On a recent Obama thread, I went into the record of previous Democratic presidents, and my doing so prompted some serious disagreement from others. One objection was raised to what I had to say about FDR. I decided to continue that discussion here rather than take that other thread too far off-topic.

In 1943, William C. Bullitt - an official in the administration of and close confidante of President Roosevelt - wrote an urgent letter to the President warning of Joseph Stalin's intentions and designs. FDR dismissed these concerns, saying, "I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace". (link) Keep in mind, this was not a public statement by the President, but a private communication to a trusted adivser.

1. Was FDR really so clueless as to actually believe what he was saying? Or did he have some other motive that he didn't want to share with Bullitt for some reason?

2. What effect did this stance of his have on the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, and ultimately, to the postwar power of the Soviet Union?

He probably did believe it, and that is unfortunate, but it is unreasonable to call him 'clueless'; we have this bad habit of seeing things through 20/20 hindsight and judging with the knowledge of today. In 1943 the only completely unjustifiable aggressive act the USSR had taken was against Finland, and very little territory had been annexed, only a small strip of land and a few islands. Thats not to justify the attack, but to place it into context. The moves into Poland in 1939 and the Baltic states were justified by the USSR as being the reclamation of territory lost to them in war only a dozen years earlier, by Poland. Again, not to justify the act, but contextually, it was (mostly) recently Russian land which had taken by force.

Furthermore, what did the west know about the excesses of the regime? Stalin was a brutal dictator to be sure, that was known, and his show trials for political enemies were also well known. But the mass purges of the CPSU were almost entire;ly unknown, and though the west knew about the great famine in the 1920s, they took the view of most US journalists at the time, that it was a natural disaster. The link between the forced collectivisation and the famine was not widely known until post-war.

Stalin was seen by the west as a dictator along the lines of Franco: unpleasant, dictatorial, and with skeletons in his closet, and having killed more than a few people, but no Hitler.



Little to none. There were those in his administration who wanted to press the Soviets for more, treat them harsher, but everbody knew that the USSR was doing ALL the heavy lifting against Nazi Germany, and bore the vast brunt of the war, and the war damages, upon themselves. Stalin knew that too, and was a canny negotiator. besides, what could FDR have done, exhort guarentees? He did that, some Stalin obeyed, some he ignored (Like the Polish government promise). Churchill had far more sucess in dealing with Stalin, their negotiations Stalin almost always stuck to.

As long as the defeat of nazi germany and Imperial japan was the top priority, the West didn't have a lot of negotiating room or leverage with Stalin. Even lend lease was only helpful to the USSR, not critical. By 1943 the USSR was requesting 'essential' supplies like gold braid for uniforms and pure silver for medals through lend-lease.

That's not to defend FDR necessarily, after all he was still verywrong about Stalin as it turned out, just to point out that his rightness or wrongness on the issue wouldn't have changed much in the end.

Actually I am going to have to disagree with you Vermillion. FDR was fairly clueless when it came to Stalin's true intentons while Churchill knew full well what Stalin had in mind. This makes sense as GB had an immense amount of experience dealing with Russia in foreign affairs for centuries. He knew how much the Russians have long wanted the Balkans and were waiting for the opportunity to expand their territory.

During WW2, Stalin was getting angry at his allies for delaying the invasion of France. He wanted a second front opened up so that it would ease his fight in the East. He wanted D-Day to be the #1 priority. But Churchill had other ideas in mind. He wanted to attack North Africa first and then attack "the soft underbelly of Europe" which included Italy, Greece, and the Balkans. This is what Churchill wanted to be the UK and US's main priority not only to stop Hitler but to stop Stalin.

The truth is that Roosevelt went behind Churchill's back to talk directly with Stalin and basically sold him out. Of course hindsight is 20/20 but Roosevelt had absolutely no idea what a man like Stalin was capable of. But Churchill knew and unfortunately he was not listened to. I think Roosevelt did not have the foresight to see what America's role in the post-war era would be and thus cared little about the balance of power shift that would occur.

1. Was FDR really so clueless as to actually believe what he was saying? Or did he have some other motive that he didn't want to share with Bullitt for some reason?

I think this was Dr. Win the War being Dr. Win the War. In 1943 the United States saved american lives by supplying the Soviet Union with whatever it could. The United States and the USSR were not deluded into thinking they were other than friends of necessity. Leder points out that the United States did not give Stalin everything it wants and took combat first to North Africa not opening Stalin's desired front on the western border of Germany until June of 1944. By that point it could easily be seen as an attempt to stop the amount of territory that the USSR was going to occupy before the end of the war.

FDR felt that he could handle Stalin and that he had some personal rapport with him. FDR left everyone always thinking that they had gotten what they wanted. He was a consummate politician in this since and that is not a full compliment.

2. What effect did this stance of his have on the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, and ultimately, to the postwar power of the Soviet Union?

The criticism of Democratic foreign policy has to have some limits. We have one poster challenging critics of American foreign policy by asking if you speak German or Japanese. I believe the entire military effort in WWII was very effectively carried out. Hitler and Tojo and fascism were removed from the equation. What was left was the Soviet Uion creating a sphere of interest in countries that we had very little economic stake in and, with the exception of Poland, very little political stake in. When the Soviets failed to stay out the foreign policy of the countries in eastern Europe, the United States and the democrats met this threat with a policy of containment that is celebrated as successful by most conservatives. (credit of course going to Reagan.)

