by Kai Bird
19. Ibid., p. 292.
20. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981), p. 94.
21. Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944), p. 387; Jan Karski phone interview, April 21, 1987.
22. Jan Karski speech, Washington, D.C., March 29, 1987. Harvey Bundy, not McCloy, happened to sit in on Karski’s briefing of Stimson on Aug. 12, 1943. From Stimson’s cursory diary entry that day, it is possible to conclude that in this luncheon meeting Karski did not dwell on the fate of the Jews, but spent most of his time talking about the exploits of the Polish underground. Thus, even though three of his closest friends—Stimson, Bundy, and Frankfurter—were briefed by the Polish courier, it is possible that McCloy was never told of Karski’s visit to Belzec. A year later, however, Karski told his story for the general public in Story of a Secret State. Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, it became a best-seller and was excerpted by a number of national magazines.
23. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 323.
24. Carey McWilliams, A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 118–19.
25. Ellen McCloy’s brother, John S. Zinsser, wrote Lew Douglas in 1945 concerning a possible buyer for the family chemical business: “Dad will have absolutely nothing to do with him because he is Jewish.” (J. S. Zinsser to Lew Douglas, 9/10/45, LD.)
26. Author’s interview with anonymous Wall Street lawyer, June 22, 1983. This story was told to me with considerable reluctance. The lawyer emphasized that he believed the incident reflected less on McCloy personally than on the tenor of society at the time.
27. Henry Stimson diary, 3/8/44, LOC.
28. Senate resolution 247, 1/24/44, ASW 291.2, Jews, box 16, RG 107, NA.
29. Henry Stimson diary, 3/8/44, LOC.
30. McCloy to Marshall, 2/22/44, ASW 291.2, Jews, box 16, RG 107, NA.
31. Ibid.
32. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 173–75, 253.
33. Ibid., pp. 219–20.
34. Pehle to McCloy, “Report of Accomplishments for the Week of February 14–19, 1944,” and other weekly reports submitted to McCloy in the spring of 1944, ASW 400.38, War Refugee Board, box 44, RG 107, NA.
35. Henry Stimson diary, 3/31/44, LD; Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 262.
36. Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 173.
37. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 290–91 ; Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, P. 237.
38. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 236.
39. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 194.
40. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 289.
41. Harrison (McClelland) to sec. of state for War Refugee Board, 6/24/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
42. Ibid.
43. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 238.
44. Pehle to McCloy, 6/29/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
45. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 292, 407n.; Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1951), pp. 300–301.
46. Major General J. E. Hull (signing for Major General Thos. T. Handy) to director, Civil Affairs Division, 6/26/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA; also cited in Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 292–94.
47. Gerhardt to McCloy, 7/3/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
48. McCloy to Pehle, 7/4/44, ASW 400.38 Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
49. Dino A. Brugioni and Robert C. Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1979), p. 5.
50. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 315.
51. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Summit, 1986), p. 118.
52. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 290; Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 256.
53. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 248.
54. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, p. 388.
55. Pehle to War Refugee Board, with attachments, 7/15/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
56. Johnson (Olsen) to secretary of state, 7/1/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
57. Murray Green, “Why We Didn’t Bomb Auschwitz,” WP, June 18, 1983. Years later, when McCloy came under criticism for the decision, he authorized a friend, Edward T. Chase, to write an article that reported his recollection of having “had some discussions with Harry Hopkins, Sam Rosenman and either Air Force Gen. Hap Arnold or one of his aides” about whether to bomb the death camps. No record of these discussions can be found.
58. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 295.
59. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 265.
60. Ibid., p. 270.
61. Churchill and Eden may have seen other evidence on the death camps. In 1980, Peter Calvocoressi, a British veteran of Bletchley Park, the site in Britain where intercepts of German Enigma traffic were decoded, published a memoir in which he asserts that his fellow cryptologists at some point during the war began intercepting the daily statistics radioed to Berlin from each concentration camp. The intercepts reported the number of new arrivals, the number killed, and the number of inmates remaining in each camp. Calvocoressi reports that special attention had to be paid to these figures, because it was discovered that the German cryptologists were using the daily numbers to determine the random settings for their constantly changing Enigma cipher. It is hard to believe that Bletchley Park did not inform British policy-makers of these grisly statistics. But there is no evidence that McCloy himself saw these intercepts. (Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra [New York: Ballantine Books, 1981], p. 16.) In addition, it is known that British cryptologists broke the German railway code in 1941 and therefore were able to track the unusually large number of trains carrying Jews to the Silesian death camps. Some historians have concluded that the intelligence services suppressed this information. (Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler’s “Final Solution” [Boston: Little, Brown, 1980], pp. 84–86.)
62. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, p. 847.
63. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, pp. 272, 285, 341.
64. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 307, 410.
65. Ira Hirschmann memo to Ambassador Steinhardt, 6/22/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA.
66. Clayton Bissel to McCloy, 7/25/44; Pehle to McCloy, 7/20/44 with attached transcripts, memos, and correspondence relating to interrogation of Joel Brand, ASW 400. 38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA; see also Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy, p. 215; Amos Elon, Timetable: The Story of Joel Brand (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 212.
67. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 296.
68. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 321.
69. Pehle to McCloy, 10/4/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA; Gerhardt to McCloy, 10/5/44, ASW 400.38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA. Though McCloy and Gerhardt repeatedly turned down or deflected requests for bombing Auschwitz, they were willing to issue another war-crimes warning. This time, at the suggestion of Jewish groups, Eisenhower was asked to issue a statement warning the Nazis against the extermination of concentration-camp inmates, “whether they are Jewish or otherwise.” Yet, when this language was wired to Eisenhower in mid-October, he replied that his Psychological Warfare Division believed that any direct reference to Jews “would give Germans powerful propaganda line [sic].” McCloy personally approved alternative language, specifying those of any “religious faith,” and this warning was subsequently broadcast under Eisenhower’s name. Even warning the Nazis against the destruction of Jews, let alone rescuing Jewry from the death camps, was sometimes thought unseemly. (Supreme Headquarters to War Department, 10/14/44, ASW 400.38, Countries—Germany, box 44, RG 107, NA.)
70. Wyman, Abandonment of th
e Jews, p. 324.
71. Pehle to McCloy, 11/8/44, ASW 400.38, Countries—Germany, box 44, RG 107, NA.
72. Major General J. E. Hull to McCloy, 11/14/44, ASW 400.38, Countries—Germany, box 44, RG 107, NA.
73. McCloy to Pehle, 11/18/44, ASW 400.38, Countries—Germany, box 44, RG 107, NA.
74. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1986), p. 745.
75. Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews, p. 304.
76. Ibid., p. 292.
77. Laqueur, Terrible Secret, p. 100.
78. Henry Morgenthau, Morgenthau Diary. Prepared by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 11/20/67 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), vol. I, pp. 393–98.
79. Ickes diary, 8/6/44, LOC.
80. Morgenthau, Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, pp. 440–42.
81. Ibid., p. 424; see also David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, pp. 402–3.
82. Morgenthau, Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, pp. 436, 438.
83. Ibid., pp. 443–45.
84. Henry Stimson diary, 9/4/44, LOC.
85. Morgenthau, Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, pp. 521, 524.
86. Ibid., p. 529.
87. Henry Stimson diary, 9/7/44, LOC.
88. Henry Stimson diary, 9/9/44, LOC.
89. Henry Stimson diary, 9/14/44, LOC.
90. Henry Stimson diary, 9/16–17/44, LOC.
91. Ickes diary, 9/17/44, LOC.
92. Morgenthau, Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, p. 40.
93. Henry Stimson diary, 9/27–10/1/44, LOC.
94. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, p. 581.
ELEVEN: VICTORY IN EUROPE
1. McCloy to chief of staff, 6/9/44, ASW 000.2, Communism, box 1, RG 107, NA.
2. McCloy to assistant chief of staff, G-2, 12/23/44, ASW 000.2, Communists, box 1, RG 107, NA.
3. McCloy to Senator Kenneth S. Wherry, 2/21/45; McCloy to Francis Biddle, 3/14/45, ASW 000.2, Communists, Hearings—Subcommittee of House Military Affairs Committee, box 1, RG 107, NA.
4. Ickes diary, 11/24/44, LOC.
5. Henry Stimson diary, 12/19/44, LOC.
6. Henry Morgenthau, Morgenthau Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, pp. 52–53.
7. John Morton Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau: A Revision and Condensation from the Morgenthau Diaries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 616.
8. Ibid., p. 619.
9. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 236.
10. Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, pp. 623–24.
11. Morgenthau, Diary, vol. I, U.S. Senate, p. 61.
12. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 202.
13. Mary Ellen Crane Rossiter interview, Oct. 31, 1987.
14. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 196. General Jacob Devers was McCloy’s landlord at the time. (McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.)
15. Ladislas Farago, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (New York: Dell Publishing, 1970), p. 762.
16. Martin Blumenthal, ed., The Patton Diaries, vol. II, p. 685.
17. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, pp. 254–55; “Proposed Itinerary Mr. John McCloy and Party,” ASW 333.9, ETO, box 18, RG 107, NA; McCloy diary, 4/12/45, box 1/3/55M.
18. Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, p. 630.
19. Major General Ralph C. Smith, “Military Attaché Report: Conversation with General De Gaulle on Economic Problems and War Criminals,” 4/18/45, ASW 333.9, ETO, box 18, RG 107, NA.
20. McCloy interview, July 10,1986; Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Road to Victory, p. 1301; McCloy to Chuck Weeden, 3/12/74, JJM, Amherst.
21. Henry Stimson diary, 4/19/45, LOC.
22. Nelson M. Shepard, “Problem of Feeding Germany Unsolved, McCloy Says on Return,” Washington Star, April 26, 1945; “U.S. Opens Action to Punish Nazis,” NYT, April 26, 1945.
23. Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 159.
24. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 77–78.
