Roosevelt (74 page)

With the second front settled, the President decided on a personal plea to Stalin about Poland, but despite his efforts to keep some distance from Churchill, he felt that he had not established personal rapport with Stalin. The Marshal still seemed stiff and unsmiling; there seemed nothing human to get hold of. Roosevelt told Frances Perkins later, doubtless with some embellishment, that he decided to do something desperate.

“On my way to the conference room that morning we caught up with Winston and I just had a moment to say to him, ‘Winston, I hope you won’t be sore at me for what I am going to do.’

“Winston just shifted his cigar and grunted. I must say he behaved very decently afterward.

“I began almost as soon as we got into the conference room. I talked privately with Stalin. I didn’t say anything that I hadn’t said before, but it appeared quite chummy and confidential, enough so that the other Russians joined us to listen. Still no smile.

“Then I said, lifting my hand to cover a whisper (which of course had to be interpreted), ‘Winston is cranky this morning, he got up on the wrong side of the bed.’

“A vague smile passed over Stalin’s eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. As soon as I sat down at the conference table, I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits. It began to register with Stalin. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally Stalin broke out into a deep, heavy guffaw, and for the first time in three days I saw light. I kept it up until Stalin was laughing with me, and it was then that I called him ‘Uncle Joe.’ He would have thought me fresh the day before, but that day he laughed and came over and shook my hand.

“From that time on our relations were personal, and Stalin himself indulged in an occasional witticism. The ice was broken and we talked like men and brothers.”

Less than three hours later Stalin visited the President privately. He had asked the Marshal to come, Roosevelt said, because he wanted to discuss a matter briefly and frankly. It referred to internal American politics. While personally he did not wish to run again in 1944, if the war was still in progress he might have to.

There were in the United States from six to seven million Americans of Polish extraction, he went on, and as a practical man he did not wish to lose their votes. He personally agreed with the Marshal about the need to restore the Polish state, but he would like to see the eastern border moved farther to the west and the western border moved even to the Oder. He hoped, however, that the Marshal would understand that for election reasons he could not participate in any decision at Teheran or even next winter on the subject and he could not publicly take part in any such arrangement at the present time.

Stalin answered that now that the President had explained, he understood.

Roosevelt pushed his luck a bit further. There were many Americans of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian origin, too, he said. Not that the United States would go to war over the question when the Russians reoccupied the three Baltic Republics! But to Americans the big issue would be the right of self-determination. He was personally confident that the people would vote to join the Soviet Union.

Stalin: The three Baltic republics had no autonomy under the last czar, who had been an ally of Britain and the United States, and no one had raised the question of public opinion then and he did not see why it was being raised now.

Roosevelt: The truth of the matter is that the public neither knows nor understands.

Stalin: They should be informed and some propaganda work should be done.

Stalin’s “understanding” about Poland seemed to have evaporated by evening. When the President expressed hope that Moscow would proceed to re-establish relations with the Polish government-in-exile, Stalin retorted that the London group was working with the Germans and killing partisans. Of course he wanted friendly relations with Poland—Soviet security was involved—but this was possible only with an anti-Nazi government. Poland could be expanded only at the expense of Germany. The agreement of 1939 had returned Ukrainian soil to the Ukraine and White Russian soil to White Russia.

“The Ribbentrop-Molotov line,” Eden put in.

“Call it what you will,” Stalin replied, “we still consider it just and right.” The three men huddled around State Department maps of central Europe. Of one ethnographic map Stalin remarked contemptuously that Polish statistics must have been used. Discussion went on; Stalin would not budge. By the end of the day—which was the end of the conference—there was no agreement, but there was implicit acceptance of Stalin’s demands on borders.

“We came here with hope and determination,” the joint Teheran communiqué proclaimed. “We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose.” The next morning, December 3, the President flew back to Cairo to meet with Churchill and the Combined Chiefs for the final decisions on grand strategy for 1944.