I strong Soviet Union was going to tower over Eastern Europe. I believe that FDR knew this and felt that he could help arrange this in terms that Americans could accept (governments more like Diem's South Vietnam and Cuba's Batista) that weren't really democracies but were not seen as directly as Soviet satellites. But FDR died after Yalta and his foreign policy was played very close to the vest. His solution to Stalin breaking his promises is therefore not on the record.

Our policy of aiding the Soviet union through the time of the quote was one of necessity. Any 1943 we were thrilled to help the Soviet Union and I think for very good reason.

Churchill's desire to invade the 'soft underbelly' had nothing to do with Russia or Stalin, it had everythijng to do with him feeling an invasion of Europe in 1942 or 1943 was impossible, and worse, that a failed invasion and the destruction of British forces in it would crack the morale of his entire country. he writes about it at length in his war diaries, and his biographers have concluded the same.

Churchill had no specific inner knowledge of Stalin, he just hated communists in general. That wasn't due to some secret knowledge to which the US was not privy, just his own opinion, openly stated and openly arrived at.

However close a confidante William Bullitt was to Roosevelt is open to interpretation. He was an ambassador, but that doesn't make him a close adviser.



See page 1 of Blackstone’s link.

In 1943 Roosevelt broke his relationship with Bullitt. In the second volume of his two volume set on Roosevelt, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1970, James MacGregor Burns writes:


It is interesting that in his acclaimed book, Winston and Franklin, 2003, Jon Meacham mentions Bullitt only once - see page 47.

While we might legitimately debate Roosevelt’s handling of Joseph Stalin, using Bullitt as a jumping off point is a bit treacherous. What evidence do we have that Roosevelt really said the words you highlighted in blue, other than the words of Bullitt, writing three years after Roosevelt's death with motive to write kiss and tell, possibly highly embellished and designed to make the kiss and teller look good and settle old scores?

Operation Dragoon

Operation Dragoon was the invasion of Southern France by the Allies to complement the Normandy invasion. Churchill did not want to invade there, he wanted to attack the Balkans while Stalin "preferred" Southern France. Roosevelt was the deciding vote and hence Operation Dragoon. But there is little doubt that Churchill knew full well that the post-war map was going to be redrawn and that the Red Army had nothing stopping them from rolling right through the Balkans and annexing vast amounts of territory.

Churchill did not have to have a working knowledge of Stalin to know his intentions. He would only have to know his history which showed that the Russians had wanted the Balkans for centuries. Stalin did not want the allies to invade because that would mean the Balkans would be under British/American control and not Soviet. Churchill knew full well Stalin's imperialist tendancies and he did everything he could to undermine the Soviets. Unfortunately for him, Roosevelt just could not see the light and we handed the Soviets Eastern Europe on a platter.

Correction:

I got the title of Meacham's book transposed.

It should have been Franklin and Winston.

I'm going mostly by what I read in this article for American Diplomacy (sorry, should have stated that up front). Among other things, a paragraph on page 2 is revealing:


I agree that this still doesn't entirely exactly how much of a personal relationship the two had (though the author of the article does insist that Roosevelt considered Bullitt a "trusted adviser and friend"), but on a professional level at the very least, it's clear that Roosevelt held him in fairly high esteem. Furthermore, in all my searches on the subject, I've come across nothing that contradicted the notion that Bullitt was a close confidante of Roosevelt, nor have I found anything that impeached his integrity and credibility in any plausible way, or most especially, cast doubt upon his account of what Roosevelt said. If you can, I'd be interested in seeing it. Otherwise, I think we can assume that Bullitt's account is at least as plausible as anything you read in the New York Times or the AP.

Also, you brought up the incident over Sumner Welles and the subsequent falling out between Bullitt and Roosevelt. That occurred in the summer of '43, whereas the letter I referred to in my opening remarks was written in January of that year.



First thing I should mention is that I'm not sure how you've arrived at the conclusion that the annexation of the Baltic countries in 1940, while the Soviet Union was still buddy-buddy with Hitler, was in any way justifiable. Lithuania actually fought alongside Soviet Russia in its post-WWI war with Poland.

Also, there's one other thing that Stalin was up to, that was known about at the time, that also should be mentioned: his rank interference in the affairs of other countries, including the U.S., by infiltrating trade unions and political parties. This was something Bullitt himself had protested vigorously against when he was ambassador to the U.S.S.R. under Roosevelt before the war.

So with all this in mind, what exactly was FDR's justification for thinking Stalin worthy of such confidence? The fact that he had invaded "only" one country unjustifiably (or four or five)? As you noted, he was certainly understood all around to have been no better than Franco, yet could you seriously imagine Roosevelt saying of Franco, "I think if I give him everything he wants and ask for nothing in return, then noblesse oblige, he'll work with me for a world of democracy and peace"? Hell, I don't think he'd even have said that about Churchill, judging by the fact that he seemed more willing to please Stalin than Churchill (and I really don't think I'm exaggerating here). So I stand by the assessment I made in my debate question. If Roosevelt really believed what he was saying, then he absolutely was bone-dry clueless, at best.


