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3. Initial Reaction of Interventionist Spokesmen and Press to the Soviet
Entry into the European War
The political situation facing Roosevelt's war party was far more
complicated and troublesome, there being no formal state of hostilities
with anyone, and with a long campaign to provide "aid" to England just
concluded, and with its opponents anything but happy over the state
of affairs resulting. Adding Stalin to the candidates for assistance
was a more formidable proposition. Major newspaper lineup on the issue
continued approximately the same. The Hearst papers, typified by the
New York Journal American, and the McCormick-Patterson interests, of
which the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, and the New
York Daily News represented the principal voice, could be counted on
to oppose flatly any material gestures toward Soviet Russia. But the
New York Herald Tribune, the patrician voice of Eastern interventionist
Republicanism, while managing to carry a sizable freight consisting
of thinly disguised Stalinist spokesmen, suddenly discovered that objections
to an alliance with Communist Russia to beat Hitler were based on "moralistic
follies," while its chief columnist spokesman, Walter Lippmann, the
closest thing to Jove on the American journalistic scene, loosed some
of his rumbling thunder on the subject, cautioning critics of aid to
Stalin against releasing excessive "vaporings about democracy."
America's tiny Communist press could not come up with material as good
as this. With spokesmen as far apart as the Chicago Tribune and the
New York Herald Tribune, there was no sense to allegations by Republicans
that the Democrats were the "war" party; a large number of both were
on Roosevelt's pro-war team. World War Two homogenized American politics.
It put foreign policy more or less off the agenda thereafter, resulting
in the "bi-partisanship" which prevailed regardless of the winners in
the quadrennial elections. The war really created two new parties, supporting
pro-involvement or anti-involvement in global international activities,
and vastly disparate in size progressively after Pearl Harbor. What
passed for "debate" among the world interventionist majority for thirty
years descended to the level of whether five or seven units of artillery
or one or two aircraft carriers should be sent to some distant land.
There has been nothing in American history to match what has happened
since 1942 in demonstrating dramatically the function of foreign policy
as a reflection of domestic policy, and the essential control of the
latter by the former.
With the entry of Communist Russia into the war against the Germans,
most of America's liberals and non-Communist Left took another ludicrous
and wrenching opinion lurch. The venom behind the "Communazi" epithet
quickly was neutralized in the warm flow of sympathy which was promptly
forthcoming. They were aided by many self-recruited newcomers who joined
them and helped build the big wave of pro-Stalinist sentiment which
was still washing over the land when the falling-out occurred five years
later. It might be said that not as many liberals and leftists were
against aid to Russia as there were conservatives and rightists for
such aid. The anti-aid liberals were grouped around the Keep America
out of War Congress, and additional figures such as Norman Thomas and
Eugene Lyons represented other factions hostile to pro-Soviet support.
But other left organizations, such as the Legion for American Unity,
the Union for Democratic Action, the Council on Soviet Relations and
the Socialist Workers' Party were examples of elements quick to back
an aid program for Soviet Russia.
On the operational side, two of the principal interventionist pressure
groups, ostensibly buttressed by influential conservatives, the Committee
to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and the Fight for Freedom Committee,
both responded promptly to the Russo-German war by urging U.S. aid to
the Communists. The former dropped "by Aiding the Allies" from its name,
while stipulating that aid be given Stalin "without relaxing opposition
to Communism." The FFF soft-pedaled that approach and attacked the most
formidable anti-interventionist group, the America First Committee,
while posing to the latter a bogus choice, "Would you rather have the
Nazis looking across the Bering Strait or Alaska?"(13) This was
reminiscent of the ingeniously clever questions invented by George Gallup,
head of the American Institute of Public Opinion, and an ardent pro-war
activist, one of which was whether it was more important to defeat Hitler
or to stay out of the war. When put this way, 70% supported the first
clause, but when the same people were quizzed on a declaration of war,
a larger percentage, 80%, flatly said no.(l4) Pollsters persisted
in putting people on the spot this way by presenting two-part propositions,
the first of which was ethical and the second practical politics, which
introduced serious popular confusion between ends and means, insofar
as these same pollsters stated the issues and allowed decisions based
on these limitations. Thus either large interest group, for or against
involvement, was equally free to quote the public response, and both
were right. But the chips came down only when the interventionists quietly
inserted the matter of aiding the Reds as part of the pro-war proposition.