The most pressing question was Turkey’s entrance into the war. The President dispatched John Boettiger to escort President Ismet Inönü to Cairo for final discussions. Over the next three days Roosevelt and Churchill mobilized their combined persuasiveness—along with clear hints about postwar arrangements—to talk Inönü and his colleagues into the war. The Turks were polite, co-operative, concerned, and stubborn. They wanted a commitment of military aid that the straitened Anglo-Americans could not make. So anguished was Inönü as he faced his dilemma that Roosevelt had to admit that if he were a Turk he would need more assurances than were being offered; naturally, he conceded to Inönü, the Turks did not want to be caught with their pants down. Inönü would not make the pledge. Roosevelt seemed unperturbed by the outcome; Churchill gamely swallowed one more setback to his military ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean.

On a far more important matter, however, the Prime Minister won a crucial victory. In Cairo he immediately set himself to induce Roosevelt to renege
on his promise to Chiang of a big operation in the Andamans. Churchill had powerful arguments on his side. Stalin’s promise to fight Japan after Germany posed the likelihood of a better continental land route into Japan. Operations in the central and Southwest Pacific were opening up other avenues to the enemy homeland. The decision for
OVERLORD
and
ANVIL
(the attack through southern France) in May escalated European needs, especially for landing ships. Mountbatten was asking for a much bigger landing force for Southeast Asia than had been expected.

Churchill could see that things were different in this second Cairo meeting. Chiang was no longer present; the crucial decision had been made in Moscow for the second front. Stilwell was in Cairo to speak for Chiang, but “Vinegar Joe” felt at sea amid the big-power politics going on by the Nile.

At first Roosevelt was dead set against withdrawing the promise to Chiang. They had a moral obligation to do something for China, he told Churchill and the Combined Chiefs. Too, he was dubious about putting all the eggs into one basket. Suppose Stalin was unable or unwilling to make good his word; Washington might find that it had forfeited Chinese support without obtaining commensurate help from the Russians. His Joint Chiefs of Staff backed the President; they feared especially that a cancellation of the Andamans thrust would give Chiang an excuse to renege on his promises of land operations and would lead in turn to Chinese withdrawal from the war. Admiral King, feeling especially strongly on the matter, managed to scrounge up enough landing ships for Europe to leave a goodly supply for the Andamans.

But Churchill and his chiefs were determined, and after a day or two of resistance Roosevelt backed down, with the glum acquiescence of most of his chiefs. The President’s reasons were partly military: under the Europe First doctrine
OVERLORD
and
ANVIL
had to be as secure as possible. Partly they were personal: at Teheran he had sided with Stalin over Churchill on
OVERLORD
and
ANVIL;
now he must favor Churchill over Chiang. And there were deepening fears on the part of almost all at Cairo about China’s staying power, with or without the Andaman operation.

“I’ve been as stubborn as a mule for four days but we can’t get anywhere,” Roosevelt told Stilwell, “and it won’t do for a conference to end that way. The British just won’t do the operation and I can’t get them to agree to it.” When Stilwell asked for political guidance on China, the President told anecdotes and mentioned postwar plans. To Chiang, Roosevelt sent a terse wire canceling the Andamans and proposing lesser alternatives. The Generalissimo’s answer was as gloomy as feared. The results of the first Cairo Conference had electrified the Chinese people, he cabled. Now this decision at Cairo would dishearten the nation to the point that it might not hold out much longer. The Japanese would deduce that under the Europe First policy the United Nations were now abandoning China to the mercies of Japan’s mechanized air and land forces. Yet Chiang seemed to acquiesce in the decision and seemed, indeed, more concerned about his economic than his military problems. He asked simply in his reply for more planes—and for a billion dollars in gold.

One other matter remained to be resolved at Cairo: the command of
OVERLORD.
This was Roosevelt’s decision alone. It had long been expected that Marshall would command the climactic invasion he had so long argued for, and that Eisenhower would return to Washington and take over his post. But Roosevelt could not quite bring himself to make the appointment, even though most of his advisers favored it and Marshall clearly, though diffidently, wanted it. “I feel I could not sleep at night with you out of the country,” Roosevelt told his Chief of Staff. It was one of the hardest decisions Roosevelt ever made, Sherwood felt.

