Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (161 page)

“I think the Prime Minister’s plan not to tell the Germans is risky,” Stalin rejoined. To spring dismemberment on the Germans after surrender would put the political onus on the Allies. To include it in the formal surrender document would leave responsibility with the Germans, where it belonged.

Roosevelt sided with Stalin. “It will make it easier if it is in the terms and we tell them,” the president said.

Churchill wasn’t convinced. Telling the Germans in advance that their country would be divided up would make them fight harder. “Eisenhower doesn’t want
that,
” Churchill said. “We should not make this public.”

Roosevelt didn’t think the morale of the Germans was an issue at this late date. “My own feeling is that the people have suffered so much that they are beyond questions of psychological warfare.”

Stalin agreed with Churchill on the matter of current confidentiality. “These conditions for the moment are only for us. They should
not
be public until the time of the surrender.”

This settled the question for the time being. Roosevelt raised a related question, one he had spoken with Stalin about. Should France receive an occupation zone?

Churchill immediately said yes. “The French want a zone, and I am in favor of granting it to them,” he said. “I would gladly give them part of the British zone.”

Stalin objected, not only regarding the merits of France’s claim, which he continued to dismiss as lacking, but regarding the example it might set. “Would it not be precedent for other states?” More important: “Would it not mean that the French become a fourth power in the control machinery for Germany?” Such an arrangement, he said, was unacceptable.

It wasn’t unacceptable to Churchill. The French had occupied Germany earlier, after the First World War. “They do it very well, and would not be lenient,” the prime minister asserted. There was another reason for bringing the French in: “We want to see their might grow to help keep Germany down. I do not know how long the United States will remain with us in occupation.”

Stalin looked at Roosevelt. He knew, as Churchill knew, that the American role was the crux of the whole discussion of postwar Europe. Would the United States remain committed to European security? Everyone in the room followed Stalin’s gaze to Roosevelt. “I should like to know the President’s opinion,” Stalin said.

Roosevelt certainly had considered the matter, but he hadn’t yet articulated an answer. He spoke thoughtfully. “I can get the people and Congress to cooperate fully for peace,” he said, “but not to keep an army in Europe a long time. Two years would be the limit.”

N
EEDLESS TO SAY,
this forecast wasn’t included in the communiqué the three leaders issued at the midpoint of the conference. The fact of the Yalta meeting, like that of the previous top-level meetings, had been kept secret from the world. But with Germany on the ropes, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill felt confident enough of their security to issue an interim announcement that they and their advisers were currently meeting “in the Black Sea area.” The talks were progressing well. “There is complete agreement for joint military operations in the final phase of the war against Nazi Germany.” Discussions of postwar security arrangements had begun. “These discussions will cover joint plans for the occupation and control of Germany, the political and economic problems of liberated Europe, and proposals for the earliest possible establishment of a permanent international organization to maintain peace.”

Whether it was wise to raise expectations in this way soon provoked debate. But at the time the communiqué fairly reflected the mood at Yalta. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill had fought through hard times together, and their goal was in sight. They had taken the measure of one another and developed a reciprocal respect. Each put his own country’s interests first, but this was as it should be. Nor was it an impediment to peace, for the interests of the United States, Russia, and Britain overlapped sufficiently to allow the three governments to cooperate in the promotion of peace and security after the war. So it appeared, at any rate, at the beginning of February 1945.

The good feeling gave rise to a round of toasts at a dinner hosted by Stalin on February 8. The marshal—whom Bohlen characterized as “in an excellent humor and even in high spirits”—raised his glass to Churchill as “the bravest governmental figure in the world.” The world owed the prime minister a debt. “Due in large measure to Mr. Churchill’s courage and staunchness, England, when she stood alone, had divided the might of Hitlerite Germany when the rest of Europe was falling flat on its face.”

Churchill responded in kind. He praised Marshal Stalin as “the mighty leader of a mighty country, which had taken the full shock of the German war machine, had broken its back, and had driven the tyrants from her soil.” Looking ahead, Churchill prophesied, “In peace no less than in war, Marshal Stalin will continue to lead his people from success to success.”

Stalin then toasted Roosevelt. Stalin said he himself and Churchill had had relatively simple decisions to make during the war. They had been fighting for their countries’ existence. “But there was a third man, whose country had not been seriously threatened with invasion, but who had had perhaps a broader conception of national interest, and even though his country was not directly imperiled had been the chief forger of the instruments which had led to the mobilization of the world against Hitler.”

Roosevelt replied that the atmosphere at this dinner was “that of a family,” and he believed the same could be said of relations among their countries. “Great changes have occurred in the world during the last three years, and greater changes are to come…. Fifty years ago there were vast areas of the world where people had little opportunity and no hope, but much has been accomplished…. Our objectives here are to give to every man, woman, and child on earth the possibility of security and well-being.”

Stalin raised his glass again. He said it was not so difficult to maintain unity during wartime. The joint desire to defeat the common enemy held the alliance together. “The difficult task comes after the war, when diverse interests tend to divide the allies.” But he thought this alliance would meet the test of peace. “It is our duty to see that it does…. Our relations in peacetime should be as strong as they have been in war.”