I wouldn't categorically disagree with everything you say, but I'm left with the nagging question of why all those negotiations at Tehran and Yalta were so necessary, if Stalin was just going to do what he wanted anyway. I think lederuvdapac's post might very well point to the answer.

But even leaving that aside, the strength of Soviet Communism (much like the modern jihad movement) lay not so much in the territory it conquered, and still less so in its conventional military might. It lay mostly in its propaganda appeal. And I think FDR's solicitude for Stalin, which appeared to go well beyond war strategy, helped make the U.S.S.R. appear more benign to much of the world. It seems almost surreal nowadays to behold the vehemence with which Churchill was attacked for his "Iron Curtain" speech, simply for making some very rational observations about what was going on in Eastern Europe. I think the reason is that lots of people at the time - decent, honorable people, but woefully misinformed - thought of the Soviet Communism as either just another way of doing things, or even the wave of the future. And I would "credit" Franklin Delano Roosevelt for doing a lot of the heavy lifting for getting people to see it that way.

Let’s get something straight Blackstone, I didn’t quote anything from The New York Times or AP. At least try to get it accurate, eh.

The information I quoted was from noted presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns.

http://www.academy.umd.edu/AboutUs/staff/JBurns.htm

He wrote two books on Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956

and

Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970

My quotation was from the second volume.



Your original article, from Time, (NYT, AP cough, cough). September 13, 1948. There is no mention of January, 1943 in your opening post.

Bullitt’s alleged words cannot be impeached, but neither can they be confirmed, since both parties to the conversation are long dead. Roosevelt died in April, 1945 and Bullitt in February, 1967.

The rupture of the relationship between Bullitt and Roosevelt does cast a cloud over Bullitt’s credibility. I think, Blackstone, you looked until you found the most damning thing Roosevelt might have possibly said and used it even though it cannot be confirmed or denied. Historians do not generally use information they cannot confirm on the assumption that it cannot be impeached. Seemingly the standard of accuracy among professional historians exceeds that of the courtroom.

Chill. It was just a general statement (and an accurate one).


Read the very first sentence of the link at the top of my last post.


Where are you getting "alleged" from? Those were Bullitt's actual words, published while he was still very much alive, in both Time and Life magazines. And there were plenty of ardent Roosevelt loyalists still around at the time. If any of them had thought that Bullitt misrepresented Roosevelt's attitude toward "Uncle Joe" Stalin, surely they would have cried foul. But I think they knew that what he reported was very much in character for FDR.


Not by itself. What I'm looking for is something that showed Bullitt had any kind of penchant for dishonesty. I've come across nothing. So since nobody (apparently) disputed Bullitt's account at the time he published it, and nobody can show that he was given to lying, then like I said, his account is at least as plausible as anything you read in the New York Times or the AP.

It was not an accurate statement and I will not as you say "chill." Does a "general statement" recuse someone from getting it right?

Here is what I quoted in my first post. I typed this with the books (those obsolete things are still around ) in my lap. I didn't quote anything from NYT or AP. Accurate?

I guess I'm really gonna have to spell this out. My comment about the NYT or the AP had nothing whatsoever to do with what you posted. It was (once again) a general statement assessing the credibility level of what Bullitt had to say. It was not a commentary on anything you posted. You don't have to take everything personally.

As for what you did post, I will comment on it now. That Sumner Welles had been sexually propositioning male porters wasn't a "rumor". It was a confirmed fact. Burns' own quote from Roosevelt shows that Roosevelt accepted it as true. So no, it in no way indicates that Bullitt was given to making up stories about people.

Likewise, Bullitt didn't "betray" Welles. It's not as though Welles had confided anything in Bullitt, or placed any other degree of trust in him. Bullitt simply reported Welles doing something that virtually all of 1940s American society regarded as scandalous and abhorrent. This includes Roosevelt himself, by the way (scroll to paragraph containing all 4 highlighted colors). So if this episode casts doubt on anyone's credibility, it's Roosevelt's, for his hypocrisy in condemning (rumored) homosexuality in one man, but then pitching a fit when someone does the same thing to one of his associates.

What ever. I'll reluctantly accept your explanation. However, both times you brought up NYT and AP it was addressed to me. In fact, I don't think anyone has quoted those two sources on this thread. If your "general statements" aren't accurate, why make them? Don't take it personally Blackstone, but I'm not going to let you off the hook on generalized, inaccurate or misleading statements.

Have the last word and let the thread continue on your terms.

That's because you're the only one on the thread who questioned the credibility of Bullitt's account.


I don't know what you thought was inaccurate or misleading about my statement. I think it was quite accurate to say that what Bullitt reported in his Life article is at least as credible as any report in the NYT or AP (or, in general, mainstream media). In other words, unless something contradicts it, we can take it as a given and proceed from there.

So proceeding from there, it appears to me that there are but two possible explanations for Roosevelt's comments about Stalin. The first explanation is that FDR was extremely naive and gullible, to the point where one has to wonder how he got as far as he did in politics at all. That seems pretty unlikely to me. So that leaves us with the second explanation, which is that he had ulterior motives that he didn't want to share with Bullitt. What those motives were, one can only begin to speculate about, but in either event, the results were tragic - and with a better man in the White House, avoidable.

