>>Roosevelt was never enfeebled. I lived in that era'..That is pure unadulterated B/S :-)
In other words, the truth:
That does not deny betrayal but rather justifies it on grounds of Realpolitik, obscuring the American leader's significance at Yalta. President Roosevelt was a very sick man at the Big Three conference where he was counseled by a Soviet espionage agent.
The invaluable "FDR's Last Year" (1974) by reporter Jim Bishop depicts a president near death whose irreversible heart disease was hidden from the electorate during a 1944 re-election campaign that Roosevelt never should have run. Bishop reports that the mass murderer Stalin was "moved to pity," telling the British delegates: "If I had known how tired that man is, I would have agreed to meet along the Mediterranean."
YALTA AND NATO
Robert Novak
AUGUST 18, 1997
WASHINGTON -- Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat drew criticism last month when he argued for Poland's admission into NATO by raising the "betrayal" by the Western allies at the 1945 Yalta conference. Thus are deliberations in that Crimean city a half-century ago still debated -- however irrationally.
New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson wrote on July 16 that Eizenstat at a press briefing the previous day "repeated a 50-year-old right-wing slander in asserting that the Poles belonged in NATO because they had been 'betrayed' by Yalta agreements signed with Stalin by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill." On July 20, Washington Post columnist David Broder, who also attended the briefing, took Eizenstat to task for invoking "guilt feelings" about the surrender of Poland to the Soviet Union as justification for NATO expansion.
Nelson and Broder are distinguished journalists and old friends of mine, but Poland was truly betrayed in 1945, and we indeed should feel guilty (whether or not that justifies NATO membership). Eizenstat told me he did not say Poland was betrayed, only that Poles believe it. Actually, Yalta has ceased to be a partisan issue, and Democrat Eizenstat has not turned on his own party. The ugly truth about the World War II settlement no longer needs to be hidden because of domestic politics.
Nelson's column quoted historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., FDR chronicler and Democratic activist, as saying, "I don't know what Stuart Eizenstat would have done" to save Poland. Stalin -- backed by the occupying Red Army -- broke the Yalta pact to impose Communist rule, said Schlesinger.
That does not deny betrayal but rather justifies it on grounds of Realpolitik, obscuring the American leader's significance at Yalta. President Roosevelt was a very sick man at the Big Three conference where he was counseled by a Soviet espionage agent.
The invaluable "FDR's Last Year" (1974) by reporter Jim Bishop depicts a president near death whose irreversible heart disease was hidden from the electorate during a 1944 re-election campaign that Roosevelt never should have run. Bishop reports that the mass murderer Stalin was "moved to pity," telling the British delegates: "If I had known how tired that man is, I would have agreed to meet along the Mediterranean."
But Stalin never would agree to Polish self-determination, as Roosevelt and Churchill understood. When the deal was cut on Poland, Bishop reports, the president left the meeting with his face gray and almost hollow. The president's chief of staff, Adm. William Leahy, told him: "Mr. President, this compromise formula on Poland is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without even technically breaking it."
Hanging his head, Roosevelt replied: "I know, Bill, I know. But it's the best I can do for Poland at this time." Bishop's conclusion: "It was the best and the worst. Time would not improve the American betrayal."
The agreement Schlesinger says Stalin broke was questioned by renowned diplomatic historian Herbert Feis in "Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin" (1957): "What was this worth? What likelihood was there that an interim government, Communist ruled, would allow itself to be challenged, and quite possibly ejected from office, by an election held in the Western style?" Feis writes that Roosevelt's abandonment of supervised elections was "tinged, I think, by a longing for an end to the labor of debate" by the dying president.
At Roosevelt's side was Alger Hiss, the State Department official shown by mounting evidence to be a Soviet spy. Most chroniclers of Yalta have ignored Hiss' role as the slick assistant to bumbling Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.
But just five years after Yalta, journalist Ralph de Toledano in his landmark "Seeds of Treason" (1950) noted that "Hiss moved in and out of negotiations." At a pre-conference meeting in Marrakech, Hiss and Stettinius agreed on a unity government in Warsaw that sealed Poland's fate. Stettinius recorded in "Roosevelt and the Russians at Yalta" (1949) that when FDR requested a lawyer to review the Polish agreement, "I called Alger Hiss."
Polish officials have told me that they hunger for NATO membership to confirm their return to the West. Whether that is proper U.S. policy is subject to debate. That the West owes Poland something for its betrayal is not.
townhall.com
FDR & Stalin : A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943-1945
by Amos Perlmutter
Acknowledged as the leader of the free world after World War Il, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of the most significant and compelling figures of the twentieth century. Yet no previous book has dealt critically with his foreign policy during the crucial years between 1943 and 1945. In this penetrating study, Amos Perlmutter exposes the myth of New Deal war diplomacy, showing the devastating results of FDR's not-so-grand alliance with Joseph Stalin, one of the most ruthless political leaders of the modern world. Perlmutter assesses FDR's war strategy and his postwar vision, as well as his diplomatic style in dealing with both Stalin and Churchill. FDR failed to take political advantage of the enormous U.S. economic, military, and atomic superiority. In three key areas of the Grand Alliance dispute - the Second Front, Poland, and the division of Germany - FDR clearly colluded with Stalin against the larger vision of Churchill. By failing to use the Lend-Lease program as a bargaining chip, FDR "surrendered" Eastern Europe to Stalin even before Stalin had begun his long-planned Soviet expansion into the East. A passionate, optimistic, and popular leader, FDR nevertheless failed to see the long-range goals of Stalin. He maintained an idealistic vision of a postwar world presided over by a partnership of two emerging powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Perlmutter shows how FDR's blind pursuit of that vision and the concessions he made to realize it resulted not in partnership, but in the legacy of the Cold War. Based on extensive reevaluation of domestic sources and his study of key Foreign Ministry documents in the former Soviet Union, Perlmutter sheds new light on the relationship of FDR and Stalin. Several fascinating appendixes reproduce material from the recently declassified Soviet archives relating to this crucial period in American foreign policy. FDR & Stalin is a provocative, much-needed reassessment of Roosevelt's role in the re-shaping
..the author's descriptions of events at Teheran and Yalta are clear and effective. The overriding facts of FDR's desperately failing health and of his Wilsonian devotion to the UN are points well made, but they're not new. Perlmutter adds the notion that FDR's refusal to deal in balances of power and territory proves his lack of a realistic vision...
Booknews, Inc. , March 1, 1994
Deals critically with FDR's foreign policy during crucial war and postwar years, exposing the myth of New Deal war diplomacy, and showing the devastating results of FDR's alliance with Stalin and their collusion against the larger vision of Churchill.
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