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Next Section | Previous Section | Back to Index 25. Notes, 26-10026. New Masses (July 8,1941), p. 6. The New Masses was the only weekly journal presenting the "Marxist outlook on world events"; it also presented an undeviating Stalinist outlook at any given moment and was probably the most articulate reflector of Stalinist opinion in the U.S.A. during World War II among the journals which were frankly Moscow transmission belts. To many people, it and the Daily Worker constituted the totality of the Communist press here, but there were others of some importance, such as Soviet Russia Today, People's World, The Communist, (official organ of the CPUSA), Amerasia, and the Far Eastern Survey of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which were the two centers for the dispersal of Chinese Communist propaganda, for the most part, while Science and Society specialized mainly in Marxist theory. But there were at least three dozen other publications of far greater circulation, and incredibly more affluent, whose editors and contributors numbered several warmly pro-Soviet partisans of the pen, and whose output and influence were thousands of times more significant. On the other hand, it is not known that a single pro-American journal or writer existed or was produced in the Soviet Union during the entire war. 27. A careful reading of the business and finance sections of the nation's newspapers and magazines 1939-1945 will open up to one an aspect of World War II which is almost entirely lacking in what passes for the history of that time in most conventional tomes to this day. 28. "Soviet Ambassador Oumansky, Back in Favor in Washington's Social and Official Circles," U.S. News (July 11, 1941), p.41. Oumansky was the beneficiary of a sustained news picture campaign which made him appear almost winsome. 29. On Steinhardt and related matters, see "Life in the Capital," "People of the Week" and "Washington Whispers" columns in U.S. News duly 4,1941), pp.38, 40. Said the editors, "U.S. diplomatic advisers were almost unanimous in urging President Roosevelt to support Stalin as against Hitler, on the ground that Hitler was the real threat." 30. Letter from Paul Jones of Columbia, Ohio, in Time July 21,1941), p.4. 31. Newsweek (August 5,1941), p.25. 32. Christian Century July 9, 1941), pp.881-882. 33. Catholic Times and London Tablet quoted in Christian Century July 16,1941), p. 900. 34. "Catholics Will Not Join Hitler's Crusade," Christian Century July 16,1941), pp. 900-901. How British intelligence were able to recruit so many notable Catholics into their fraudulent "Fight for Freedom" organization is a matter worthy of respectful consideration as well as suspicion of their powers of discrimination. 35. New Masses (July 8,1941), p.21. On Col. Donovan's new post in the Roosevelt amateur spy and psychological warfare agency being created at this same moment, see below, note 181. 38. "Bishop Speaks," Time (July 14,1941), pp.42-43. 37. Catholic World July, 1941), p.395. 38.Catholic World (August, 1941), pp.515-516. The Pro Red Orchestra in the U.S.A. 345 39. Maynard, "Catholics and the Nazis," American Mercury (October, 1941),pp. 399-400. Rev. Gillis was affronted by Willkie's 180-degree turnabout on foreign policy, especially as represented by the latter's speech of June 18,1940: "I want to repeat what I have said on several occasions, that despite our sympathy for the Allied cause we must stay out of the war. In these times, when our hearts are confused, we must keep our heads clear. We do not intend to send men from this continent to fight in any war. We shall not serve the cause of democracy by becoming involved in the present war; we shall serve that cause only by keeping out of the war. It is the duty of the President of the United States to recognize the determination of the people to stay out of war and to do nothing by word or deed that will undermine that determination. No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people indirectly into war; only the people through their elected representatives can make that awful decision; and there is no question as to their decision." 40."Cantuar and Commissars," Time (August 4,1941),p.28. 41."Hitler Attacks Stalin," Christian Century Uuly 2,1941),pp.855-856. 42.Editorial, Christian Century (July 9, 1941),p.875. 43.Holmes, "If Russia Wins," Christian Century Uuly 30,1941),pp.954-956. 44."Shall We Fight for Russia?" Christian Century (September 10, 1941),pp. 1104-1105. Wieman's letters in response to this (Christian Century, September 10, 1941,pp. 1114-1115, and September 24, 1941,p.1180) went into greater detail, which sounded like much domestic reform talk being heard in Britain at that moment; the U.S.A. could avoid going Communist only by massive post-war economic reform, and that could be achieved only by breaking down domestic hostility to Communism, the main barrier to reform. The latter could best be realized by joining with the USSR in the current war. This was amazing reasoning, in view of the utter absence of the slightest tendency to "go Communist" registered anywhere in the U.S.A. at that moment. 45. Newsweek (July 28,1941),p.26. 46. On reportage of Conant's speech see "Tepees and Propaganda," Time July 14,1941),pp.51-52. Time continued its booming of war mongers from the respectable side, and teased the chastened Communists continually. The most recent target after Conant's speech was the Red-lining head of the National Maritime Union, Joe Curran, and the NMU's about-face in now supporting the Anglo- Russian cause. "Hail A-Starboard," Time July 21,1941),p.17. 47. Newsweek (September 15,1941),p.28. 