This invariably drew a formidable vote against involvement. As for the
Communist Party, 145 delegates from 48 states met in New York City the
last weekend of June 1941 to prepare a "peoples' program," which included
a wild call for all-out aid. Churchill and the CPUSA were of one voice
by July 4, 1941, whatever may have been their disparate objectives.
Such an alignment was purely coincidental to forces such as Churchill
represented. Time, which in magazine journalism stood for what the Herald
Tribune did among the dailies, set the tone by simultaneously uttering
huzzas for Stalin and Russia while The Pro-Red Orchestra in the U.S.A.
(15).... displaying nothing but contempt for domestic Stalinists.
The German attack was ill-timed for the American newsweeklies, taking
place on a Sunday. As a result, the issues of June 23 were already being
distributed and could have nothing on this electrifying event, one of
the half-dozen most important dates of the entire war. Therefore, the
first comment was delayed until the issues of June 30. By that date
Time was able to make a deeper assessment of what was taking place,
and thought the message written by Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles
and read to the press, obviously with Pres. Roosevelt's approval, not
only amounted to a pledge to Stalin but used the language of a committed
belligerent, regardless of the state of diplomatic realities. It did
not bother Time that Welles filled the statement with verbiage such
as "Hitler's treacherous attack upon Soviet Russia," and using such
choice derogations as "dishonorable," "deceitful," "hostile," "murderous,"
"brutal," "desperate," and the like; as they concluded with satisfaction,
"When the U.S. could officially use such terms" in describing the German
action, "the U.S. was certainly at War. (16) A further article
asserted that all of Washington was of the view that Communist Russia
now had become at least technically a beneficiary of FDR's $7 billion
fund "to aid the allies of democracy," while noting that Churchill had
immediately sprung to Stalin's defense. A minor problem existed here,
since Churchill had become a recipient of U.S. military assistance only
about three months before when the Administration's hotly-contested
Lend-Lease legislation was enacted. Therefore if this was now to become
a "Lenin-Lease" program, it suggested to some that anything Churchill
contributed to Stalin's cause might first have to be derived from Roosevelt,
in which case the U.S. would probably be the original source of all
"aid" supplied to Communist Russia. (17)
There is little doubt but that the involvement of Stalinist Russia
in the war in the summer of 1941 put a substantial crimp in the interventionist
propaganda line that the war was an unsullied conflict between "tyranny,"
represented by Germany, and "freedom," by its British adversaries. This
was essentially the contention of the American Anglophiles, which to
their embarrassment was now tirelessly mouthed by the Communists. It
no longer was an imperialist war, and global materialist factors quickly
vanished. Though Soviet Russia itself represented one of the most impressive
feats of imperialism, the word had not been applied to the USSR by Reds
or their allies since before Lenin's deaths Now that they were a party
to the conflict, all description of the war as a contest for mainly
tangible objectives ceased, and the taking on of the moralistic terminology
of the pro-British opinion-makers irked the latter substantially.
Time on July 7 in its article "The New Party Line" was anything but
conciliatory to the CPUSA, though in a parallel piece had kind words
to say about the sudden resurrection of Soviet diplomat Constantine
Oumansky to respectability. The magazine thought the CP leader William
Z. Foster grotesque in declaring that "A victory for Russia will enormously
strengthen democracy throughout the world," while concluding that a
Russian victory would primarily "strengthen U.S. Communists.'' (l8)
The job of Time and all the other agents of traditional British affiliations
and sympathies was to get on with a war in which the assistance of Russia
against Germany could be effected with as little reward or gain redounding
to the Russians at its conclusion as possible. So, even at this early
stage it was hands-across-the-Volga, but with a grimace of distaste.