Unfortunately, I was unable to follow the Blackstone-Bof point/counterpoint...but i do have this to say.

I think FDR's main failure was that he was unable to foresee the role the United States would play in the post-war world. Isolationism had long been the foreign policy of the US and there is nothing to suggest that FDR was thinking about the post-war map when he was conducting the war. Churchill was thinking short term but also long term which is why he knew that the USSR was going to conquer the Balkans and increase their empire. Churchill wanted to attack the Balkans in order to stop Stalin while FDR's priority was to bring the war to an end...which meant capture Berlin. All other tactics that he felt took away from that objective was probably put aside as unimportant.

It's a difficult situation to pass judgment on FDR's foreign policy decision when one looks at the situation objectively. IMHO he made an amazing mistake in letting Stalin just roll through Eastern Europe. However, we must also take into account the context of the situation. FDR wanted the war to come to an end and that meant Berlin. He certainly feared that Stalin would sign another treaty with Hitler and end the Eastern front and that is probably one of the reasons that he bowed to Stalin's wishes.

Churchill never trusted Stalin for a second (as he saw fascism and communism as two sides of the same coin) and he even thought that once the Nazis were defeated that the USSR might be next (as did some of the people in the US, like Gen Patton). Churchill was thinking in terms of balance of power and that meant that even though he wanted Germany defeated, he wanted them strong enough to act as a buffer against the Soviet Union and the rest of Europe. Thats how Realpolitik had worked for centuries in the Concert of Europe. Unfortunately he was overruled by Roosevelt's superiority and we had the extremely strong USSR that led to the Cold War.

But again, can we really blame FDR? With the foreign policy that we had used at that point, it is safe to assume that he did not want to get entangled in the power politics of Europe and hence did not take Churchill seriously in that regard. As much as I would love to find another fault of FDR, I can't bring myself to seriously criticize his foreign policy decision in regards to the Soviet Union. WW2 just changed so much about the policy of the United States that its impossible to believe that FDR knew what he was in for with Stalin.

Please note, I haven't dismissed Bullitt's account. What I have said is that there is no way to confirm his statement. You have one man who is dead claiming another man, who is also dead, of making a statement.

The second Burns book on Roosevelt covers 1940-1945. Bullitt is mentioned only three times in 685 pages.

BTW: Including you, there have only been four posters on this thread. What difference does it make whether anyone else has questioned Bullitt's credibility?



In my opinion, Roosevelt should never have run for a 4th term. He was gravely ill when the war was won in Germany and died before victory was achieved in Japan. I think this says more about a system that allowed him to be reelected and continue in this state than it does about Roosevelt himself.

It should also be noted that Woodrow Wilson's health was precarious during his last term.

With absolute 100% certainty? Probably not. The same can be said about a lot of things you read about in the papers. But it's very likely true, given the fact that no known challenge has been made to the statement, which most assuredly would have been the case if it was grossly false; and also given the fact that Bullitt's credibility is essentially without challenge.


None, except to explain why I made my statement about Bullitt's credibility to you and to no one else (seeing as how you remarked about my doing so).



Then why was he so insistent about helping Stalin even over the objections of Churchill? In particular, why did he push for a plan that in all liklihood resulted in far greater Allied casualties than Churchill's "soft underbelly" plan would have?

As I mentioned, Roosevelt feared that the massive casualties in the Eastern Front would cause Stalin and Hitler to sign another treaty and hence push all those forces to the West. I suppose he felt that opening up a Western Front was the quickest way to capture Berlin and end the war. As I mentioned, the reasoning that Churchill had for attacking the Balkans was not to stop Hitler, but to stop Stalin. Roosevelt probably would not go for that for two reasons: 1) Kind of betraying an important ally during wartime 2) Did not care for the power politics of Europe.

Sorry, I missed that the first time. This is probably my lack of military understanding speaking here, but I fail to see how it would have made any difference to Stalin's fight against the Germans whether we joined the fight in Western Europe or joined the fight in Southern Europe. It appears to me that the primary difference it would have made would have been to Stalin's postwar plans.

But assuming there was some genuine strategic advantage to attacking in the West first, I still can't agree with your general statement that Roosevelt was largely unconcerned with postwar Europe. The United Nations was largely his creation:


The fear that Stalin would re-patch relations with Hitler I think strained the bounds of plausibility to begin with, seeing as how there's no possible way Stalin could ever have trusted Hitler again. But I can't see how it could possibly explain Roosevelt's refusal to aid the Warsaw uprising, or his suppression of the report assigning responsiblity to the Soviets for the Katyn Massacre.

I now have it from an unnamed unimpeachable board source that Bullitt’s statement is irrelevant to the thread. To understand why it is included, dubious though it is in my opinion, one has to look at why the thread was started.



That thread is found here.

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...st&p=207899

The thread linked above contained eight short blurbs about how gawd awful every Democrat since Woodrow Wilson has been at foreign affairs. When one makes a blunder of such colossal hideousness it is often best to cut your losses and find new ground to fight another day. Blackstone chose not to do that, but to fire a shot out of the bunker hoping to recover by placing the ball pin high on the green. Hence, we have the statement from William Bullitt, possibly the worst thing Roosevelt could possibly have said.

