Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (149 page)

Roosevelt let Churchill and Stalin joust a bit before entering the debate on Stalin’s side. The marshal’s proposal regarding southern France was of “considerable interest,” the president said. He thought the military planners should examine it carefully.

Stalin, encouraged, said that the Soviet experience demonstrated the value of launching a major offensive from two directions at once. “The Red Army usually attacks from two directions, forcing the enemy to move his reserves from one front to the other. As the two offensives converge, the power of the whole offensive increases. Such would be the case in simultaneous operations from southern and northern France.”

Churchill again objected, but Roosevelt, ignoring him, asserted that the military staffs should set to work at once on the subject of an attack on southern France to precede or accompany the cross-Channel invasion.

T
HE GROUP BROKE
long enough to reconvene for dinner. The meal included an “unbelievable quantity of food,” according to Bohlen, who had endured many such repasts in Moscow. Cold hors d’oeuvres preceded hot borscht, accompanied by salads, fruits, compotes, various meats, fish, an assortment of wines, and gallons of vodka. Bohlen noticed that Stalin drank very little vodka, preferring wine—“which is understandable when it is remembered that he was born in Georgia, a wine-producing area.”

The table talk focused on the future of Europe. Stalin declared that the ruling class of France was “rotten to the core” and deserved to be punished for its collaboration with the Nazis. Even now, he said, the French were actively aiding the Germans. Consequently it would be “not only unjust but dangerous” to rely on France for postwar security. And France should be stripped of its colonial possessions.

Churchill answered that the marshal did the French a disservice. France was a defeated country, he said, and had suffered grievously under the occupation.

Stalin dismissed Churchill’s characterization with a sneer. The French hadn’t been defeated, he said. They “opened the front” to the German armies. He cited the views of the Vichy ambassador in Moscow as typical of the French ruling classes. The ambassador repeatedly stated that the future of France lay with Nazi Germany and not with Britain or America.

Churchill countered that he could not conceive of a civilized world in which a “flourishing and lively France” did not play a central part.

Stalin waved his hand contemptuously. France was a “charming and pleasant country,” he said, but it could not be allowed to play any important role in international affairs after the war.

Roosevelt shifted the subject to postwar Germany. The president offered that the entire Nazi experience must be stricken from German minds. A start might be made by eliminating the word
reich
from the German vocabulary.

Stalin said the president didn’t go far enough. The problem wasn’t the Nazis but the Germans. They followed the orders of whatever group ruled in Berlin, without questioning the nature of the orders or the legitimacy of those who gave them. Stalin said that he personally had interrogated German prisoners and asked why they had butchered innocent women and children. They had answered simply that they had done what they had been ordered to do. Stalin cited another, earlier example from his own experience. In 1907 he had attended an important meeting of workers in Leipzig. Two hundred German delegates failed to appear because the railroad clerk who was supposed to punch their train tickets didn’t show up for work and the German delegates refused to leave the station without the required punch. This mentality of blind obedience to authority, Stalin said, could not be eradicated. Accordingly, German authority—and German power—must be forever constrained. “The Reich itself must be rendered impotent ever again to plunge the world into war.” Without getting specific, Stalin recommended a permanent occupation of Germany. “Unless the victorious Allies retain in our hands the strategic positions necessary to prevent a recrudescence of German militarism, we will have failed in our duty.”

Stalin seemed to give something back in another comment. He questioned the prudence of unconditional surrender as a stated policy toward Germany. He accepted the principle as military strategy but found it politically wanting. Anti-Hitler Germans, if any remained, would be unlikely to act against the Nazi regime in the face of such an ominously vague formulation. Better, Stalin said, for the Allies to declare what terms they would require at war’s end. By making the future concrete, even if unappealing, they would “hasten the day of German capitulation.”

R
OOSEVELT’S PART
in the dinner ended suddenly. The president was talking about the Baltic Sea and the need for outside countries to have access to it. Bohlen mistranslated and led Stalin to think the president was demanding access to the Baltic
republics,
which Moscow had annexed to the Soviet Union at the start of the war. The marshal bristled, but the misunderstanding was corrected and the moment passed. Bohlen recalled what happened next:

Roosevelt was about to say something else when suddenly, in the flick of an eye, he turned green and great drops of sweat began to bead off his face; he put a shaky hand to his forehead. We were all caught by surprise. The President had made no complaint, and none of us had detected any sign of discomfort.