The wartime partnership between the U.S.A. and the USSR lay more than
five months in the future, but its psychic consequences were apparent
from the moment people and politicians began to talk of supporting Stalin
in June 1941. Ultimately it gave this country the most uneasy and morally
disturbing experience it has ever known in the history of her foreign
affairs. With the exception of a few high-flying months in 1943 it must
have been apparent to the respective contingents of pro-Stalinists of
all social backgrounds and economic levels in this country that they
were engaged in the salesmanship of a doomed product.
The schizoids of Time, with their continuous rebuffs of and sneers
at the U.S. Communists (19) while glowing with favorable sentiment
toward the Russian Reds, were symptomatic of other sectors of bedeviled
American opinion makers. It was embarrassing to have to support the
Soviet Union and simultaneously to have to suffer local Communists.
From the propaganda point of view, what was to eventuate resulted in
a unique war for the United States. While Time presumed that there was
no need to bring the populace into the picture, the issue involved being
of stratospheric foreign affairs well beyond the limited capacities
of the common citizenry to understand, the other two newsweeklies made
a gesture at trying to determine what a sector of the general public
thought about it all, even if they overwhelmingly sought the views of
persons of some prominence while doing it. The First Polls of American
Political Personalities on the Pros and Cons of Aiding the Soviet Union
The United States News (it did not add World Report until 1950) exclaimed,
"With Germany and Russia at grips along a vast frontier, and with the
Administration's announcement that any opposition to Hitler, no matter
what its source, is of benefit to our own defense, this country faces
a new problem in international relations." It faced a new problem in
internal relations, too: What did the people in general think of this
loud huzza to Stalinist Russia from the Roosevelt regime? U.S. News
sought to find out at least partially by polling public figures on the
question "Should the U.S. aid Russia as a part of the American policy
of aiding Great Britain?"
Wealthy Joseph E. Davies, late ambassador to Soviet Russia and the
launching pad of more pro-Stalinist mischief than the entire Communist
apparati in the U.S.A. combined were ever to achieve, responded, "My
answer to your query is unqualifiedly, yes." Senator Gerald P. Nye,
famous for having conducted the investigation into the material profiteers
from World War I five years earlier, replied in the negative as abruptly
as Davies had in the positive: Nye believed that Roosevelt should "draw
the line" against this further involvement.
Rep. Melvin J. Maas (R.-Minn.), minority member of the House of Representatives
Committee on Naval Affairs, declared, "I do not believe that we should
aid Russia. When you help one burglar to beat another, you are bound
to be robbed yourself in the end anyway. Stalin and Communism are as
great a menace as Hitler and Nazism. A shortsighted policy of expediency
of the moment, such as aiding Stalin, may be the tragedy of tomorrow,
loosing a greater destructive force in the world than that which now
threatens us."
The prophetic quality of Rep. Maas's contribution was rarely bettered
by others, though it was something pro-Stalinist figures abominated,
and tried to make believe had never happened when the latter zealots
for the Soviet were circling about, a little over four years later,
trying to mobilize the land in the global Cold War against Stalin which
Rep. Maas accurately predicted.
But there were far more to be put on the record by the U.S. News reportorial
pollsters. Rep. A.J. May (D.-Ky.), Chairman of the House Military Affairs
Committee, sounded the case of the reluctantly repelled among the Administration's
supporters: "The complete crushing of Hitler and his regime is today's
paramount issue, and while the Communism of Russia is unthinkable and
the enemy of human liberty, it is a stealthy force not yet turned loose
in such vicious form and with such objectives of conquest as that of
Nazism under Hitler. Therefore I am persuaded that first problems should
come first, and we should aid Russia by aiding Britain."
Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, the Royal Oak, Michigan, Catholic priest
who had been a burr in Pres. Roosevelt's hide for eight years with his
radio orations and publications, confined himself to quoting Pope Pius
XI, " 'Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian
civilization may collaborate with it in any manner whatsoever,'" and
Cardinal Hinsley of England, " 'Britain must not, cannot, ally herself
to an atheistic dictatorship.' " Norman Thomas, four times Socialist
Party candidate for President of the U.S.A., but an implacable political
adversary of domestic and foreign Communism, expressed his sympathy
with the Russian people but demurred from coming to Stalin's succor:
"I want no American boy to die to decide which of two cruel and perfidious
dictators shall temporarily rule the European continent," Thomas forcefully
responded; "Therefore I want no attempt to send aid to the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics at great cost to ourselves."
But Rev. L.M. Birkhead, Director of the fiercely pro- interventionist
Friends of Democracy, thought the fear of future Communist advancement
a trivial thing: "The United States should give every possible aid to
Russia in the present crisis," while confidently predicting that after
the defeat of Hitler, "the threat of Communism" "would no longer exist,"
"for Russia will be exhausted by this war, win or lose." No one polled
the citizens of the twelve European capitals in the hands of the Red
Army on the breezy confidence of Rev. Birkhead four years later, nor
was it done while they still lay in the grips of Soviet Communism nearly
forty years later. But in 1941 one of the "friends" of "democracy,"
in the view of Rev. Birkhead and his front, was Stalinist Communism.
Some were evasive. Paul Hutchinson, editor of the very influential
Protestant weekly Christian Century, thought that aid should be extended
to Stalin only after an American defense force had been fully built
up, while Ralph Barton Perry, the Harvard University philosopher who
chaired the Harvard Group on National Defense, stepped aside and was
willing to let the Roosevelt regime decide on the matter. Another of
the formidable Eastern figures behind the Anglophile impulse, Frederic
R. Coudert, also evaded the question.
As far as its press survey, the U.S. News thought the nation's newspaper
editors supported the idea the U.S. should aid the USSR, but of the
14 papers it quoted, only the New York Times was for immediate and limitless
aid to the Reds regardless of consequences. It was noted however that
the majority of the papers had a very restrained admiration of the Bolshevik
regime, and tended to speak of helping "Russia," not its political masters.
(20)
Things moved so fast, and the overrunning of Soviet-held Poland and
entry into Western Russia by the German forces in the three weeks after
June 22, 1941 was so rapid, that hysteria among Stalin's friends in
the U.S.A. swelled dramatically, and the question of American aid to
Russian Communism in its travails grew more prominently among those
who charted public opinion. U.S. News continued its poll another week
in July, soliciting positive and negative responses from another collection
of the country's notables, which managed to explore other dimensions
of the issue and its likely results.
Speaking favorably in behalf of pro-Communist aid against Germany were
Rev. Dr. St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the U.S., Rt. Rev. Joseph L. O'Brien, Pastor of St. Patrick's
Church in Charleston, S.C., Clark L. Eichelberger, Acting Chairman of
the most powerful pro-war pressure group in the country, The Committee
to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Major General John F. O'Ryan,
Commander of the 27th Division in World War I and sponsor of the equally
interventionist Fight for Freedom Committee. In addition to these were
Rev. Dr. Henry W. Hobson, Bishop for Southern Ohio for the Protestant
Episcopal Church and Chairman of the FFF Committee, Rev. Owen A. Knox,
Chairman of the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, Estelle
M. Sternberger, Executive Director of World Peaceways, and James H.
Sheldon, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi
League, another deeply committed band of civilian warriors.
Rev. Dr. Tucker asserted, "It would seem to me a very wise and proper
thing to do. As a matter of fact, I think our Government has already
decided on this course. Father O'Brien was more explicit and saw principled
virtue in aiding Stalin: "In the choice between Germany and Russia,
the democracies are safe if they throw their full power and influence
on the side of Russian ignorance and superstition to crush German intellectual
materialism." Eichel- berger was strongly in the affirmative as well,
"Not because Communism is deserving of any sympathy, but because the
German attack upon Russia is part of the strategy of the Battle of Britain
and part of Germany's desire to dominate the world." The unwearied assertion
of the alleged German goal of world domination was a major aspect of
the propaganda of the Committee to Defend the Allies. Gen. O'Ryan enthusiastically
supported aid to Stalin, since the defeat of Hitler called for "the
expedient cooperation with any of his enemies who will hasten his defeat,"
an end which did not seem imminent, with Russian forces flying in retreat
in Eastern Europe.