That said, this thread is not without merit sans Bullitt. Yet use of the word “clueless” does, I think, taint the question from the outset. Nevertheless, I will attempt to answer.

1. Was FDR really so clueless as to actually believe what he was saying? Or did he have some other motive that he didn't want to share with Bullitt for some reason?

In the first volume to his biography on Roosevelt , Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, Burns writes:



It seems according to Burns, that the decision can be defended.

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t think Roosevelt should have run for a third term. According David MaCullough’s book Truman, Roosevelt knew months before his death that his time was short. Did Roosevelt hand Stalin too much. Considering the WWII was still raging in the pacific and we needed our Russian ally to end it, I would say no. If he did give too much, health may have been a factor.
Again, according to Burns:



If Roosevelt blew it, as some on the right contend, then one can argue that Roosevelt was not on his best game in his last months of office. Under the circumstances, I think he made practical choices.

Edited to add:



Thanks for providing the link. People in high place still do things that are taboo and did so long before the mid 1940s - ah, nothing old or new.



http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:JRGsCB...;cd=1&gl=us

Even if Wells were guilty as charged, Bullitt betrayed both Roosevelt and Wells with leaking the incident to Owen Brewster, uh a Republican senator. Roosevelt must have thought "et tu Brute" to the power of two. Who did this benefit? Bullitt? I am beginning to see Bullitt as a scoundrel and what Sam Rayburn would have called a pipsqueak. He was a man ambitious for shoes he probably couldn’t fill.

I agree with you BOF- it is an end- run around a descredited post- and therefore, it is now an attempt to smear what is possibly the greatest president in US history, at least the top three. And to top it off, there hasn't been even a halfway decent Republican president since Eisenhower- not one single meddling one. In fact, you have to go back to lincoln to even FIND a decent republican president. They just don't make good presidents, in the grand scheme of things.

1. Was FDR really so clueless as to actually believe what he was saying? Or did he have some other motive that he didn't want to share with Bullitt for some reason?

Yes- a major ulterior motive- it is called "winning WW2". Stalin's interests mirrored our own, for the most part. Russia had forced the Germans to commit massive resources to the eastern front. Way more divisions than faced the rest of the Allies (Vermillion linked the correct numbers for me once ). The English and Russia had fought Germany to a stand still on thier own, before we had even intervened. The lend-lease act had supplied those forces before we entered the war. Our generals had a "working relationship" with thier generals- familiarity may not breed contempt- but it does breed familiarity and respect. Yes, stalin was dangerous and as crazy at Hitler- but he wasn't invading the US either, and his enemies were our enemies, and Russia paid a MUCH MUCH higher price in that war than the US did.

FDRs alliance with Stalin was far more reasonable, than say, our modern despotic ally- Saudi Arabia. At least Stalin wasn't funding major operations against the US like Saudi is now, are they? Like with today- FDR attacked the ACTUAL POEPLE TRYING TO KILL US- the Japanese and the Germans. Russia had done nothing to the US in any way that could be considered overtly threatening to the US, unlike Saudi Arabia etc.

Even knowing what we know now- the best FDR could have done is possibly thought a bit more ahead about what happened after the war.

But, unlike today- our very existance was not only being threatened, the outcome of the war, our victory, was in no way certain in 1943! Stalin was no direct threat to the US in any way at the time,


If you had some, you know, corroborating statement other than just one from Bullit, considering the animosity between the two, he can be written off quite easily as a "disgruntled employee".


2. What effect did this stance of his have on the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, and ultimately, to the postwar power of the Soviet Union?

As Loreng has posted, the entire world was in flux and in refugee status of some kind, the only Western, industrialized countries to quickly rebuild was the US, which was unharmed, and the US. A power vacuum of sorts.

As far as post war behavior, we behaved far worse than even stalin did. The list of post-war atrocities and horrors we inflicted on the world is numerous and overwhelms any good we might have done.

Vietnam, Guatamala, Chile, Cuba, Iran, Iraq- our bad behavior in other countries, our installation of puppet dictators and war criminals easily rivals anything the USSR has done outside it's borders.

Communism, the economic model- never existed in any country, and you can't even call Russia 'socialist" in economic terms- it was still Fuedalist really. No real constitutional changes or re-working of Czarist institutions- just replacing them with new poeple and changing the name of the agency. So even "communism" is inaccurate and misleading. Perhaps "imperialist russia" during Stalin- but they were less imperialist than the US post Stalin anyway. I mean, damn, we overthrew a countries leadership so Chiquita banana would not have it's bottom line affected- how freakin' evil do we need to get before we acknowledge our own bad behavior.

Eastern Europe was in a power vacuum and rebuilding. Russia got there first. We were busy with other things. Wasn't FDRs fault- it was just the reality of the times.

And, after reading Bof's post- I agree with him- Bullit was a scumbag- why would anyone believe him?

Well, thank you for that perspective on what a discredited post really looks like.



You act like you've just made an amazing discovery of some kind. But you're missing something: you failed to show how the post was a "blunder". By the way, I made it clear on that very thread that if someone raised an objection to what I had to say there, I wouldn't pursue the matter on that thread so as not to drag it too far off-topic, but would instead start a new one to deal with the objection. That's what I've done here.


