18. WORLD WAR TWO

VICTORY!

By the beginning of 1945 it was quite clear that the Nazi Reich was not going to last much longer.  With the collapse of the Reich, much of Europe would find itself without government.  Considering the great extent of the destruction of Europe caused by the war, it was expected that immense social and political dislocation would result, threatening the peace that the Allies were striving for.  Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill understood that an administrative plan of sorts would have to be laid out to provide some kind of transition to a stable post-war Europe.

It was not just political necessity that held this alliance of Russia, America, Great Britain (and other members of the United Nations) together at this point, but a certain willingness of Roosevelt to idealize this relationship.  Roosevelt had been born into a world of privilege, raised by an aristocratic mother, and schooled in the gentlemanly environment of Groton Prep School and Harvard College, where there was an expectation that life must operate according to basic rules of civilization. Roosevelt, who was of only middling intelligence – but massive personal charm – had learned to trust the world around him, especially the progressive intellectuals who filled the ranks of his advisory staff, which, central to Roosevelt's New Deal Program, had attempted to bring rational solutions to the confusing world of the Great Depression.  Roosevelt expected the surrounding world – which now included Soviet leader Stalin (whom Roosevelt believed he had won over as a friend by his own enormous personal charm) – also to operate in this same way. In Roosevelt's long political career, it was this gentleman's game (plus this personal charm of Roosevelt's) that had seemingly always moved his world.  Now it was time to bring this noble process to the realm of world diplomacy.

Thus Roosevelt truly believed that the war had brought Russia and America together in some kind of new like-mindedness about how the world should take shape after the war.  He and Stalin had this understanding – which is what Roosevelt presumed had directed the discussions in Tehran about the conduct of the final stages of the war and the shaping of the upcoming post-war alignment.

In fact, Roosevelt had seemed more cautious about the political designs of British Prime Minister Churchill, who harbored deep suspicions about Stalin and the Russians, and anyway who always talked about saving the British Empire. Roosevelt had no interest in the British Empire.  Likewise, Americans in general were supposed to be, by some kind of instinct, opposed to all empires (this was why they supposedly had fought in World War One).  Roosevelt had believed therefore that a special relationship with Russia created during the war would be more important to America and the world after the war than America's relationship with imperial Great Britain.  Also, the fact that Churchill distrusted Stalin annoyed Roosevelt greatly, and he did what he could to keep Churchill at some distance from the off-stage discussions that he and Stalin were having.

When Roosevelt laid out plans for a new global diplomatic organization, the United Nations Organization¹ (a post-war organizational follow-up to the wartime or military United Nations), to replace the moribund League of Nations, he had provided for the new U.N.'s direction by what was referred to as the Four Policemen: America, Soviet Russia, Great Britain and China (eventually this small group of major powers would include France within its ranks).  He had assumed the natural cooperation of Great Britain and China with America's leadership.  But the real dynamic driving the organization, he had believed, would be the cooperation between America and Soviet Russia – clearly the two budding, post-war Superpowers.

The General Assembly.  In a number of ways, the new U.N. he proposed appeared to be much like the League of Nations that it was replacing.  The U.N. General Assembly would continue the League's idea of the equality of each of the sovereign members of the organization, the equal respect accorded to the voice of each member.  The General Assembly was intended to be a large gathering of all members where they could air their thoughts and concerns freely in an effort to reason together in building a better world after the war.  Each member had an equal vote in building cooperative international policy.  Each member had an equal responsibility in building the international culture and its political, economic and social values that would hopefully guide the world to a much-needed peace.

The Security Council.  Also, similar to the League and its Council, the U.N. would possess a special branch, the Security Council, which would be set up to deal with matters that fell beyond the reach of mere reason to resolve: conflicts which threatened directly the world's peace.  Like the League Council, the new Security Council would rely on the muscle of the world's major powers – America, Russia, Britain, China (and eventually France) – to lead the way.  The Security Council was to be a small assembly of just fifteen of the U.N. members, the Big Five serving permanently on the Security Council (thus the Permanent Members), and then ten other members chosen from the General Assembly serving on a rotational basis. Like the older League Council, the Security Council was envisioned as the enforcer of the post-war international status quo.