Dr. Hobson backed aid to the Soviet for a different reason, fearful
of a quick German victory which he was sure would be followed by a westward
drive by Hitler against America. Rev. Knox's reason for backing aid
was the following: "If we believe that democracy must be maintained
by war and that England's fight is our fight, there would appear to
be little logic in doing anything less than giving Russia full support,"
while Estelle Sternberger's view was close to that of Rev. Dr. Tucker,
that the Roosevelt regime was obviously favoring this course anyway.
Sheldon not only vigorously supported aid to Stalin, claiming "the very
life of democracy is at stake," but used his response to cover a sideswiping
blow at two obviously opposed public figures, the eminent aviator Charles
A. Lindbergh and Senator Bennett Champ Clark (D.-Mo.), both of whom
he claimed had fallen into Hitler's "amazingly efficient propaganda
trap." Dr. Hobson had of course avoided all Stalinist propaganda traps.
J. Barnard Walter, Secretary of the Friends' General Conference, issued
an evasive generalization, declaring that "The one way the U.S. can
help is to propose the kind of peace in which all peoples can unite
with justice," a course a light year away from that which FDR was traveling.
The others were in the unqualified "no" category; Frederick J. Libby,
Executive Secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War,
John Haynes Holmes, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American
Civil Liberties Union, pastor of the Community Church in New York City
and vice chairman of the Keep America Out of War Congress, Brig. Gen.
Robert E. Wood, Chairman of the Board of Sears Roebuck Co., and Rev.
Edward Lodge Curran, Pastor of St. Stephen's Church in Brooklyn and
Director of the Anti-War Crusade of the International Catholic Truth
Society. Libby's flat negative was followed by extensive explanation:
Only a fleeting military expediency would prompt the United States to
support Churchill in the coalition he has formed with the Communist
dictator against the Nazi dictatorship. Such a tieup strips the last
shreds of idealism from the Allied side of the war. After pointing out
that Churchill had made an agreement to fight at Stalin's side until
Hitler was defeated, and that this meant that neither could negotiate
peace without the other's consent, Libby observed that "This means that
Stalin's war aims become Britain's war aims as well," concluding with
a harsh-tasting evaluation for interventionism: If America ever joined
this war now, we should be fighting, not for the "four freedoms," but
to restore Soviet tyranny over such little nations as Finland, Estonia,
Lithuania and Latvia. Only the strictest neutrality is possible now
for the United States, if it is to maintain its loyalty to democratic
ideals. The hypocrisies of the [First] World War should not be repeated.
Rev. Holmes, a front rank member of America's most influential opinion
makers, was no less vehement: No, the United States should not aid Russia.
Why should we use our wealth and power to make the world safe for Communism?
The idea that this is a war for democracy and civilization is now revealed
as the perfect sham it has always been. It is a war for imperialistic
power and for the mastery of the world by any nation that can get it.
General Wood, a founder of the most implacable anti-interventionist
group, the America First Committee (though he was not identified with
it in his statement), simply responded in a single sentence, "I do not
think the United States should aid Russia as part of the American policy
of aiding Great Britain," but Fr. Curran adamantly declared: "decent
nations who still enjoy the blessings of peace should lend no aid or
comfort to the brawl." He concluded: "The use of the Lend Lease law
in favor or Communistic Russia by the President of the United States
will generate the prompt and righteous indignation and opposition of
all Godfearing, liberty-loving American citizens who denounce both Nazi
Germany and Communist Russia as kindred branches of the same pagan stem."(21)
Four days earlier, Newsweek had added to the controversy by printing
the reactions of several opponents of aid or involvement, which were
as sharply hostile as those cited by U.S. News. Senator Burton K. Wheeler,
(D.-Mont.), one of the foremost opponents of the Roosevelt foreign policy
as it veered toward involvement in the war buildups in Europe and Asia
since 1937, remarked: "The death struggle between the armed Germany
and Russia is a death struggle between the armed might of Nazism and
Communism, and not an American war." This view was echoed by John T.