Obviously not, since the whole thing ended Bullitt's career in the administration. As for his motives, let's just go back again to the attitudes of the time. Like the link shows, Roosevelt wasn't above using this charge against political enemies either. Bullitt may have genuinely believed, as most people back then did, that this kind of behavior truly does render one unfit for high government service. That didn't make him untrustworthy, only ignorant. It's also a bit difficult to argue that he "betrayed" either Roosevelt or Welles, since he had made it very clear to Roosevelt that he wouldn't stop fighting him on this until Welles was fired. He had to have known that this wouldn't earn him a spot on FDR's top ten list.


Well, that's true in one sense. We don't need Bullitt to tell us what we already know of the unreasonably high regard Roosevelt had for ol' "Uncle Joe". But his quote from Roosevelt does put it in that much better focus. So as I alluded to in earlier posts, this is about more than just mere horsetrading for some military advantage. If that's all it was, it could be defended. But what it was about was much more than that. As the cite from Grolier.com in my previous post indicated, Roosevelt was actively preoccupied, even before U.S. entry into the war, with the notion of some sort of international apparatus much like what was to become the UN. Military necessity may have compelled him to make some unsavory deals, but his ideology is what led him to treat them as positive goods, instead of necessary evils. As I stated to another member earlier in this thread:

To Clarify Blackstone: the USA's treatment of foreign countries was easily bested by the US- Stalin did not live long enough to see Vietnam. However- had he lived- I am sure he would have tried his best. That being said- Breshnev was far, far far better of it's foriegn entanglements than we ever were.

Need I remind you? Guatamala, Niceruagua, all the central American and South American things we did- you know, folks like Pinochet? Noriega? Variuos military juntas in Guatamela and a civil war wwe started and lasted until the 90s?

Ya, our post WW2 body count outside our borders was quite high, and post Korea, we have been the single worst disaster to the countries we meddled in, for millions of poeple.

Look at Iraq now- certainly the poeple of Iraq are far, far, far worse off than when under Saddam- and damn, that's SADDAM we are talking about- you have to screw up powerful bad to best Saddam at that one!

FDR did the right time from his view on the world at his time, in context of the world conflict. Communism didn't become the boogeyman it did until after Stalin got the bomb, and took east Berlin and east Germany. Even Eisenhower was perplexed at our former Allies behavior- he continued to have dialoge with some of his former USSR counterparts after the war, right before the "cold war" heated up.

HE also, did NOT LEAVE OFFICE WARNING OF COMMUNISTS- but of the defense industrial complex- and he was SOOO right. Just look at the industry today- totally corrupt scumbags- Haliburton and KBR.

So, if FDR was 'clueless" about Stalin, you would think the greatest republican president of the 20th century might have missed it too?

Fine, you have given us the right's perspective on this we’ve heard for years. How do you answer the words of the much respected political historian James MacGregor Burns? I’ll post them again, since you ignored them. Fortunately, I can cut and paste instead of type this time - no toil of typing from the pages of tomes.



Again, Bullitt’s words are important only if you can confirm to professional historian standards that Roosevelt actually said what Bullitt accused him of saying. Historical method is about conformation, not impeachment or lack there of. It is also not like journalism. Journalism is an on-the-fly, first draft of history, which was exactly what your original source from Time was. I have all the respect in the world for good journalists who check sources while working under a stressful deadline. But what really happened comes years later as original source material becomes available.

If you insist on dirt, here’s some for you. Roosevelt employed Margaret “Missy” LeHand as his secretary. William C. Bullitt struck up a romance with “Missy.” In her autobiography, This I Remember, Harper, 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt writes:



Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin somewhat confirms this in her book, No Ordinary Time, Simon & Shuster, 1994:

.

Elsewhere in these two books, Bullitt is mentioned only in passing. There is no refutation of the quote you gave us from the 1948 Time article, perhaps because historians (Burns, Meacham and Goodwin) and participants like Eleanor Roosevelt dismissed it as of little importance.

I don’t think I can totally impeach your quotation from Bullitt Blackstone, but as I said before, I don’t think you can substantiate the quote either. There is enough in the character of Bullitt and the events surrounding him to cast “reasonable doubt” on the quotation. I would suggest Blackstone that you bone up on historical method. I've given you a way out, but if you insist on keeping Bullitt, your thread falls with him.

BoF makes many salient points.

It seems to me we are dealing with a quote that was first committed to paper in 1948. Why should we believe this quote when there was proof of both political and personal friction among the parties?

I submit, in a less loquacious way, that the quote had no better than hearsay status in proving what really happened, given the date and the source.

At this point, I think the real reason for using obscure articles chocked full of 'hearsay evidence' to try to impeach a President's policy posthumously is nothing more than a dislike for Democratic politicians of all levels.

It parallels the frequent use of the oft-quoted "Father, I cannot tell a lie" rubbish that embellishes many accounts of Washington's boyhood.

No hijack attempt here but do the participants in this thread know about Lincoln's Missouri prayer in which he declared that blacks WERE inferior and that he only objected to slavery because not eveyone could afford slaves? The inferiority claim was, of course, more rubbish but it was a dominant opinion of white society during that period.