But the most important feature of the Security Council was the absolute veto power given to each of the five Permanent Members.  Any one of the five could effectively block a U.N. action if it was perceived to be opposed to that country's particular national interest, the purpose being to prevent the organization from being drawn into a conflict which would pit it against one of the major powers, the one thing that most undercut the operations of the League of Nations – which ultimately led each of the major powers to withdraw, one by one, from the League.

It was expected (at least by Roosevelt and the Americans) that this provision would be exercised only very infrequently, as it was supposed that the spirit of unity that had these five powers working so closely together during the war would continue on into the post-war period.  This would soon prove to have been a very naive Rooseveltian assumption.

Bretton Woods (July 1944).  In July of 1944 delegates from forty-four United Nations Allies gathered at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, for a three-week conference to plan for a post-war international economic system.  The goal was to open or free up trade and currency exchange among these partner nations – so as to facilitate rapid post-war economic recovery.  Two international organizations, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were set up to facilitate this move toward freer trade and currency exchange. Indirectly, the American dollar was made the international standard or base by which their currencies were valued.  And this value could be changed only by agreement with the IMF.

The Soviet Russians participated in the initial talks at Bretton Woods.  But coming to see the IBRD and the IMF as basically extensions of American capitalism, they ultimately refused to join those international organizations.  This was an early sign of things to come.

Yalta (February 1945).  With the collapse of the Nazi Reich well underway, it became a matter of critical importance for the Allied powers to come to some kind of agreement as to how Europe was to be brought to a new political order.

Thus it was in February of 1945 that Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill gathered for a meeting in southern Russia at the Black Sea resort of Yalta.  What they resolved there as an answer to these many problems was basically an agreement as to which parts of Europe were to fall under which military governments.  The lines were drawn pretty much as they expected to find their armies positioned anyway at war's end.  The Russian Red Army would occupy and administer most of Eastern Europe. Italy would fall largely under American supervision.  And Germany would be divided into a number of different zones administered by Russia, America and Britain (it was eventually agreed to give France a section, carved out of the American and British zones).  The German capital, Berlin, would also fall under joint zoning and administration, even though the city was located entirely within the Russian zone of occupation.

But understanding that the war in the Pacific against Japan was far from over, Roosevelt also hoped that with the final defeat of Germany, Stalin might bring Russia into the war being waged in Asia against Japan.  Up to that point Russia had not been at war with Japan.  As Stalin saw no particular advantage for Russia in joining in, both Roosevelt and Stalin knew that they would have to offer Russia some incentives for doing so.

Thus as an incentive for Russia to enter the war against Japan, it was agreed that Russia would be given title to the island of Sakhalin off the Pacific coast of Russia and would be accorded administrative rights at war's end in Korea north of the 38th parallel and in the Chinese province of Manchuria.  Accordingly, Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan within a short period of time ("two or three months") after the completion of the defeat of Germany.  Roosevelt and Churchill were pleased with this decision because it was expected that the war against Japan, which was proving to be incredibly deadly, was likely to last another two years – even with Russian help.

In March of 1945 the Western Allies (Americans, British, French, etc.) finally crossed the Rhine River and were heading rapidly eastward across Germany. In the same month the Russians captured Vienna (Austria).  The end was nearing for Hitler's Third Reich.  In April the Russians were now moving rapidly through a fast collapsing Berlin.

¹Actually Roosevelt had come up with a draft proposal for just such an organization only a few weeks after America's entry into World War Two in early December of 1941, and on New Years Day 1942 his proposed organization was formalized as the United Nations when America, Great Britain, Soviet Russia and China signed a document soon to be known as the United Nations Declaration – which then representatives of twenty-one other nations also signed the very next day.