Somewhere along the line FDR had come to regard Nazi Germany as the greater evil, and he became ever less critical of the USSR. Charles Bohlen, the experienced Moscow diplomat who was taken into the Roosevelt White House as an interpreter and adviser, observed that FDR understood Stalin’s mistrust as caused by “the neglect that Soviet Russia had suffered at the hands of other countries for years after the Revolution. What he did not understand was that Stalin’s enmity was based on profound ideological convictions.” Thus he did not see the moral and political chasm that separated the United States and the USSR, much less that it could never be bridged.20
The former American ambassador to the Soviet Union, William Bullitt, urged FDR to extend Lend-Lease to the Soviets but only in return for pledges on human rights. The president and Secretary of State Cordell Hull ruled that out, in favor of keeping the USSR in the war.21 FDR came to think he could convert Stalin by providing plentiful aid with no strings attached and by meeting him face-to-face. The president, in communication with Ambassador Bullitt, said that he was going to follow his own “hunch” that Hopkins was right in thinking that they could work with the Soviets.
They also wanted to believe that the Soviet Union was or would soon work “toward democratic socialism.” Although there had been some “rough edges” in the relationship with Moscow in the past, the White House came to think that earlier examples of the Soviets’ “pathological behavior” should be overlooked or tolerated.22 When FDR heard of the German attack on the USSR in June 1941, he must have reasoned that it was a “heaven-sent opportunity.” To help keep the Red Army in the fight, the United States had extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union later that year with a hope and a prayer.23
Indeed, the Red Army held on, then carried the burden of the Allied fighting and in early 1943 won the decisive battle at Stalingrad (summer 1942–February 2, 1943), where Hitler’s newly appointed Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered on January 31. Although there is controversy regarding the exact number of German and Allied troops that were surrounded—ranging from 195,000 to 290,000—there is general agreement that some 110,000 Axis troops were taken prisoner. There is no question, however, that this battle was an unmitigated disaster for Germany and represented a turning point in the war.24 Meanwhile in North Africa, American and British forces in Operation Torch defeated the Axis powers on May 12 and took 238,243 prisoners, half of them German. It was like a second Stalingrad in the space of a few months.25
HELPING HIS ALLIES OVERLOOK CRIMES
President Roosevelt pressed Stalin for direct talks on four occasions during 1942 and 1943. Wanting to secure the postwar peace and win support for the United Nations, he thought his personal charisma would work if he could meet the Master of the Kremlin. That was a mistake, for the Communist leaders had long since made up their own minds. Moreover, Molotov had reported the president’s efforts to be informal and scoffed at their “obvious” phoniness.26 In the meantime, Roosevelt continued to overestimate his own abilities and, without ever having laid eyes on Stalin, confidently told Churchill he would be able to handle that man better than either the U.S. State Department or the British Foreign Office: “Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.”27
The president went to great lengths to win Stalin over; in May 1943 he sent former ambassador Davies off again for talks. Rumors were circulating that a new Soviet-Nazi agreement might end the war. FDR was convinced it was essential to prevent any such outcome, even if it meant accepting the western borders that Stalin kept demanding. Davies’s book about his earlier experiences had been published as Mission to Moscow. Not only did it whitewash everything, but it excused the Soviet invasion of Poland and Finland. A movie based on the book was even less critical. It premiered in April 1943, and Davies watched it with the president, who liked it. He wanted Davies to show it to Stalin to convince him of American sincerity. FDR remained confident that if only he could meet with Stalin alone, without the feisty Churchill around, he could get along famously with the Soviet Boss.28
The Kremlin was pleased enough with the Davies movie to open it for national distribution. Surely Stalin must have wondered what was behind dispatching such an apologist for Soviet crimes, but he still balked at an early meeting. Instead he asked for more deliveries through Lend-Lease and mentioned his disappointment in his allies, who, without consulting him at all, had put off opening a second front in Europe until the spring of 1944.29
Stalin did offer a symbolic gesture to improve his image in America: on May 22, 1943, he announced the imminent dissolution of the Comintern. (He had promised to do this for nearly a decade.) Secretary of State Hull told the public that this latest step would “promote a greater degree of trust” and contribute to the “cooperation necessary for the winning of the war and for successful postwar undertakings.”30 The British government directed the BBC to describe the end of the Comintern as “by far the most important political event of the war,” for it supposedly indicated that the Soviet Communists had turned to international cooperation.31
The Soviet dissolution of the Comintern was also an attempt to shift attention away from the Katyń massacre. The world was astounded at revelations by the Nazis that the bodies of thousands of Polish officers had been found. Berlin broadcast the story beginning on April 13, and it made news around the globe.32
Surely it was not a coincidence that on April 19, not a week after the horrors about Katyń began to circulate, the Soviet Union announced new military tribunals to deal with the Nazi occupiers “and their local hirelings.” The Kremlin wanted to direct the world’s attention back to the crimes of the Third Reich and staged a series of show trials, the first beginning in July.33
In letters to FDR and Churchill in late April, Stalin denied involvement in the “monstrous crimes” against the Polish officers and claimed that the “London Poles” were allowing themselves to be used as “tools” for anti-Soviet purposes.34 On April 25 the USSR broke off relations with the London-based Polish government. A week later Stalin decided it might be useful to dissolve the Comintern, and Moscow hurried to inform the worldwide network, including Mao Zedong, Yugoslavian boss Josip Broz Tito, and American Communist leader Earl Browder. The process began to drag, and Stalin, in a call to Dimitrov on May 20, asked him to speed things up. In an interview on May 29, carried on the front page of The New York Times, the Soviet dictator said that Moscow had no intention of mixing in the affairs of other countries, and he disclaimed yet again wanting to Bolshevize them. That big story succeeded in pushing the news of the murdered Poles into the background.35
The dissolution of the Comintern completely fooled American intelligence, never mind President Roosevelt. Thus in a May memorandum, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—precursor to the CIA—reported Russian voices as saying that Moscow had given up on world revolution, and it took the breakup of the Comintern as “proof” of Stalin’s loyalty to his allies. In a June memo, the OSS thought it saw “fundamental changes in Russian Communism.” The most important of these, it said, was Soviet rejection of the purity of Communist ideology in the name of the motherland and defense of national security. American intelligence was completely wrong, but like the British, the Americans were focused on Germany and Japan. The Soviets similarly directed attention to the common enemies but spied just as energetically on their allies. Russian historians were amazed at how completely Western intelligence services and Roosevelt accepted the significance of dissolving the Comintern.36