I 'think' Lincoln was a Republican but more than anything, he operated without our own 20/20 hindsight and the information available to him forced him to reflect the societal nuances of the time. There are many who equate his Emancipation Proclamation to his naval blockades. The resulting assumption was that both were no more than economic ploys to destroy the South's agrarian means of financing the war with exports.

No hijack attempt here - just a note to say that I am far more impressed by the supporting documentation from BoF than from the use of the Time Magazine hearsay quote from Blackstone.

If I am incorrect about the classification of the Time Magazine article as 'hearsay', please use the link to show me the exception. LINK

Where he asserts that Roosevelt "was almost wholly concerned about the immediate job ahead—winning the war"? I think this should be viewed in light of what I posted earlier from Grolier.com:


Does Burns specifically contradict the notion contained in this article (which presumably represents the mainstream historical view) that the postwar world was in fact a major preoccupation of FDR during the war? If not, then I'd have to say that his impression of Roosevelt being "almost wholly concerned" with the war itself was just a bit of an exaggeration.

In fact, not only was Roosevelt preoccupied with developing a new international apparatus of some kind after the war, the evidence shows that he was specifically preoccupied with dismantling the British Empire. From his son's book recounting his presidency:


This, by the way, was from August 1941, four months before the official U.S. entry into the war (yet FDR still speaks in terms of "we"). So yes, he was a bit more concerned with just winning the war, and it's unfortunate - highly unfortunate - that he didn't show any signs whatsoever of taking that holier-than-thou attitude he showed toward the British Empire and applying it to the infinitely worse Soviet Union.


If this is the worst you can dredge up on Bullitt - a bunch of vague gossip from various people speculating about what his personal motives were with regard to this particular woman - then I'd say he's on pretty safe ground.


That would be a highly unlikely reason. Whatever relevance those authors might have thought Bullitt had, when a former ambassador under FDR to both France and Russia writes an article in Life magazine quoting Roosevelt saying those words (that are reprinted in Time and who knows where else), that would have been regarded as an explosive charge to make - if it was false. The fact that it didn't stir up a whole lot of negative reaction (that anyone can point to) is testament to its truth. And in fact, I think we both know it is true. Roosevelt never had anything bad to say about Stalin, publicly or privately, apart from a few throwaway lines to men like Bullitt, along the lines of, "Well, although I deplore some of his methods, I still think he's such a great guy."

Let me ask you this, in all of the biographies you've read about FDR, can you point to anything specific, where he's expressing to anyone genuine misgivings about having to deal with Stalin? Any feelings of conflict, whereby on the one hand he would like to stick it to him, but on the other he feels it would be unwise? Or is he always enthusiastic about the prospect of making deals acceptable to Stalin? For example, when he sent George Earle to Europe to look into the Katyn Forest massacre, and then contradicted him and said it was the Germans' fault (so why send him in the first place if your conclusions are already predetermined?), is there any indication that he privately acknowledged the truth of it, and would be willing to let the truth come out once the war was over?

Or look over this transcript between Roosevelt and Churchill over the Warsaw Uprising. Plenty of Roosevelt refusing to help out the Polish patriots, but not much in the way of explanation on his part, is there? I don't see any sign that he was the least bit troubled by what he "had" to do.

Another thought occurred to me as well. Japan was at least as much a threat to the British Empire as Russia was, if not moreso, as well as at least as much a threat to the B.E. as it was to the U.S, if not moreso - and yet Churchill never seemed to see the urgency in enlisting Stalin's help in defeating Japan. Does this seem at all curious to anyone?



Actually, my cite is the exact opposite of hearsay. It's first-hand testimony from a direct witness. Contrast this with the very vague, subjective impressions from BoF's mostly second-hand sources. If this was a courtroom case, Bullitt could be charged with perjury if his statement was false, but there'd be no way a similar charge could stick to Burns, even if his impression of Roosevelt being "almost wholly concerned" with winning the war was shown to be highly misleading.

Scholarly historians call these primary and secondary sources, not first-hand and second-hand sources.

Eleanor Roosevelt is a primary source. Time, from which you got the Bullitt statement, is a seondary source. Groliers, an encyclopedia, is a secondary source. Encyclopedias are good for high school term papers, but little else. Generally, encyclopedias contain a little information on a lot of subjects, not a lot of information on a specific subject.

While the works of Burns, Meacham and Goodwin are secondary sources, they are from recognized scholars.



Where do you get the idea that Groliers represents the mainstream interpretation of historians. Please provide some evidence to support this assertion. I've cited three noted historians. Please find three that support your position.

This is almost laughable Blackstone. You down Burns, Goodwin and Meacham and throw the book - Groliers at me. You try to discredit my scholarly sources with an encyclopedia. You are doing what you accusedme of doing. Thanks though. The next time I want to know something about history, I'll skip all the heavy time consuming reading of monographs and biographies and click the link to Groliers.



We can't translate everything that comes down the pike to "if this were a courtroom case." It isn't. History contains some interesting, edge of your seat material - some Perry Mason moments if you will, but this just isn't one of them.

The most Bullitt deserves is a footnote.

But Bullitt himself is a primary source. So unless you're even remotely suggesting that Time misquoted him, then it's no more "secondary" than a Xerox machine.


