Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (150 page)

T
HE MOST SENSITIVE
topic at Teheran involved Germany’s eastern neighbor. The future of Poland touched each man in a different way. For Stalin, Poland was a security issue. Thrice since the early nineteenth century, twice in Stalin’s lifetime, Poland had provided invaders of Russia a running start. Stalin insisted that Poland become a buffer state for the Soviet Union, a shield between Germany and Russia. This implied, although Stalin didn’t say so explicitly, a government in Poland that was subservient or at least friendly to Moscow.

For Churchill, Poland was a matter of honor. The German invasion of Poland had precipitated Britain’s declaration of war. If the war ended with Poland’s having simply traded German masters for Russian, neither Churchill as prime minister nor the British people collectively would be able to hold up their heads again.

The difference between Stalin and Churchill played out in their competing definitions of Poland’s future borders and their contradictory visions of Poland’s future government. Stalin wanted Poland moved as far west as possible, the better to guarantee Soviet security. Churchill had less concern about Poland’s borders, although he couldn’t accept a Soviet-Polish frontier that stole a large part of the Polish patrimony. But he wanted the Allies to recognize the Polish government in exile in London. Stalin, as skeptical of Churchill on this issue as on several others, assumed that any Poles London liked would be antagonistic toward the Soviet Union.

Roosevelt appreciated Stalin’s security concerns, and he shared Churchill’s desire to see Poland free of foreign domination. To these considerations he added one of his own, as he explained to Stalin in another private meeting. He reminded the marshal that the United States would conduct a presidential election in 1944, and he said that though he didn’t want to run again, he might feel obliged to if the war was still on. This was where the Polish question came in. “There are six to seven million Americans of Polish extraction,” Roosevelt said. “As a practical man I don’t wish to lose their vote.” He went on to say he appreciated Stalin’s concerns about the future of Poland. And he was inclined to agree with him on certain aspects of the Polish question, particularly as they affected borders. But for “political reasons” he had to put off any decisions about Poland, preferably until after November 1944.

Stalin acknowledged that he had wondered about Roosevelt’s reticence on Poland. But now that the president had explained, he understood.

W
HAT MAY HAVE
been Roosevelt’s most important decision of the war came at Teheran. The commitment to a date for the invasion of France—which by now had acquired the name Overlord—having been made, the Americans and British required a commander. The Americans would be supplying most of the men and materiel; hence Roosevelt would have the choice. Persons close to the question had assumed for many months that the president would choose Marshall. Roosevelt thought Marshall deserved this chance to make history, or at least to be remembered by history. “Ike, you and I know who was the Chief of Staff during the last years of the Civil War,” Roosevelt told Eisenhower during the stopover in Algeria en route to Cairo and Teheran. “But practically no one else knows, although names of the field generals—Grant, of course, and Lee, and Jackson, Sherman, Sheridan, and the others—every schoolboy knows them. I hate to think that fifty years from now practically nobody will know who George Marshall was. That is one of the reasons why I want George to have the big command. He is entitled to establish his place in history as a great general.”

John Pershing disagreed, at least with the conclusion that Marshall must go to Europe. The octogenarian general, who had been Marshall’s mentor and remained America’s most distinguished soldier, wrote Roosevelt advising that Marshall stay where he was. “We are engaged in a global war of which the end is still far distant,” Pershing explained, “and for the wise and strategical guidance of which we need our most accomplished officer as Chief of Staff. I voice the consensus of informed military opinion in saying that officer is General Marshall…. The suggested transfer of General Marshall would be a fundamental and very grave error in our military policy.”

Roosevelt replied with characteristic deftness. “My dear General,” he wrote, “You are absolutely right about George Marshall—and yet, I think, you are wrong, too!” Marshall was indeed the ideal chief of staff. “But, as you know, the operations for which we are considering him are the biggest that we will conduct in this war.” America required him in Europe. “The best way I can express it is to tell you that I want George to be the Pershing of the second World War—and he cannot be that if we keep him here.”

But gradually Roosevelt changed his mind. The longer he worked with Marshall, the more he appreciated Marshall’s rare gifts. No one else talked back to Roosevelt the way Marshall did; no one stuck so stubbornly to his beliefs in discussions with Churchill and the British brass. Yet no one carried out orders so loyally and efficiently once they were given. And no one embodied soldierly discretion more thoroughly than Marshall. Roosevelt concluded that he had to keep the Virginian close by him on the Potomac.

The only problem was that Marshall wanted the European job. He agreed with Roosevelt that he deserved it, and like Roosevelt he recognized that posterity never remembered desk officers. Saying no to much less worthy persons than Marshall had often caused Roosevelt pain; saying no to Marshall was almost more than he could manage.

