World War II Behind Closed Doors (20 page)

In April 1942, shortly after Roosevelt had rejected Churchill's suggestion that Stalin should be granted his wish for the 1941 borders, a young naval officer called George Elsey arrived in Washington to work in the map room at the White House at the very heart of American power. His personal experience sheds considerable light on how Roosevelt's White House operated, and offers an insight into just how the American President thought he could deal with Stalin. Whilst Elsey felt that the White House was without question ‘a very exciting place to be’, he did rapidly discover some surprising truths about the way the American system of supreme command functioned. ‘Franklin Roosevelt had some strange habits’, he says.
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‘He would send messages out
through one department and have the replies come back through another department because he didn't want anyone else to have a complete file on his communications with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for example…. It was a trait of his that he didn't want anybody else to know the whole story on anything’. Through his own experience in the White House, Elsey came to the conclusion that the way Roosevelt often kept his own State Department in the dark was ‘disgraceful’ and led to gross administrative confusion. It was a leadership technique that the President carried over into his personal dealings with his staff: ‘Because Roosevelt didn't ever take people fully into his confidence, it left his subordinates always uncertain of where they stood. They had to be loyal to him, but they didn't really know how loyal he was to them. This was part of his behavioural pattern, which is hard to understand and hard to excuse except it was the nature of the man’.

Elsey's judgement is confirmed by many of those who worked for Roosevelt in more senior positions. Even a man like Henry Morgenthau, who had been a neighbour of Roosevelt's in New York State and had served him faithfully since 1933, found that he was often out of the decision-making loop – even though he was Secretary of the Treasury. Roosevelt once memorably said to him, that as President he preferred not to ‘let his left hand’ know what his ‘right hand was doing’.
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It is an important insight into Roosevelt's technique of leadership, and one that was to have considerable consequences when it came to the attempt to create a coherent policy for dealing with Stalin.

But this was not the only insight into Roosevelt's character and method of governance that Elsey gained in the White House map room. He also learnt about the limitless self-confidence of his new boss: ‘When I was assigned to the map room in April 1942 I was frequently on a night watch, and I was alone and there wasn't much going on. [So] I would dig back into the files to see what had happened before I got there. And there were some perfectly fascinating letters and cables, copies of cables that had been exchanged with the Prime Minister’. Elsey was struck by one cable in particular that he uncovered on one of his night-time searches.
It was a confidential note sent from Roosevelt to Churchill on 18 March 1942. ‘I know you will not mind my being brutally frank’, wrote Roosevelt, ‘when I tell you I think I can personally handle Stalin better than your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so’.
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‘That was a favourite word of Roosevelt's’, says Elsey. ‘I can “handle” people. I can “handle” something. And I thought this was a pretty astonishing thing for Roosevelt to be saying to the Prime Minister. But it stuck. That phrase stuck in my mind and I kept thinking of it as the war went on. Roosevelt was always thinking he could “handle” people, no matter who or what it was. He had that self-confidence that he would be in control no matter who or where… that he would pull through as the top dog’.

Roosevelt was about to demonstrate in practical terms just how he believed he could ‘handle’ the Soviet leadership – with near disastrous consequences for the alliance. The occasion was the visit of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, in May 1942. This was the first contact at this level between the USA and the Soviet Union, and came at a time of great tension in the relationship between the Allies.

On his way to America Molotov stopped off in London, where he met Churchill and other leading figures in the British government. It was a difficult encounter. The Prime Minister wanted to sign a formal treaty of alliance with the Soviet Union to replace the existing agreement; but there were seemingly insurmountable problems caused by the two familiar fissures between the British and the Soviets – the question of the second front and the even more intractable issue of the drawing of post-war borders. The British knew, for example, that the Soviet Union was insistent not just on consolidating its gains in eastern Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but on annexing the Baltic states at the end of the war as well.

Churchill could offer Molotov little hope on either of these two major issues. This meant that the meetings, which began on 21 May, were frosty. Churchill sought to emphasize the immense
problems the British faced in mounting a second front, saying that he did not think it would be possible to launch a successful large-scale crossing of the Channel until 1943. Whilst he agreed in principle to an invasion of France, there remained the question of when that operation was practicable. And significantly, when the British stuck consistently to their position and refused to give ground, Molotov moved his. After consultation with Moscow, on the 26th the Soviet Foreign Minister agreed to sign a treaty that contained no mention of post-war boundaries or the date of the second front.

With the straightforward British position fresh in his mind, Molotov arrived in Washington on 29 May. During his stay he lodged in the White House. It was an extraordinary moment in history. Here was a former Bolshevik terrorist, a man utterly opposed to the values of the United States – an individual, moreover, who had personally conducted negotiations with Hitler and Ribbentrop – staying in one of the most potent symbols of a system he despised.

The incongruous nature of the occasion was symbolized by two events on the first day of his visit. Both of them occurred in Molotov's bedroom in the East Wing of the White House. First, when a White House valet unpacked the Soviet Foreign Minister's suitcase he found inside it ‘a large chunk of black bread, a roll of sausage and a pistol’. These were, presumably, the essential travelling requirements of his terrorist days. Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's wife, later wrote that: ‘The Secret Servicemen did not like visitors with pistols but on this occasion nothing was said. Mr Molotov evidently thought he might have to defend himself and also he might be hungry’.
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The second significant moment occurred after eleven o'clock that evening, when there was a knock at Molotov's door. He opened it to find Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's special adviser, standing outside.

‘Can I say a few words to you, Mr Molotov, before the meeting tomorrow?’ asked Hopkins.

Molotov asked him inside.