Actually, I used the mainstream encyclopedia article to raise a question, and asked you if your scholarly sources contradicted the article. Your post was filled with plenty of jargon to make you look educated, but nothing that in any way addresses my question (not to mention any of the other substantive points I raised). I'm left with the conclusion that you're plenty aware that your sources do not contradict what's in the article, even if a particular vague, subjective impression from one of the authors might lead the casual reader to overlook it.

And by the way, I cited another primary source who contradicted your secondary source - which you ignored.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...88459-1,00.html

Read the first sentence on the first page of your link. Bullitt’s words came through Robert Sherwood. I would say that makes the Time article a secondary source. The source would be primary, if it were found among Bullitt’s papers and under the circumstances (the rift between Roosevelt and Bullitt), it would still be suspect.

Do you mean the Elliott Roosevelt link or the One on the Warsaw Uprising. The Warsaw link is irrelevant to the question at hand – namely Roosevelt’s actions at Yalta. This is a smokescreen. Blackstone you are using every trick possible to down Roosevelt in a conservative revision of history.

Roosevelt get’s high marks from academia. Try these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_ra...ge_scholar_rank



http://www.answers.com/topic/historical-ra...ates-presidents

Why is it that Roosevelt has ranked no lower than third since Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. first started polls of academic historians in 1948? How do you square his consistently high marks with your “mainstream” Grolier’s account?



http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/fdrwc.htm

This quote from the Elliott Roosevelt link makes it look like the neo-con philosophy that has destroyed the Bush administration has been around for a long time.

Wrong. Read the last paragraph on the first page.


The question of why academia is biased so much to the left is a question deserving of its own thread. But you're dreaming if you think that a mere poll of their political opinions rebuts any of the facts I presented.


What's definitely been around for a long time, as his quote of his father amply shows, is the bizarre penchant many leftists have for working themselves into a lather over borderline oppression, while waxing lyrical over real despots (Stalin, Castro, etc.)

And of course, it also shows that winning the war was far from being FDR's only significant motivation.

What this thread has definitely shown, if anything, is your penchant for and burning desire to trash FDR using any means available.

You did not answer my claim that your link to the Warsaw Uprising was irrelevant.

http://www.warsawuprising.com/doc/Roosevel...hill_Stalin.htm

The Warsaw Uprising had nothing to do with Stalin or Yalta, in fact, the Polish patriots were fighting Hitler’s regime, not Stalin. Your burning hatred for FDR has led you to get your own thread off topic.

Here is a better link to the Warsaw Uprising.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/wgupris.htm

Did you get the Yalta and Warsaw files mixed together in your briefcase?

BTW: I read Leon Uris’s Mila 18 some years ago. Although it is a work of historical fiction, it is still a compelling read for anyone interested in the Warsaw Uprising.

http://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Leon-Uris/dp...1695&sr=1-3

I'm glad you found those resources on the Uprising, because you could definitely use some brushing up on it if you think that Stalin was irrelevant to the whole story. The Beeb sums it up succinctly:


And as my earlier link showed, Roosevelt and Churchill proposed to assist the Uprising, and Stalin put his foot down, refusing the use of Russian-controlled airspace or landing strips in assisting it (which would have been critical to its success). When Churchill proposed a forceful response, Roosevelt told him he was on his own, and made not a peep of protest himself.

As a matter of fact, I did do some brushing up on this last night and started a new thread on this sidetrack which you are more than welcome to place your input.

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...mp;#entry211545

A few points:

1. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 was different than the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. My bad. The Poles were defeated in both. Had Stalin allowed airlifting of supplies earlier, would this have changed the outcome or just postponed the inevitable? We don't know.

2. On August 20, 1944, Roosevelt did join Churchill in asking Stalin to work with them on delivering supplies. Why did your link ignore the August 20 memo? Did the person who put the "selected" documents together have an agenda? Roosevelt declined to join Churchill in a second harsher memo. Would a second memo have put Stalin on a faster track? I don't think we can know the answer. Then again, would you have Roosevelt try to use Stalin's airspace without permission?

3. This incident, in my opinion, is small potatoes in the Roosevelt/Churchill/Stalin saga. Blackstone, on this thread, you have used any information you can find to discredit Roosevelt. Despite your obvious raw hatred of the man, professional historians - since Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. started conducting polls in 1948 - have rated this man in the top three of all American presidents.

4. One thing you have completely ignored is that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a gravely ill man when he was reelected in 1944. He passed away on April 12, 1945 - only a few months after his 4th inauguration. David McCullough writes in his book Truman that Roosevelt knew for some time that he didn't have much time left. I think his dream was to live to see the end of the war before he exited the stage. He saw the end of Germany, but not Japan. He needed Stalin to help him end the war in the Pacific. Shortsighted? Maybe. Human? Yes? My biggest criticism of Roosevelt - I believe he ran for a fourth term knowing he wouldn’t live to see it through.

If this were a courtroom, as you are so fond of saying, I think we've cast reasonable doubt on your "premise" that Roosevelt was something of a buffoon, or the word "clueless" with which you contaminated your first question from the get go. The defense rests.

Again, I invite you to take part in the new separate thread I've started on just the Warsaw episode.

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...mp;#entry211545

I don't buy that defense for a second. It's like seeing a man drowning in a pond, not lifting a finger to help him, and then shrugging afterwards that you don't know what the outcome would have been if you had tried to save him. There's very little doubt that allo