Churchill concluded with his trademark orotundity. “We are all standing on the crest of a hill with the glories of future possibilities stretching before us,” the prime minister said. “In the modern world the function of leadership is to lead the people out from the forests onto the broad sunlit plains of peace and happiness. This prize is nearer our grasp than anytime before in history, and it would be a tragedy for which history would never forgive us if we let this prize slip from our grasp.”

T
HE FRIENDLY FEELING
diminished a bit when the discussion turned to two especially sensitive subjects. Stalin insisted that the Ukraine, White Russia (Byelorussia), and perhaps Lithuania be seated in the United Nations general assembly. He didn’t pretend that these Soviet “republics” were independent of Moscow; he simply wanted to balance what he presumed would be the pro-American votes of several Latin American countries and probably the Philippines and the similarly pro-British votes of Canada, Australia, and other members of the Commonwealth. Roosevelt wasn’t inclined to deny Stalin’s demand, in part because he appreciated its rationale, in part because he didn’t want to spoil the good mood at Yalta, and in part because he understood that votes in the assembly wouldn’t really matter.

Yet he also understood that explaining any such concession, once he got home, wouldn’t be easy. Roosevelt wanted to have things both ways in the United Nations: to keep power in the hands of the Big Four but to create the appearance of equal representation, at least in the general assembly. To rig the voting in the assembly would seem a subversion of international equality.

The president tried to put the issue off until a later date. He launched into a rambling account of the evolution of the British Commonwealth and of the various ways of measuring size and influence in international affairs. But his filibuster failed with Stalin, who patiently heard the president out and then reiterated his original position. The Kremlin eventually got two extra votes in the assembly—not three: Roosevelt did manage to remove Lithuania from the list. What he got in return was Stalin’s agreement to support some extra votes for the United States in the assembly, if Washington desired them.

As ticklish as the issue of representation seemed at Yalta, its ramifications were nothing next to those involving Poland. The Polish question had emerged at Teheran but been filed among matters not currently urgent. By Yalta it had become most urgent. The Red Army had liberated Poland from Nazi control; the question now was whether Poland would be liberated from the Red Army. Most Poles demanded that it be, with ample reason. The Soviet government was denying responsibility for the 1940 massacre in the Katyn Forest of many thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians, whose bodies had been found by the Germans in 1943. The Kremlin claimed that the blood was on German hands (as the Kremlin would continue to claim for nearly fifty years). But many Poles knew that the Soviets had done the killing. They also knew that the Red Army had cynically sat across the Vistula River while the Nazis crushed an uprising of resistance forces in Warsaw during the summer of 1944. This time the Polish deaths were counted in the many scores of thousands, and the Russian role, albeit passive, was undeniable.

Two groups of Poles claimed to represent the reviving Polish nation. The self-appointed Polish government in exile in London was bitterly anti-Soviet; the Kremlin-appointed provisional government in Lublin was predictably pro-Soviet. The London Poles had the backing of the British and American governments and the impassioned support of Americans of Polish descent. The Lublin Poles enjoyed the endorsement of Stalin and the Red Army.

The immediate Polish problem at Yalta for Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill was to reconcile the two sets of claimants. The larger problem was to balance the desire of the United States and Britain to see democracy planted in Poland against the demand of the Soviet Union to secure its borders against future attack.

“I come from a great distance and therefore have the advantage of a more distant point of view of the problem,” Roosevelt said, in raising the Polish question. But his was not a disinterested view, as he readily admitted. “There are six or seven million Poles in the United States.” Nearly all of them had strong views on the Polish question. “Opinion in the United States is against recognition of the Lublin government, on the ground that it represents a small portion of the Polish people. What people want is the creation of a government of national unity, to settle their internal differences.” Roosevelt suggested the establishment of a council of representatives from the London and Lublin groups, which would oversee the creation of a permanent government and the holding of elections. Yet the president assured Stalin he understood Russia’s security concerns. “We want a Poland that will be thoroughly friendly to the Soviet Union for years to come. This is essential.”

Churchill joined Roosevelt in advocating a government of national unity. The prime minister reminded Stalin that for the British Poland was a question of honor. Britain had gone to war with Germany over Poland; Britain could accept no less than a postwar Poland that was “free and independent.”

Stalin responded that for Russia Poland was “not only a question of honor but also of security.” For centuries Poland had been a corridor of attack on Russia. “During the last thirty years our German enemy has passed through this corridor twice. This is because Poland was weak.” Stalin proposed that Poland be made strong. “It is not only a question of honor but of life and death for the Soviet state.” Roosevelt and Churchill had said they wanted a national unity government for Poland; Stalin doubted that this could be established. The London Poles called the Lublin group “bandits” and “traitors,” and “naturally the Lublin government paid the same coin to the London government.” Stalin preferred the Lublin group on grounds of their service to the Allied war effort. “As a military man, I must say what I demand of a country liberated by the Red Army. First, there should be peace and quiet in the wake of the army. The men of the Red Army are indifferent as to what kind of government there is in Poland, but they do want one that will maintain order behind the lines.” The Lublin group did that. As for the Londoners, they called themselves resistance fighters, but what they resisted was Poland’s liberation. “We have had nothing good from them, but much evil. So far their agents have killed 212 Russian military men. They have attacked supply bases for arms…. If they attack the Red Army any more, they will be shot.”