While Communist espionage channels were being perfected in the United States, similar subversive networks were being built throughout the world. Soon Stalin found the state secrets of all the major powers pouring in so fast that he was able to play the world-wide game of power politics like a professional gambler who sits at the poker table carefully planning his strategy as he reads the marked cards held by each of the other players.
We now know that it was from this supremely satisfying position of political omniscience that Stalin initiated a series of schemes which had their part in precipitating World War II. Defected Russian Intelligence officers have revealed that World War II was fomented and used by the Russian leaders as an important part of the long-range strategy for the expansion of World Communism. This chapter will answer the following questions:
• What is the explanation for Stalin’s attempt to reach a secret understanding with Hitler in 1933?
• Why did Stalin claim credit for starting World War II?
• Why did Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939 surprise Communists throughout the world?
• Was Stalin caught off guard when Hitler scrapped the pact and attacked Russia?
• What was the U.S. attitude during the early months of the Nazi invasion of Russia? What changed that attitude?
• What do you deduct from this statement in 1942 by a Presidential advisor: “Generations unborn will owe a great measure of their freedom to the unconquerable power of the Soviet people”? Did Allied leaders appear to have had a basic understanding of Communist strategy?
• How did the Communist leaders use Lend-Lease to get atomic bomb secrets?
• When did U.S. coexistence with Communism begin? Name the four steps of degeneration through which it passed. On what presumption was Russia made a full partner with the U.S. in shaping the post-war world?
• How do you account for the fact that the United Nations Charter follows the format of the Russian Constitution of 1936 rather than the format of the League of Nations? Would you feel there was any significance in the fact that the general secretary for the organization which drew up the charter was Alger Hiss?
• What was the attitude of the Communist leaders when they emerged from World War II as the second greatest political power on earth?
It is said that Communism was largely responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. It will be recalled that when the German Kaiser capitulated in 1918 the Communists tried to take over Germany. Anti-communist political groups immediately sprang up and through a frantic coalition they prevented the Communists from seizing power. It was in this anti-Communist atmosphere that Adolf Hitler began his political career. He joined the National Socialists (Nazi) Party which had a strong anti-Bolshevik platform and by 1921 he had become its leader.
Hitler organized his notorious Nazi Storm Troopers to retaliate against a spreading rash of Communist violence. He had his Brown Shirts trained in street fighting, rioting and the suppression of political opponents by direct physical attack. By 1923 the Storm Troopers numbered 10,000 and Hitler felt strong enough to try and take over the German province of Bavaria. But this uprising failed. Hitler was thrown into prison and while there began expressing his frustrated ambitions in a feverish manuscript on total war called Mein Kampf—My Battle. In this book Hitler revealed that he was not only bitterly anti-communistic but that he stood for outright violation of the Treaty of Versailles. He said he would fight for the complete restoration of Germany as a world power. He was planning for the creation of a great Nordic empire embracing all the people of German blood in Europe regardless of their national residence. Mein Kampf constituted a threat to every nation bordering on Germany. It also contained a threat against Russia because Hitler declared that the natural course of German expansion would eventually carry the Nazi conquest into the fertile Ukrainian agricultural region and then into the rich Russian oil fields.
Later as Stalin watched Hitler cudgel and jostle his way into power he recognized in the Nazi dictator a formidable opponent of his own breed and kind. He saw that Hitler was shrewd and ruthless. He was completely amoral. He had no compunction whatever against violence, the purging of his own people, the use of deceit in propaganda, nor the sacrifice of millions of lives to achieve personal power. Materialism had produced precisely the same product in Germany that it had produced in Russia. Although called by different names Nazism and Communism were aimed at the same identical mark and were forged in very similar ideological molds.
Perhaps this explains why Stalin secretly tried to negotiate a personal understanding with Hitler shortly after the latter came into power during 1933. One of Stalin’s leading secret agents, General W. G. Krivitsky, has furnished the details tails of these efforts.{75} When Stalin’s gestures of friendship were rejected by Hitler; Stalin knew the German Fuehrer could be dealt with only as an outright enemy.
Stalin then hastened to gain the sympathies of the democracies. He attempted to identify Russia’s policies with the political and economic welfare of freedom-loving people in other nations. He called this campaign the “Popular Front.” At the Seventh World Congress of the International in 1935, he instructed loyal Communists in every country to combine with any political groups which opposed Hitler and his allies—even right wing parties which the Communists had previously attacked. Judged by its results, the “Popular Front” was the most successful tactic ever adopted by Communist strategists. It permitted Communists to associate openly with the most conservative and highly respected political groups in capitalist countries.
