Roosevelt and Stalin: a lesson for us all

I just finished a book called Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship. What an eye-opener. Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought he knew how to handle Joseph Stalin as World War 2 ramped up. Unlike Winston Churchill, FDR decided he should be extremely accommodating to Stalin, thus showing the Russian tyrant he had nothing to fear from America and the West. The result of this approach was heartbreaking and puzzling.

As early as 1942, Roosevelt worked tirelessly, if not realistically, to help Stalin. He sent many young American sailors to their deaths on the dangerous Murmansk convoys to keep Stalin supplied even as Churchill said the Royal Navy was too stretched to provide decent escort service. FDR then agreed with Stalin to support a cross channel attack on France in 1942, way before the U.S. and England were ready. It would have been a bloodbath.

In 1942, the Brits, Americans, and Russians met at Teheran with more of FDR’s generosity on display. He agreed in principle to Russia’s dominance in the Baltic countries and eastern Europe, thus abandoning these countries to years of misery under communism.

As the war continued, Roosevelt gave away much more to the Russian dictator. He advocated giving one-third of the surrendered Italian navy to Stalin, despite the fact that the Russians didn’t fight in the Mediterranean while the British lost a huge number of ships there. He urged American military leaders to abandon the Italian peninsula and the entire Mediterranean strategy because Stalin didn’t like armies near where he planned to take over entire nations. A truly sad occasion was the Warsaw uprising in 1944 when the Polish resistance leaders led an uprising against the German occupiers because the Russians who were closing in on Warsaw asked them to do so. Instead of coming to their rescue, the Russians cynically stopped short of Warsaw to let the Germans destroy future opposition to Russian military and political dominance in the area. The British asked FDR to help supply the Poles with needed help, but he refused, afraid to anger Stalin. In addition, Roosevelt agreed to support the Russian-supported Polish government being put together, even though the true Polish government was in London in exile.

Toward the end of the war, FDR repeatedly gave way before the Russians. He held the American army back from Berlin, he agreed to huge land accessions if Russia would enter the war in the Pacific against Japan. He looked the other way as Lend-Lease supplies to Russia were diverted to other uses than defeating Hitler, he let Russians inspect American industrial plants without letting our people see Russian plants, he canned his ambassador to Moscow when he pointed out the evils he encountered there, he refused to look into many reports of Russian atrocities against Poles.

The book ends by asking a key question—why did FDR act this way? The answer the author gives has to do with FDR’s worldview. He, like his hero Woodrow Wilson, saw the world in utopian terms. It could be made better, people were basically good, something like the old League of Nations could be reconstituted and made to keep the peace. This idealism permeated the “progressives” of this time. They came to see ugly, totalitarian regimes like the U.S.S.R. as a bit rough around the edges but interested in the same upward drive for perfecting the human race. Their worldview blinded them to the reality of evil.

Does all this sound familiar? Look at the progressives today. They lash out at Israel, but have little to say to Iran. They tolerate North Korea, they excuse Hugo Chavez, they praise Fidel Castro, they hang out with thugs at the United Nations. I see the current administration in this light—the leaders think that if we are nice and accommodating, the world’s dictators will stop their nastiness. Then we can sit around the campfire and sing songs together. Really??