Taki Magazine

FDR vs. Churchill

by Grant Havers on May 29, 2008

I am very grateful that Takimag has encouraged a real discussion about the role of Churchill in WW 2.  It is hard to imagine many other magazines allowing the degree of opennness on the causes of that terrible conflict.  This on-going dialogue has certainly compelled me to go back to the history books and re-think some of the conventional wisdom regarding the main players in the war.

There is one longheld position, however, which so far I have found little reason to abandon:  that FDR bears infinitely more responsibility than Churchill for the rising influence of Stalin at the end of the war.  FDR was the far greater appeaser of Stalin, who surrendered to demands which were far less necessary than was the case at Yalta.  While a nauseating reaction to Churchill’s often effusive praise of Stalin around the time of Yalta is an understandable one, it is also undeniable that Churchill possessed a hatred of communism which was simply unthinkable to Roosevelt, a hatred which dated as far back as the 1917 revolution. FDR’s attitudes to Stalin, by contrast, were consistently and outrageously generous. 

I heartily recommend Robert Nisbet’s 1988 work Roosevelt And Stalin:  The Failed Courtship, to put to rest any doubts about the role of FDR in fostering the influence of the Soviets while attempting to marginalize Churchill at Teheran and Yalta.  (This work is also used by Buchanan in his study of Churchill, but he draws different conclusions from that of Nisbet.)  As Nisbet argues, FDR truly “courted” Stalin much as he would have courted a Bronx democrat.  In FDR’s view, Stalin was just a slightly more radical version of a New Dealer who could be trusted to co-govern the world with the United States after the war.  FDR even agreed with Stalin that France had to be put in its place after the war, since it was a dangerous imperialist power; of course, Stalin saw France as the one continental rival to his ambitions after the destruction of Germany.

Nisbet does not accuse FDR of treason, nor does he fault him for giving “permission” to Stalin to control Poland.  This permission was unnecessary, since Stalin already controlled the nation.  Still, he clearly faults the president for a dangerous naivete towards Uncle Joe, a naivete which led FDR to believe that Stalin had the “moral” right to control Eastern Europe; that was never Churchill’s position!  Here are a few of Nisbet’s most important conclusions, based on a close reading of the relevant documents:

1) Even before WW 2, FDR discouraged criticism of the Soviet Union in his administration
2) FDR never accepted the view that Stalin was an imperialist, since he was a fellow leftist who “cared” about humanity.  Indeed, the true imperialists were Churchill, De Gaulle, and Hitler, in FDR’s view.
3) FDR ignored the advice of Russia experts like George Kennan and William Bullitt about the dangers posed by Stalin’s regime.  The leftist Harry Hopkins had the greatest influence over FDR on Russian matters.
4) FDR’s State Department was more critical of Britain’s actions (in Greece and Italy) fighting communists than it was of Stalin’s crimes in the East.
5) Churchill, who thought Stalin was an “unnatural man,” worried after the Quebec conference that FDR was more than willing to condemn all of Europe—East and West—to Soviet control. 
6) Churchill was astounded that FDR abandoned Berlin to the Russian army in 1945. 
7) FDR promised to withdraw troops from Europe two years after the war, to further win the confidence of Uncle Joe.

And on it goes.  If Nisbet is right, Churchill had little to do with any of these planned blunders, and vigorously opposed them.  After the war, Churchill was understandably coy about recording his displeasure over FDR in his official WW 2 history, since he desired good relations with the United States.  Notwithstanding his commendable efforts to recognize the threat of Nazism earlier than many of his countrymen,, FDR’s failure to recognize the threat of Stalinism must go down as one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the 20th century.

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