During the Cairo conference he sent Harry Hopkins to talk to the general. “Hopkins came to see me Saturday night before dinner and told me the President was in some concern of mind over my appointment as Supreme Commander,” Marshall recalled. “I could not tell from Hopkins’ statement just what the President’s point of view was, and in my reply I merely endeavored to make it clear that I would go along wholeheartedly with whatever decision the President made. He need have no fears regarding my personal reaction.” Marshall declined to state his own opinion in the matter.

The next day Roosevelt himself summoned Marshall. “In response to his questions, I made virtually the same reply I made to Hopkins,” Marshall said.

I recall saying that I would not attempt to estimate my capabilities; the President would have to do that; I merely wished to make clear that whatever the decision, I would go along with it wholeheartedly; that the issue was too great for any personal feeling to be considered. I did not discuss the pros and cons of the matter. If I recall, the President stated, in completing our conversation, “I feel I could not sleep at night with you out of the country.”

Roosevelt wasn’t quite ready to announce a decision. Churchill was deferring to the president on the choice of a commander, but he hadn’t fully yielded on the commander’s responsibilities. The prime minister remained unconvinced that a single commander would do a better job than the Combined Chiefs in directing the ground, sea, and air forces of the two great powers in the most complicated military operation in history. Marshall and the American chiefs thought they had won this argument ahead of the North African invasion, and they grew exasperated to have to fight it again. But they considered the principle of unified command so important that they were willing to accept a British officer as commander—provided that the British commander be John Dill, who seemed the most capable of the British officers and the one most likely to enjoy the confidence of the American public.

Roosevelt wasn’t about to yield the command to a British officer, but the American chiefs’ self-denying statement provided him ammunition for use against Churchill. So too did a comment—a question, actually—by Stalin at the second meeting of the principals at Teheran. The American, British, and Russian military staffs had been discussing the progress of their campaigns and their plans for the future, when Stalin politely but sharply asked, “Who will command Overlord?”

“That has not yet been decided,” Roosevelt answered.

Stalin shook his head dismissively. The Anglo-Americans still weren’t serious, if they hadn’t chosen a commander. “Nothing will come of the operation,” he said, “unless one man is made responsible not only for the preparation but for the execution of the operation.”

Roosevelt realized the time was at hand. The main reason he had traveled all the way to Teheran was to win Stalin’s trust. He had made some progress but not enough. Churchill continued to grumble against a unified European command; the prime minister wanted to keep the Mediterranean separate, in part because he thought Roosevelt would choose Marshall, whose hostility to the Mediterranean operations Churchill favored was well known.

To satisfy Stalin, Roosevelt needed to make a decision now. To mollify Churchill, he couldn’t choose Marshall. The only other American with the stature for the European command was Eisenhower. Since Roosevelt wanted to keep Marshall in Washington anyway, this settled the matter.

On his return trip from Teheran, Roosevelt stopped in Tunis, where Eisenhower met him. The general climbed into the president’s car. “Well, Ike,” Roosevelt said, “you are going to command Overlord.”

52.

J
UST BEFORE LEAVING
W
ASHINGTON FOR
C
AIRO AND
T
EHERAN
, R
OOSEVELT
had performed a minor miracle. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he arranged for the performance of a minor miracle, which from his perspective was even better. The Senate approved a resolution sponsored by Tom Connally of Texas endorsing Roosevelt’s blueprint for the postwar structure of peace. “Resolved,” the measure declared:

That the Senate recognizes the necessity of there being established at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.

The endorsement alone was significant; the magnitude of the endorsement—by 85 to 5—was even more significant. One of the dissenters was Hiram Johnson, who had voted against the Treaty of Versailles and didn’t see any reason to give Roosevelt what he had denied Wilson. Another was Burton Wheeler, whose isolationism had resurfaced not long after the smoke from Pearl Harbor cleared. But they were the ones isolated now. Nearly everyone else sided with the president.

The victory for the Connally resolution—or “peace resolution,” as its proponents managed to get the papers to call it—reflected Roosevelt’s success in casting the United Nations as more than a wartime alliance. The alliance would win the war, but it would also constitute the framework for the peace. Perhaps Roosevelt had realized from the start—from the moment he selected the name for the anti-Axis alliance—that by making the United Nations the vehicle of victory rather than something conjured up after the victory had been won, he would grant it a legitimacy in American thinking the League of Nations never enjoyed. Perhaps he was not so prescient and acted simply on intuition. If so, his intuition was uncanny, for it allowed him to win the battle Wilson had lost, even before the battle was joined.

Roosevelt’s miracle also reflected his shrewdness in keeping Cordell Hull around. During most of the 1930s the secretary of state had seemed extraneous to American foreign policy, chipping away at American tariffs by means of his reciprocal trade pacts but otherwise having little to do with the conduct of international affairs. Even after the start of the war Hull was often outside the loop of decision, with Roosevelt relying on Hopkins, Sumner Welles, and his own relationship with Churchill in directing American diplomacy. But Roosevelt knew that the time would come when Hull’s quarter century of service in Congress and his continued good standing among the senators and representatives would yield crucial benefits.