20 

3. Roosevelt Awards Baltic States to Stalin.

Roosevelt treated the Soviet Union as a close ally months before the USA was at war. Moscow was promised all possible help and political support. He had finally obtained the long sought partner with whom to divide the world.

While still technically a neutral, he hastened to take the side of Stalin:

The President ...had chosen to declare at his ...press conference on October 1, that freedom of worship was assured under Section 124 of the Soviet Constitution. In making known this hopeful (sic!) interpretation, (Roosevelt) was clearly trying to disarm opponents of aid to Russia.... 1

After the United States became an open belligerent,

Roosevelt mocked both (his Secretary of State) Hull and the Atlantic Charter and the moral principles of the entire American nation, giving Stalin all that the latter asked from Churchill - both territories and zones of influence.2

The President of the United States had to choose between self-determination for Eastern Europe and cooperation with the Soviet Union. He chose a clear and consistent political course, at least as far as the Baltic States were concerned, although he took care to keep it secret to the very end.

The year 1942 saw, according to the Dean of American Sovietologues, Roosevelt and Churchill, slipping still further into a position of acquiescence in Stalin's territorial demands in Europe. Not only did they acquiesce, but they were, by 1943, in some ways the moving spirits in this development.3 

Early in 1943 — on February 20, to be exact — Roosevelt wrote a secret letter to Stalin, in which he explained his own plan for "the tetrarchy of the Universe". (Yes, they are Roosevelt's own words!) The letter was 21 brought to Moscow by two members of the National Council for Young Israel, Zabrousky and Weiss, whose mission was to convince Stalin to support the creation of the state of Israel. The message "to our common friend Stalin" states, inter alia:

The United States and Great Britain are disposed — without any kind of moral reservation — to give absolute equality of vote to the USSR in the future organization of the world (and membership in) the leading group at the heart of the Council of Europe and of the Council of Asia. By these means the intercontinental expansion of the USSR will be justified...

In these conditions, benefiting by such a high position in the tetrarchy of the Universe, Stalin ought to be content... We yield to their wishes regarding Finland and the Baltic. - - -

Stalin will be left with a wide field of expansion in the small countries of Eastern Europe. - - -

Please inform Stalin, dear Mr. Zabrousky, that...all these are only a general outline to be further studied.... Transmit also the assurance of my full understanding, of my sympathy and my desire to ease the solution of those problems.4

On the September 2, 1943, the US President repeated the outline of a similar kind to his new ambassador in Moscow in regard to "the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union, and Stalin's demands for territory at the expense of Poland and Rumania".5 

On September 3, Roosevelt met Cardinal Spellman of New York, who was a voice of the American Catholics, and told the prelate about his plans for the future of the world:

It is planned to make an agreement among the Big Four. Accordingly the world would be divided into spheres of influence. ...it might be assumed that Russia will predominate in Europe.

... 22 

Stalin would certainly receive: Finland, the Baltic States, the Eastern half of Poland, Bessarabia. There is no point to oppose these desires of Stalin, because he has the power to get them anyhow. So better give them gracefully. - - -

On the direct question, whether Austria, Hungary and Croatia would fall under some sort of Russian protectorate, the answer was clearly yes. But he added, one should not overlook the magnificent economic achievements of Russia. Their finances are sound. It is natural that the European countries will have to undergo tremendous changes in order to adapt to Russia, but he hopes that in ten or twenty years the European influences would bring the Russians to become less barbarian. - - -

The European people will simply have to endure Russian domination, in the hope that in ten or twenty years they will be able to live well with the Russians.6

In short: Roosevelt does not mind at all a few decades of barbarism in Europe, as long as he can execute his plan for the division of the world. That plan envisages, by late 1943, a "biarchy of the Universe" ruled by himself and "Uncle Joe" Stalin. Britain was hopelessly exhausted by the war, and China was at best a third rate power at that time.

The fate of the Baltic States was definitely settled at the Teheran conference in November/December 1943. At the beginning of the conference, Roosevelt moved from the American embassy to live in the Soviet compound together with Stalin, while Churchill was alone at the British embassy. The two decided many things in private among themselves. A minor episode indicates the atmosphere at the conference and the attitudes of the three leaders. At one point Stalin proposed that at least 50,000 German officers should be physically liquidated at the end of the war:

But Churchill was horrified at the suggestion.... "The British Parliament and people will never tolerate mass executions," he thundered. "Even if in war passion they allowed them to begin, they would turn 23 violently against those responsible after the first butchery had taken place.... At this moment, ...Roosevelt interposed that he did not favor shooting 50,000 Germans, only 40,000. The Prime Minister was not amused.7

The death of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was concerted in private between Roosevelt and Stalin. There was a basic concord among the two, as the President had already informed his fiend and ally in the Kremlin by the Zoubriski/Weiss letter more than five months earlier. A historian of US-Soviet relations notes:

There was no real ambiguity about, Stalin's objectives in Eastern Europe, therefore, when Roosevelt embarked for Teheran ...Nor was there much doubt as to what the American response would be. - - -

Under no circumstances would the United States fight for self-determination in Eastern Europe. The one question still unsettled was how to present this policy in the United States as anything other than a violation of the Atlantic Charter.8 

President Roosevelt solved the problem by agreeing with Stalin to keep their agreement secret till the end of the war. This was rather easy, because there were no official records taken at the conference, the private meeting was attended only by a couple of people of either side, and because it was in the interests of both Roosevelt (there would be elections in the US within a year!) and Stalin (to hide his war aims). Fortunately, both of the American participants at the secret private meeting have reported what was discussed and agreed — ambassador Harriman and translator Bohlen subsequently published quite identical versions of it.

