The interactions of the “Big Three” have inspired several books, but once again the book by Joseph E. Persico ties what I see as the complete story together nicely. FDR had a much stronger affinity for Stalin than to Churchill.  He confided to Joseph Kennedy, his ambassador to Great Britain, that he had never liked Churchill from the beginning.  Churchill was open in his desire to maintain the British Empire, and Roosevelt was strongly opposed to imperialism. I was startled to read a quote from him in the book that he told Admiral Godfrey, the U.S. is going “…to show the Brits, Portuguese, and Dutch how to take care of those West Indies Islands. Every n—-r will have his two acres and a sugar patch.” On the other hand Roosevelt was strangely able to overlook the atrocities committed under Stalin. He knew that large numbers of people Stalin decided he couldn’t trust were summarily executed and millions of Ukrainians were intentionally starved.  Both Roosevelt and Churchill knew that Stalin had ordered the execution of thousands of Polish officers, but covered it up. FDR was somehow persuaded that he could work with Stalin and trust him.

Roosevelt early and often acted according to Stalin’s wishes. He had established diplomatic relations with the Soviets, and apparently was willing to accept the large numbers of spies that action brought into the country and his administration. He released Earl Browder, the head of the U.S. Communist party who had been convicted of passport violations. He took that action to placate Stalin, and it restored a key link in Russia’s spy chain in America. One of the strangest actions he took involved 1500 pages of Soviet cryptographic material and a codebook that had been sold to the Office of Strategic Service by Finland. FDR ordered the information to be returned to the Soviets without copying it, and there is a dispute whether it was copied or not. There is no dispute the Soviets were absolutely baffled about why the Americans had returned the information.  Secretary of State Edward Stettinius was said to have explained that FDR ordered to action because he wanted to do nothing to arouse Stalin’s suspicions.  



There were two actions that FDR took that were, in my opinion,  his greatest mistakes as a war time President. The first was the internment of 114,000 Japanese, 11,000 Germans, and 11,600 Italians despite the advice he was receiving that the people did not present a security risk. Several Japanese and Germans were exchanged for Americans that had been stranded in those countries by the war, and it was against the will of many involved in the exchanges. The German Jews exchanged probably felt the strongest about that. The second great mistake was that FDR gave Stalin the D-Day invasion on the French coast that Stalin was demanding. Churchill had pleaded with both Stalin and Roosevelt that the invasion should be through the Balkans. He drew a picture of a crocodile, and pointed out that it was better to invade at the soft underbelly instead of into the waiting teeth. He predicted that 90 percent of the soldiers landing on Omaha would become casualties. He also realized that failure to invade though the Balkans would effectively put central Europe into Communist control after the war. FDR was influenced by massive number of Russian casualties, and agreed with Stalin insistence that the French coast be the invasion site. He admitted to Adolph Berle that he was willing to cede central Europe to the Soviets, contradicting his publicly professed support of self-determination of nations. Berle argued with FDR, convinced that he “was overfeeding the Russian Bear.” There were a bit over 10,000 casualties on the beaches of Normandy, which was one seventh what had been predicted by some strategists. Roosevelt sacrificed large numbers of allied soldiers and gave central Europe to post-war Communist control to appease Stalin. I judge that to be unforgivable.

There is disagreement about how much Roosevelt knew of Soviet spying in America, but he may have accepted it to appease Stalin. Whitaker Chambers revealed the actions of his spy ring to Adolph Berle in 1939.  There are accounts that Berle tried to brief FDR on the matter, but that FDR impolitely dismissed him. The author didn’t find supporting documentation about such a briefing, perhaps because FDR forbade anyone taking notes while meeting with him. However, FDR did the country a large favor when he allowed Henry Wallace to be replaced by Harry Truman. FDR had Hoover put Wallace under surveillance, and learned Wallace had discussed putting known Communists into crucial positions in his cabinet should Roosevelt die and he became President. However, FDR realized his mistakes with Stalin too late. Stalin had an angry outburst to FDR, and said some things that made FDR observe, “Stalin has been deceiving me all along.”