48. Newsweek {September 22,1941),p.24. 49. Time (December 29,1941),p.26. 50. On Caldwell's estimate of the war in Eastern Europe on his return from Russia four months later, see below. Caldwell and his wife, the famous photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, were in Moscow between May 1 and October 1, returning to the U.S.A. by way of Siberia just before the Pearl Harbor attack. 51. Straight, "For a Free World," New Republic (August 11, 1941), p. 182. 52. New Masses (August 12, 1941),p. 19. Other stirring testimonials of Prod Perry's sort were also published from the artist Max Weber and Emil Lengyel. 53. Christian Century (August 6,1941),pp.986-987. He returned to the fear- Communism theme in his report published in the issue of October 15, 1941,p. 1285. 54. "We have not heard that he is agitating for the intervention of Switzerland,his own country, as a belligerent," the editors concluded pointedly. Editorial, "Barth Says Britain's War Is Christian," Christian Century (September 17,1941),p. 113Z. 55. Kilpatrick, "Karl Barth and His Times," Christian Century (October 8,1941), pp.1235-37. 56. Editorial, "Is It a Holy War?" Christian Century (October 8, 1941), pp. 1230-32. 57. Christian Century (August 27,1941), p.1061. 58. Time (August 11, 1941), pp.9-10. 59. Time (August 11, 1941), pp 10-12. 60. Time (August 18,1941), p. ll. 61. Hopkins' visit was originally interpreted for its readers as a gesture to offer "moral support" to Stalin. U.S. News (August 8,1941), p.4; the editorial position was somewhat braver shortly thereafter. 62. On the above see "War Dramas, Old and New: Praise for Prowess of Soviet Troops," U.S. News (August 8, 1941), p. 17. On p. 40 of the same issue it was reported, "Harry Hopkins, in and out of Moscow, is dealing with matters involving delicate political relationships as well as matters of supply.... Some important officials in Washington are wondering if something Mr. Hopkins told him caused England's Prime Minister Churchill to say that U.S. was very near the verge of war." 63. "Role of Harry Hopkins in Forming a World-Wide Anti-Nazi Front," U.S. News (August 15,1941), pp.7-8. 64. U.S. News (August 15,1941), p.17. The preservation or restoration intact of the European colonial domination of Africa and East Asia also appeared to be taken for granted. 65. "Roosevelt-Churchill: Inside Story of Meeting," U.S. News (August 22,1941), pp.7-9, contained the material under the heading, "What it means to Russia." U.S. News (September 12,1941),p.5, reported the first U.S. tanker carrying gasoline to the Soviet had arrived in the Siberian port of Vladivostok. The preaching fervor and deep religious faith of David Lawrence in the Roosevelt-Churchill "Atlantic Charter" laid out in a two-page editorial ("The Eight Points," U.S. News, August 22,1941,pp.18-l9),is one of the most painful things of the 1941 public opinion molding journalistic propaganda to retread, especially his profound conviction that it was unfailing evidence that the "Allies" planned a "peace without vengeance" and that the German government's warning to their people that they would be dismembered if defeated and that their economy would be locked up behind punitive walls could be dismissed as idle talk by Germans and all others as well. But the German propaganda to their people in 1941 as to their fate if vanquished came closer to actuality by at least a light year than did the vaporings of the "Atlantic Charter"; for five years after defeat their worst fears were realized. Had it not been for Anglo-American panic that the Russians might end up with all of Germany as a satellite, the punitive program in Germany after the war might have gone on indefinitely. When Lawrence burbled about "our humane peace terms," he created an embarrassment for the future of no small dimensions. But he was right in one prediction, when he declared, "We are to be part of the European orbit for generations to come." It is indeed a tribute to the human powers for self-delusion that over 40 years after the event we still see books published which talk about the issuance of something called the "Atlantic Charter" and "signed" by Roosevelt and Churchill on a British warship off the coast of Newfoundland in August, 1941. What was originally a simple press release handed to a radio operator, and intended largely to be a diversion and concealment for what they had really talked about, quicklv became a noble document rivaling the Magna Carta, The Petition of Right, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. That there was no such document was admitted as early as 1944 but writers by the hundreds since that time wearily attest to there being a stately position-paper supposedly outlining the reverent state of affairs which was to prevail in perpetuity once the enemy of 1941 had been annihilated and the planet redeemed in a vast bath of hot lead and blood. 66. U.S. News (September 26,1941),p.12. 67. U.S. News (October 10, 1941),p.6. 68. Fortune (August, 1941),pp.4S47,136-146. 69. Hopkins, "Hitler Won't Win," American Magazine (July, 1941),pp. 24-25, 123-124. 70. Hopkins, "The Inside Story of My Meeting With Stalin," American Magazine (December, 1941),pp.14-15,114-117. Political leadership of this kind largely explains the predicament of the West from mid-1945 on, but the beatification of Churchill in the Anglo-American press made criticism almost impossible. The ex post facto yarns about Churchill's attempts to recoup lost ground in 1943 and 1944 described a largely impossible situation. 71. Newsweek review in issue for September 1, 1941,p.42. That by Roosevelt in New York Herald Tribune Books (September 14,1941),p.4. Roosevelt repeated in his review Lyons' criticism of the New York Times and Herald Tribune "for having given space deliberately or gullibly to radical reviewers," when in a few weeks both were to expand upon this practice many magnitudes. 