The fateful Roosevelt-Stalin meeting began in Teheran, December 1, 1943, at 3:20 P.M. To summarize: President Roosevelt and Stalin agreed on changes in Polish frontiers. The President also disclaimed interest in the political integrity of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in favor of the Soviet Union. The transcript, quoted below, consists of the minutes of the meeting prepared by the American 24  participant Bohlen and printed in an official publication of the US Government (Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conferences of Cairo and Teheran, 1943, pp. 594-6. ):

The President said he had asked Marshal Stalin to come to see him as he wished to discuss a matter briefly and frankly. - - -

He said we had an election in 1944 and ...he might have to (run).

He added that there were in the United States from six to seven million Americans of Polish extraction, and as a practical man, he did not wish to lose their vote. He said he personally agreed with the views of Marshal Stalin (on Poland) ....He hoped, however, that the Marshal would understand that for political reasons outlined above, he could not participate in any decision here at Teheran or even next winter on this subject and that he could not publicly take part in any such arrangement at the present time.

Marshal Stalin replied that now the President explained, he had understood. The President went on to say that there were a number of persons of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian origin, in that order, in the United States. He said that he fully realized the three Baltic Republics had in history and again more recently been part of Russia and jokingly added, that when the Soviet armies re-occupied these areas, he did not intend to go to war with the Soviet Union on this point.

He went on to say that the big issue in the United States, insofar as public opinion went, would be the question of referendum and the right of self-determination. He said he thought world opinion would want some expression of the will of the people, perhaps not immediately after their re-occupation by Soviet forces, but some day, and that he personally was confident that the people would vote to join the Soviet Union. - - - 25 

The President (remarked) that the truth of the matter was that the public neither knew nor understood.

The future of the three nations, their re-occupation and incorporation in the USSR, was thus decided among Roosevelt and Stalin. They left Teheran, according to the official communiqué of the conference, "friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose".9 

The mention of a referendum does not in the least affect the absolute nature of Roosevelt's award of the Baltic States to Stalin. There was enough previous information to show which way referenda and elections went in Soviet-occupied areas. Roosevelt's own confidant and ambassador to Moscow remarked:

Roosevelt probably had in mind the international implications of agreeing to a plebiscite, which would give a color of decency to the operation.10

The President knew perfectly well what he had done. Almost a year later, in the covert correspondence with Churchill, he repeatedly worried that it might not be possible to keep his deal with Stalin strictly secret.11 Kennan seems to be right in his conclusion about the affaire in Teheran:

One does not get — at least I do not — the impression that Roosevelt had any substantive objections — any real political objections — to seeing these areas (of Eastern Poland and the Baltic States) go to Russia, or indeed that he cared much about the issue for its own sake. - - - He simply did not want this issue to become a factor in domestic politics which could make trouble for his (re-election).12

The secret Teheran agreement was, indeed the knell of death for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Early in January 1944, Otto von Hapsburg talked with Roosevelt about Central Europe and reported:

The President had indicated that the countries he had told the Russians they could take over and control 26 completely as their sphere - so completely that the United States could from this moment on have no further policies with regard to them were: Rumania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland.13

That was that. It was all over for the Baltic States....

What about the conference of Yalta, which is often said to have decided the future of Eastern Europe? The talks held from the 4th to the 11th of February 1945, were, at least as far as the Baltic countries were concerned, no more than a tacit confirmation of the Tehran agreement. As a matter of fact, Stalin wanted to make doubly sure and included Lithuania as one of the Soviet republics for which he demanded a vote in the United Nations. But neither Churchill nor Roosevelt made the last objection — the sale was final.14 At Yalta Roosevelt tried to please Stalin in everything, even giving him parts of China and Japan. In his secret correspondence he explained:

All my hopes for the future of the world are based upon the friendship and cooperation of the western democracies and Soviet Russia.15

Thus the Baltic nations were included in the Presidents hopes for friendship, albeit only as parts of the USSR....


1Harriman, p. 103.
2Baciu, p. 24.
3Kennan p. 338.
4Figaro (Paris), Feb 7, 1951, as translated in Baciu, pp. 30-33.
5Harriman, p. 227.
6Gannon, Robert I., Cardinal Spellman Story (N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1962), pp. 222, 23.
7Harriman, pp. 273, 74.
8Gaddis, J.L., The United States and the Origin of the Cold War (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 137, 38.
9Harriman, p. 283.
10Ibid., p. 227.
11Roosevelt and Churchill, p. 592.
12Kennen, p. 335.
13Bullitt, Orville H. (Ed.), For the President: Personal and Secret (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1972), p. 601.
14Harriman, p. 409.
15Roosevelt and Churchill, p. 403.

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