‘I can tell you that President Roosevelt is a very strong supporter of a Second Front in 1942’, Hopkins told him. ‘But the American Generals don't see the real necessity of the Second Front. Because of this I recommend you paint a harrowing picture of the situation in the Soviet Union so that the American Generals realize the seriousness of the situation’.
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Molotov replied that the situation on the front line was genuinely serious, so, by implication, he would have no difficulty in doing as Hopkins suggested. Hopkins also recommended that Molotov find time to speak to Roosevelt half an hour before the meeting and inform the American President that he planned to take Hopkins' advice. This Molotov also agreed to do.

This exchange is not mentioned in any of the American minutes of the conference; and the content of the meeting was clearly intended to stay secret. Hopkins, in a long memo about Molotov's visit,
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mentions only in passing that the Soviet Foreign Minister was ‘put up at the room across the way’ from him in the White House and that ‘I went in for a moment to talk to him’ – with no reference to his mission from the President.

What this bizarre nocturnal meeting in the White House offers us, of course, is the chance to see at close quarters how Roosevelt attempted to ‘handle’ people. (Given how close Hopkins was to Roosevelt, and that Hopkins mentioned specifically in the conversation that Molotov should approach the President before the scheduled meeting, it is clear that Roosevelt knew just what was going on.) By sending Hopkins on his own to Molotov's room, Roosevelt was able to accomplish a number of political objectives. First, he could give the impression that he was secretly on Molotov's side over the important issue of the second front and was battling against the reticence of recalcitrant generals, but more than that, he could show that he wanted to be a friend and confidant of the Soviet leadership. And, most crucially of all, he could accomplish all this in a completely deniable way.

In fact, this method of ‘handling’ people seems to have been not uncommon in the White House. Less than a month later, on 21 June, when the British were in Washington, General Sir Alan
Brooke (later Lord Alanbrooke), Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was surprised when Hopkins asked him to come to his bedroom for a chat. ‘We went to his room’, Brooke recorded in his diary, ‘where we sat on the edge of his bed looking at his shaving brush and tooth brush, whilst he let me into some of the President's inner thoughts! I mention this meeting as it was so typical of this strange man with no official position, not even an office in the White House, and yet one of the most influential men with the President’.
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As for Molotov, he appears to have taken the advice of the ‘strange’ Harry Hopkins at the crucial meeting on 30 May. In the presence not just of President Roosevelt but also of General George Marshall, the powerful Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Molotov outlined the difficulties the Soviet Union faced, going so far as to say that if the second front was delayed until 1943, it was possible that by then ‘Hitler might be the undisputed master of Europe’ and, by implication, the Soviet Union defeated. Molotov said he thought it only ‘right’ to ‘look at the darker side of the picture’. He went on to state that he ‘requested a straight answer’ to his question about whether the Americans were prepared to establish a second front. And according to the American minutes of the meeting, a straight answer was just what he got: ‘The President then put to General Marshall the query whether developments were clear enough so that we could say to Mr Stalin that we are preparing a Second Front. “Yes,” replied the General. The President then authorized Mr Molotov to inform Mr Stalin that we expect the formation of a Second Front this year’.
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It was obvious to all concerned how desperately the Soviets wanted the British and Americans to mount a cross-Channel operation in order to draw off an anticipated forty German divisions from the Eastern Front. And here was President Roosevelt making a commitment that the British Prime Minister had taken great care not to make. What is also interesting, given the importance of this one exchange, is that the recently released Russian minutes of the meeting
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do not contain the key sentence that ‘The President then authorized Mr Molotov to inform Mr Stalin that we expect
the formation of a Second Front this year’, although they do show that General Marshall said that it was ‘possible’ that a second front could be opened in 1942 and that the Americans were doing ‘everything possible’ to achieve this end.

But whilst the Russian minutes of the meeting seem to show Roosevelt and Marshall offering less of a commitment than did the American record of the encounter, the subsequent wrangling over the wording of the communiqué to be released at the end of Molotov's visit indicates that the American records contain much of the real spirit of the discussion. When General Marshall saw the proposed statement, with explicit reference to a second front in 1942, he objected to it. He ‘urged that there be no reference to 1942’
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but Roosevelt insisted that form of words be included in order to please the Soviets.

Perhaps the possibility that the Soviets might try to extricate themselves from the war loomed large in Roosevelt's mind, and this optimistic statement about the second front was a way of offering another reason for the Red Army to keep slugging it out with the Germans. Perhaps he even – but this is extremely unlikely given the military advice he was receiving – thought that the Americans could actually deliver a second front in 1942. But whatever the exact motives behind Roosevelt's actions – and typically he never explained to anyone why he insisted on the reference to ‘1942’ staying in the communiqué – this was, in a profound sense, not the right way to ‘handle’ Stalin. The Soviet leader was a man who wanted actions to follow words. Roosevelt had utterly misjudged him.

Molotov returned to Moscow with a final communiqué containing the sentence: ‘In the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in 1942’. When Churchill learnt of this apparent commitment he was at pains once more to point out to Molotov that this statement represented only a hoped for possibility, but nonetheless Molotov presented the statement to the Politburo as it stood. And the plain meaning of the words, as far as the Soviet leadership read them, was clear – the Western Allies
had promised an invasion of northern France in 1942 in order to relieve the dire pressure on the Eastern Front.

It is almost impossible to underestimate the importance of this moment in the history of the Alliance. Stalin already suspected that the Western Allies were standing by on the periphery of the conflict, whilst the Soviets and the Germans bled each other to death. Now, almost worse, Stalin would come to believe that Roosevelt had added outright duplicity to the mix. When the much longed for second front was not launched in 1942, Stalin would come to believe he had been betrayed. And if he could not trust the Western Allies on this most fundamental issue, how could he trust them at all?