Churchill insisted toward the end of the second Cairo Conference that he and Roosevelt motor out and see the Sphinx. For once silent, the two men stared at the brooding features as the evening shadows fell. It was symbolic that Roosevelt thus ended in the company of Churchill alone this year of conferences, just as they
had started it together. The two men had had their differences, but in the end they had stood together, even on
OVERLORD.
Churchill had spent week after week in America, day after day with the President. He had addressed Congress again, attended Cabinet meetings, presided alone—with the permission of the President, who had been in Hyde Park at the time—over a meeting of American and British military and diplomatic chiefs in the White House. He had made no secret—even to Stalin—of his satisfaction at being “half American.” He was more papal than the Pope; driving with Roosevelt and his party through Frederick, Maryland, one day he had noticed a sign advertising Barbara Fritchie candy, and while Roosevelt and Hopkins listened in astonishment, he recited a score or so of lines from Whittier’s famous poem—“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head….”

Someday there would be a price to pay for the exuberant friendship of the two men. Churchill turned a myopic eye to the teeming masses in Asia; among intimates he could even worry about the Russians breeding like flies and overwhelming the white population of Britain and the United States. His attitude toward China was deeply affected by racial feeling. But in this moment Anglo-American co-operation was at a peak.

Roosevelt left Cairo for home on December 7. He stopped in Tunis, where he greeted Eisenhower with a cheery “Well, Ike, you’d better start packing.” He touched down in Malta, where he presented a scroll to the islanders for their heroism. He reviewed troops in Sicily. Then the long return trip on the
Iowa
and a greeting at the south entrance to the White House by the assembled Cabinet. Rosenman had never seen the President look so satisfied and pleased. He also looked tired, but robust and confident. To Stimson, the President said: “I have…brought Overlord back to you safe and sound on the ways for accomplishment.”

It was Christmastime. The President wanted to be in his own home; for the first time since he became President he celebrated Christmas at Hyde Park. On Christmas Eve he broadcast a report to the people from his own fireside. Mainly it was a long, general, and optimistic survey of the fighting fronts and of his conferences abroad. He announced his selection of Eisenhower to lead an attack from “other points of the compass” along with the stern Russian offensive in the east and the relentless Allied pressure in the south. As for Stalin: “…I may say that I ‘got along fine’ with Marshal Stalin. He is a man who combines a tremendous relentless determination with a stalwart good humor. I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed.”

The next day he presided over a family reunion in the old mansion. Seven of his fourteen grandchildren were there, with their mothers. The President watched as gifts were unwrapped, carved the family turkey, and, as always, read Dickens’s
Christmas Carol,
skillfully condensing it to hold the attention of the young.

The President was not, however, in a wholly festive mood. Shortly before Christmas he wrote Frankfurter: “…I realized on the trip what a dreadful lack of civilization is shown in the countries I visited—but on returning I am not wholly certain of the degree of civilization in
terra Americana.”

T
HE PRESIDENT HAD RETURNED
home from Teheran to an embittered capital. All the old simmering issues seemed to be coming to a boil. Joseph Guffey, the aged New Deal war horse, rose in the Senate to castigate the “unholy alliance” of Old Guard Republicans under Joe Pew and of Southern Democrats under Harry Byrd. In reply, his foes threatened to organize a new Southern party that would hold a balance of power between the two major parties. In the House, John Rankin, of Mississippi, pointedly read off the Jewish names of New Yorkers supporting a soldiers’-vote bill. Secretary of Interior Ickes charged over a nationwide radio hookup that the “four lords of the press”—Hearst, McCormick, and the two Pattersons—hated Roosevelt and Stalin so bitterly that they would rather see Hitler win the war than be defeated by “a leadership shared in by the great Russian and the great American.”