25. Henry Stimson diary, 4/23/45, LOC.
26. Truman, Year of Decisions, p. 82.
27. Ibid., pp. 85–86; Melvyn P. Leffler, “Adherence to Agreements: Yalta and the Experiences of the Early Cold War,” International Security, Summer 1986.
28. Truman, Year of Decisions, p. 102.
29. Ibid., p. 64.
30. Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), pp. 133–34.
31. McCloy diary, 4/30/45, box 1/3, JJM.
32. Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945 (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 470–73.
33. Henry Stimson diary, 4/27–29/45, 5/10/45, LOC. The next day, over lunch, McCloy told Ickes that Stettinius “has no real leadership and no real ideas. He tries to keep everybody happy by jollying them and inviting them to cocktails.” (Ickes diary, 5/20/45, LOC.)
34. Henry Stimson diary, 5/10/45, LOC.
TWELVE: HIROSHIMA
1. Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York: Penguin, 1985), pp. 347–48.
2. Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 190.
3. Henry Stimson diary, 5/15/45, LOC. Stimson was mistaken to think that a date for the Potsdam meeting had already been set. Almost two more weeks would pass before it was set.
4. Stimson to acting secretary of state (Grew), 5/21/45, top secret, folder: Soviet Union, Memcons & Ltrs, 1945, AH.
5. Henry Stimson diary, 5/15/45, LOC.
6. Stimson to President Truman, 5/16/45, PSF, HST. Stimson reported in his diary on May 16, 1945, that McCloy helped him prepare this memo.
7. Sherwin, World Destroyed, p. 191. Joseph E. Davies noted in his diary on May 21, 1945, that Truman had confided in him that he did not want to meet in June because the “test was set for June, but had been postponed to July.”
8. Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, p. 44.
9. On May 19, 1945, Stimson told McCloy over the phone that he thought simple geography and “our position in the world, made it perfectly possible for us to get along [with the Soviets] without fighting. . . . This was the time to put up with a good bit of ill mannered behavior with the Russians in a sincere attempt to work out such a relationship rather than form what would be construed as a close military alliance against them.” (memo of telephone conversation with the secretary of war, 5/19/45, box WD 1, folder 29, JJM.)
10. Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, p. 156.
11. Donovan to president, 5/12/45, Confidential Files, HST; see also Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 255.
12. On May 28, 1945, Grew bluntly told Truman, “The greatest obstacle to unconditional surrender by the Japanese is their belief that this would entail the destruction or permanent removal of the Emperor and the institution of the throne.” Grew believed the idea of depriving the Japanese of their emperorship simply “unsound.” See Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), vol. II, pp. 1428–29.
13. McCloy to Colonel Stimson, 5/28/45, box WD 1, folder 29, JJM.
14. Memorandum of conversation with General Marshall and the secretary of war—May 29, 1945, McCloy diary, 5/29/45, DY box 1, folder 17, JJM.
15. In fact, McCloy’s Kuhn, Loeb friend Lewis Strauss a few weeks later suggested to Forrestal a quite practical demonstration. Strauss remembered seeing in a Siberian forest the 1908 effects of a large meteor hit which had “knocked down forests for miles around its point of impact and the trees lay in windrows radiating like spokes of a wheel from the center.” Troubled by the idea of dropping such a “cataclysmic weapon” on a crowded metropolis filled with women and children, Str
auss suggested targeting the bomb over a large grove of cryptomeria trees near the village of Nikko on Honshu Island. There is no record of whether Forrestal tried to pursue the idea or not. (Lewis L. Strauss, Men and Decisions [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962], pp. 192–93.)
16. Sherwin, World Destroyed, p. 302. Ironically, it was James B. Conant, the president of America’s leading institution of higher learning, Harvard University, who proposed targeting civilian workers’ quarters. At the time, Conant was serving as deputy science adviser to the White House.
17. Ibid., p. 210.
18. Ibid., p. 205.
19. Ibid., p. 301.
20. Charles S. Cheston, acting director, OSS, to president, 5/31/45, Confidential Files, HST; Henry Stimson diary, 6/1/45, LOC. The most destructive air raid over Tokyo actually occurred on March 9–10, when some eighty-three thousand people were killed. The Japanese capital was repeatedly firebombed in the months afterward.
21. Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After, p. 171.
22. John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1970), vol. II, p. 943; Wyden, Day One, pp. 171–72.
23. Toland, Rising Sun, vol. II, p. 943.
24. John J. McCloy, The Challenge to American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 40.
25. Toland, Rising Sun, vol. II, p. 944.
26. Ibid.
27. Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, p. 159; McCloy, Challenge to American Foreign Policy, p. 41.
28. Wyden, Day One, p. 172.
29. Walter Mills, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), p. 70.
30. McCloy recalled that he went to see Byrnes, who was then working in the White House, and pitched the idea to him. But Byrnes dismissed the idea without explanation: “He said,” recalled McCloy, “my proposal was not possible.” McCloy left with the impression that Byrnes was angry about not having been invited to the meeting. (McCloy interview, Sept. 14, 1984.)