72. American Mercury (August, 1941),pp.135-143; Lyons was sure Stalin was going to be overthrown in a very short time. 73. American Mercury (November, 1941),pp.583-589. 74. Pp.5,20. Said Eastman, echoing Lyons, "Stalin is the weaker of two gangster- tyrants, and common sense demands that we support him in his resistance to Hitler." 75. New Masses (December 9, 1941),p.21. 76. Newsweek (September 8, 1941),p. 12. As a 100% creation of British intelligence services in the U.S.A., it must have been a little trying for the latter to gear up its fraudulent organization in this country against the Communists when at home Churchill and prominent people in his government were continuously huzzaing Stalin and the British home front was vociferously acclaiming all things Communist. But such difficulties were not discernible to the American public, the imposture having been executed so skillfully. 77. Newsweek (September 22,1941),p.9. 78. U.S. News (September 19,1941),p.13. 79. "Communist Muffling," Newsweek (September 15,1941),p.9. 80. There is ample evidence that the economic involvement of the U.S.A. in the war, 1940-1941, had as much to do with the steady involvement in the war as the economic aspect of Anglo-American affairs, 1915-1917 had with the entry into the war of that time, despite the steady efforts of a regiment of obscurantist academics to expunge this from the record. 81. Time (September 8,1941),p.10. 82. The first week of December, 1941 newspapers in the U.S.A. were printing pictures of weeping Russian peasants outside their burning homes, with the captions frankly ascribing such firings and the general destruction in the neighborhood to the Red Army. It was significant that no soldiers of either side appeared in these photographs, which suggested that the damage was being done to the home front far behind the battle lines. See the general approval of this destruction by the Red Army in Time (September 1, 1941), pp. 22-23. On Time's reproduction of Stalinist propaganda from Red Star as "news," see the issue for September 8, 1941, p. 15. 83. Time (September 22, 1941), p. 52. This effusion was accompanied by a cheap, subtle attack on the music of Richard Wagner, though this time there was no suggestion for the extirpation of German music. For the embarrassingly fulsome description of the first performance of this new Shostakovich symphony in the U.S.A. see below. 84. Time (September 29, 1941), p. 12. Oswald Garrison Villard reported that the Legion's vote was "under direct pressure from President Roosevelt, according to Gov. Heil of Wisconsin, who was at the convention." "The Military Outlook," Christian Century (October 8, 1941), pp. 1240-1241. 85. Christian Century (September 24, 1941), p. 1190. 86. Newsweek (September 29, 1941), p. 10. 87. Mowrer, "44 Ways to Beat Hitler," Look (September 23, 1941), p. 10. Look became part of the liberal press with a vengeance in 1941, and as the wartime '40s wore on, it, more than the liberal literary weeklies, became the special organ for the more spectacular trial balloons of the liberal correspondents, columnists and radio commentators. The Nation gradually became the forum for European left wing refugees more than of any other attitudinal group, while even such a staid agency of Eastern Anglo-American-controlled financial voices and its associated world politics as Foreign Affairs opened its pages more and more year by year to pro-war leftist liberals, especially from the fall of 1941 on, when the various impulses for interventionism began to grow together, regardless of their differing strategies and objectives. 88. "Iranian Aftermath," Time (September 15, 1941), pp. 21-22 89. Newsweek (September 1, 1941), p. 13 90. Time (September 15, 1941), p. 18. 91. New York Herald Tribune Books (November 23, 1941), p. 18. Cripps was the founder of the London leftist paper Tribune, which, along with Laski's Herald, were far more the sources of British collectivist, and, at the same time, pro-Soviet, ideas, than any of the organs associated with left partisan sects. 92. Look (September 9, 1941), p. 38. 93. "Biz Meets Facts," Time (July 21, 1941), pp. 73-74. 94. Villard, "This Global War," Christian Century (September 10, 1941) pp. 1108-09. A decade and a half later, Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. and Brent Bozell and their associates were tormenting these same liberals with this identical language and rhetoric, only this time in promoting a war against the liberals' erstwhile Communist "allies," even if it meant "burning out the farthest star." as. Villard, "The Military Outlook," Christian Century (October 8, 1941), pp. 1240-41. 95. On Dewey's views see Ruth Byrns, "John Dewey on Russia," CommonutZl (September 18, 1941), pp. 511-513. 97. See Prof. Childs' letter to the New York Times for January 11, 1942, reprinted in Frontiers of Democracy for March 15, 1942. 98. "Progressives for War," Time (July 7, 1941), p. 48. 99. "Switch," Time (October 13, 1941), pp. 6849. The colleges selected were Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Iowa, Chicago, Missouri, Minnesota, Northwestern and Stanford. The Pro-Red Orchestra in the U.S.A. 349 100."Tanks and Thanks to Russia," Time (October 6,1941),p.25. Reprinted by permission of The Journal of Historical Review, P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, California 92659, United States of America. Subscription rate: $40 per year. Next Section | Previous Section | Back to Index |
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