despite himself –
“After serving as a county judge, Truman wanted to run for Governor or Congress, but [Missouri Democratic Party Boss Tom] Pendergast rejected these ideas. Truman thought that he might serve out his career in some well-paying county sinecure, but circumstances changed when Pendergast reluctantly backed Truman as a Democratic candidate in the 1934 U.S. Senate election after four other potential candidates turned him down.”
For this, Truman, the Senator from Missouri, got nicknamed “the Senator from Pendergast.”
Obviously, he didn’t find it very flattering.
But then, Truman did some good administrative work in the Senate, chairing the Truman Committee investigating waste and incompetence in the war effort. It won him some respect.
By 1944, the Bosses like Pendergast were feeling let-down by Henry Wallace, and President Roosevelt was forced to choose a new running mate.
“Roosevelt told party leaders that he would accept either Truman or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. State and city party leaders strongly preferred Truman, and Roosevelt agreed. Truman did not campaign for the Vice-Presidential spot, though he welcomed the attention as evidence that he had become more than the "Senator from Pendergast". Truman's nomination was dubbed the "Second Missouri Compromise" and was well received. The Roosevelt–Truman ticket achieved a 432–99 electoral-vote victory in the election, defeating the Republican ticket of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and running mate Governor John Bricker of Ohio. Truman was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 1945.”
82 days later, Roosevelt dies on 12 April 1945.
And Harry S. Truman becomes President of the most powerful country in the world.
The whole thing seems insane in retrospect.
***
SOUND AND FURY
Events continue moving quickly in Europe, largely under their own power, set in force by the Roosevelt administration and not requiring much from Truman –
On 2 May 1945, Berlin is taken and the Soviet flag flies over the Reichstag. Axis soldiers in Italy surrender.
On 7 May 1945, the German Instrument of Surrender (unconditional) was signed.
8 May 1945 is celebrated as V-E Day, Victory in Europe Day.
On 9 May 1945, Stalin announces victory on the radio (the speech is available on the Marxist Internet Archive, but doesn’t say much beyond this) –
“COMRADES! Men and women compatriots! The great day of victory over Germany has come. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has acknowledged herself defeated and declared unconditional surrender. […] Being aware of the wolfish habits of the German ringleaders, who regard treaties and agreements as empty scraps of paper, we have no reason to trust their words. However, this morning, in pursuance of the act of surrender, the German troops began to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops en masse. This is no longer an empty scrap of paper. This is actual surrender of Germany’s armed forces. True, one group of German troops in the area of Czechoslovakia is still evading surrender. But I trust that the Red Army will be able to bring it to its senses. […] Henceforth the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace among peoples will fly over Europe. […] Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.”
The United Nations Charter is signed on 26 June 1945.
The period of war in Europe is over! The period of peaceful development has begun!
***
THAT IT IS REALITY AND NOT A SHAM
Obviously, Truman authorized atomic weapons to be used against the Empire of Japan, and Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945.
It looked like the world would be at peace.
And then the winter comes.
Stalin gives the famous speech –
“It would be wrong to think that the Second World War broke out accidentally, or as a result of blunders committed by certain statesmen, although blunders were certainly committed. As a matter of fact, the war broke out as the inevitable result of the development of world economic and political forces on the basis of present-day monopolistic capitalism.”
This set off, unsurprisingly, somewhat of a panic among the Western Allies.
Wait, aren’t the Russians our friends?
On 22 February 1946, George Kennan writes one of the most important documents in American history, the Long Telegram, outlining Soviet intentions –
“At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.”
Again, I say – imagine you are Truman in ’46; you got here through a mix of some administrative talent, a series of odd coincidences, and a number of political favors… and now you are desperately trying to untangle what’s going on.
The stakes?
Well, not so high. Merely that all of the world hangs in the balance, and World War III looms if the board is misplayed.
By the end of February, the hair was standing up on the back of Winston Churchill’s neck.
5 March 1946, he gives the “Sinews of Peace” speech.
Churchill –
“Our American military colleagues, after having proclaimed their "over-all strategic concept" and computed available resources, always proceed to the next step -- namely, the method. Here again there is widespread agreement. A world organization has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war. UNO -- "U-N-O" -- the successor of the League of Nations, with the decisive addition of the United States and all that that means, is already at work. We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can some day be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel. Before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self-preservation we must be certain that our temple is built, not upon shifting sands or quagmires, but upon the rock.
[…]
Now I come to the second of the two marauders, to the second danger which threatens the cottage
homes, and ordinary people -- namely, tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the United States and throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. With these states control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The power of the state is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police.
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