Hopkins, moving quickly, directed that Roosevelt be taken to his room, where Ross McIntire, the navy physician who traveled with the president, examined him. McIntire pronounced the problem to be indigestion.

Roosevelt remained in his room, not returning to dinner. By the next morning he seemed fine. Everyone blamed the borscht, and almost no one thought any more of the incident.

T
HE
G
ERMAN QUESTION
recurred throughout the Teheran talks, and it afforded Roosevelt additional opportunity to improve his relationship with Stalin. Roosevelt’s move was instinctive, reflecting the sensitivity he had always displayed in social settings, but it was also deliberate, as he explained to Frances Perkins after the fact. “You know, the Russians are interesting people,” he said, in a recollection that smudged some details but captured the essence of the Teheran meeting.

For the first three days I made absolutely no progress. I couldn’t get any personal connection with Stalin, although I had done everything he asked me to do. I had stayed at his Embassy, gone to his dinners, been introduced to his ministers and generals. He was correct, stiff, solemn, not smiling, nothing human to get hold of. I felt pretty discouraged. If it was all going to be official paper work, there was no sense in my having made this long journey which the Russians had wanted. They couldn’t come to America or any place in Europe for it. I had come there to accommodate Stalin. I felt pretty discouraged because I thought I was making no personal headway. What we were doing could have been done by the foreign ministers.

I thought it over all night and made up my mind I had to do something desperate. I couldn’t stay in Teheran forever. I had to cut through this icy surface so that later I could talk by telephone or letter in a personal way. I had scarcely seen Churchill alone during the conference. I had a feeling that the Russians did not feel right about seeing us conferring together in a language which we understood and they didn’t.

On my way to the conference room that morning we caught up with Winston and I had just a moment to say to him, “Winston, I hope you won’t be sore at me for what I am going to do.” Winston just shifted his cigar and grunted. I must say he behaved very decently afterward.

I began almost as soon as we got into the conference room. I talked privately with Stalin. I didn’t say anything that I hadn’t said before, but it appeared quite chummy and confidential, enough so that the other Russians joined us to listen.

Still no smile.

Then I said, lifting my hand up to cover a whisper—which of course had to be interpreted—“Winston is cranky this morning. He got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

A vague smile passed over Stalin’s eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. As soon as I sat down at the conference table, I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits. It began to register with Stalin. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally Stalin broke out into a deep, hearty guffaw, and for the first time in three days I saw light.

He also saw a change in Stalin’s behavior toward Churchill, which was one reason Churchill grew so red and scowling. Charles Bohlen summarized a dinner session shortly after the beginning of Roosevelt’s ingratiation offensive: “The most notable feature of the dinner was the attitude of Marshal Stalin toward the Prime Minister. Marshal Stalin lost no opportunity to get in a dig at Mr. Churchill. Almost every remark that he addressed to the Prime Minister contained some sharp edge, although the Marshal’s manner was entirely friendly.” Some of Stalin’s jabs were innocuous, the same kind of teasing Roosevelt had initiated. But others had steel at their cold heart. “At one occasion,” Bohlen recorded, “he told the Prime Minister that just because Russians are simple people, it was a mistake to believe that they were blind and could not see what was before their eyes.”

And what they—or at least Stalin—saw was the old anti-Bolshevism emerging in British policy, beneath what seemed a secret sympathy for Germany. Stalin tested Churchill with a brutal recommendation for the postwar treatment of the Germans. Asserting that the Allies must adopt “really effective measures” to ensure that Germany not rise again, he asserted that two conditions must be met. First, the Allies must retain possession of the “most important strategic points in the world” so that “if Germany moved a muscle she could be rapidly stopped.” Second: “At least 50,000 and perhaps 100,000 of the German commanding staff must be physically liquidated.”

Churchill objected vigorously to Stalin’s second point. “War criminals must pay for their crimes,” he conceded, as well as individuals who had committed “barbarous acts.” But “the cold-blooded execution of soldiers who had fought for their country” was something he could never countenance.

Roosevelt couldn’t tell whether Stalin was serious or simply goading Churchill. The president decided to treat Stalin’s proposal—the part about the mass executions—as a joke. He said he couldn’t go along with the marshal; the liquidation must be capped at “49,000.”