Flynn, veteran columnist for the liberal New Republic and feature writer
for Collier's magazine: "It never was our war, and it is less our war
now than ever." Senator Walter F. George (D.-Ga.), Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, expressed his "profound hope" that this
country will not become an active participant in the present war," a
hope already dashed by its considerable involvement indirectly as a
result of the Lend Lease Act of the previous March, though far from
the shooting stage, to be sure. In its roundup of no-help-to-Russia
notables, Newsweek cited Sen. Clark as asking a Brooklyn crowd rhetorically
if they could imagine "American boys being sent to their deaths singing
'Onward Christian Soldiers' under the bloody emblem of the Hammer and
Sickle." The redoubtable Sen. Robert A. Taft (R.-Ohio) was quoted in
the same collection of statements as seeing a positive aspect of allowing
Stalin to go down: "The victory of Communism in the world would be far
more dangerous to the United States than a victory of Fascism." Probably
the most influential of the anti-aid figures was former President Herbert
C. Hoover, and both Newsweek and Time published statements by him in
their July 7, 1941 issues. In the former, Hoover noted, "We now find
ourselves promising aid to Stalin and his militant Communist conspiracy
against the democratic ideals of the world," an allusion to the Administration's
sympathetic moves in that direction beginning with the publication of
the Welles statement. "Collaboration between Britain and Russia," concluded
Hoover, "makes the whole argument of our joining the war to bring the
four freedoms to mankind a Gargantuan jest."
Time frontpaged this observation by FDR's immediate predecessor in
the White House and added his famous warning, "If we go further [than
aid to Stalin] and join the war and we win, then we have won for Stalin
the grip of Communism on Russia, and more opportunity for it to extend
in the world."(23) It has been a rare week in the over 40 years
since Hoover uttered those words that the world has not seen them supported
by world events. Despite the prominence given to the views of public
figures hostile to additional involvement in the war via aid to Russia
in harmony with already announced British policy to go all out in this
direction, there were all kinds of indicators that the Administration
considered the spreading of the war advantageous to its own cautious
edging- into hostilities. At the end of July 1941, U.S. News told its
readers in tones just short of panic that "best informed U.S. officials"
were convinced the Germans would reach their objectives in Russia by
September 15.(24) To some this was over-kill in the propaganda
department, for should Hitler attain his goals that soon, then there
was little need to attempt aiding Stalin; the war in the East would
be over long before any assistance arrived at the war front. Others
were less disconcerted. Time, still looking for a formula by which it
could express its distaste for American Communists while hailing the
Russian variety, conceded that the Soviet Union was "the weaker of two
well-hated dictatorships," yet denounced Hitler's "crusade against Communism,"
and backed aiding Stalin in his struggle as a protection of "democracy."(25)
U.S. News also enjoyed the discomfiture the opening of the war between
the Germans and Russians caused to the Communist Party (CP) in America,
forcing it to abandon its nearly two-year position of neutrality overnight,
though there were signs that this abrupt turnaround was not unbearably
painful, and was being achieved with skill. As early as July 8, New
Masses, easily the most influential Communist journal in the U.S.A.,
printed a piece authored by Rep. Adolph A. Sabath (D.-Ill.) urging aid
to the Soviet as a matter of concern to U.S. defenses In general the
stress was upon this issue, and not that of making the Russian Communist
regime safe. From this point on it was a contest between the liberals
and Communists as to which could make the most ringing appeal to American
self-interest in saving Stalin.
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