In 1938 Stalin watched closely as Hitler decided to test the temper of the Western Allies by occupying all of Austria. When no serious consequences resulted, the Fuehrer prepared to assimilate other areas along the German borders. At Munich he threatened to blitzkrieg Europe unless England and France let him take over the industrial section of Czechoslovakia. When they agreed, he immediately extended his occupation to nearly all of that valiant little country.
In 1939 Hitler seized Memelland in Lithuania and then prepared to march into Poland. However, at this point he hesitated. Russia wanted Poland, too. As a matter of fact, Russia held the balance of power in Europe and Hitler did not dare take steps which would start an all-out war in the West unless he could be assured that Russia would not interfere. Hitler, therefore, made overtures to Stalin to sign a nonaggression pact. To the astonishment of the whole world, Stalin accepted! This meant that Hitler could go to war with the assurance that Russia would not interfere.
This caught most of the Communist world completely off guard. For years Red propaganda had portrayed Stalin as the world’s leading opponent of Nazism and Fascism. Now Stalin’s regime had ratified a pact with the Nazis which gave them a carte blanche to start a war in the West.
In America it took the Communist press several days to get their propaganda in reverse. Whittaker Chambers says it was absolutely incomprehensible to American Communists that Stalin would capitulate to his greatest enemy. It was not until Chambers talked with Stalin’s former director of espionage in Western Europe that he heard the official explanation. General W.G. Krivitsky said this pact demonstrated Stalin’s genius as a strategist. He explained that Stalin knew this pact would turn Hitler loose on Europe but that he also knew that as the war progressed it was likely that the western nations would fight themselves into exhaustion. At that point Soviet troops could march in. Almost without a blow the Soviet troops would be able to take over all of Europe in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat!
And just as Stalin had suspected, Hitler was not at all slow to take advantage of the political shove Stalin had given him. The pact was signed August 23, 1939. By September 1, the German Panzers were pouring through the valiant, but helpless ranks of the Polish horse cavalry, and thousands of tons of bombs were falling on Polish cities.
Also, as Stalin had expected, England and France were immediately dragged into the war because of their commitments to Poland. This was a war which these countries were neither physically nor psychologically prepared to wage. Before a year had passed, Poland had been divided between Germany and Russia and France had been occupied. Soon afterwards the British troops were bombed off the European continent at Dunkirk, and the Nazis were then left practically without resistance as they expanded their occupation into Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium.
Assuming that the war would now settle down to a struggle between Germany and England, Stalin felt ready to make his next carefully calculated move. Only two major capitalist nations still remained outside of the conflict: Japan and the United States.
On April 13, 1941, Stalin nudged the Japanese war lords into an offensive in the Pacific. This was accomplished by the same simple device as that which had turned Hitler loose on Europe—a pact.
At that moment Russia, even more than the United States, was the greatest single impediment to Japanese expansion in East Asia and the Pacific. By accepting a pact with Russia, the Japanese war lords were left free to launch their pan-Asiatic campaign in the Pacific and the Far East. They made immediate preparations for their attack.
Stalin now intended to sit back and wait for the capitalist nations to endure their baptism of fire. He had assured the Soviet military leaders that World War II would be won by the nation which stayed out the longest. That nation, of course, must be Russia. What he did not know, however, was that Adolf Hitler had been planning a disastrous surprise for the Communist Motherland. In fact, at the very moment Stalin was promoting his neutrality pact with Japan, Adolf Hitler was secretly announcing to his general staff: “The German armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign.”
The great surprise came on June 22, 1941. Hitler scrapped the pact and attacked Russia on a 2,000 mile front with 121 divisions and 3,000 planes. He had written all about it years before in Mein Kampf.
This sudden blitzkrieg attack changed the history of the world. It shattered Stalin’s intention to stay out of the war while the capitalistic nations fought themselves to exhaustion. It meant that Russia would enter the war prematurely and with the most meager preparations.
To many observers in the United States, this new development in World War II appeared favorable to the interest of peace-loving countries. Hitler’s attack on Russia locked the world’s two greatest aggressor nations in deadly combat and even military leaders thought this might relieve future world tensions. But within six months the Germans had occupied 580,000 square miles of the richest land in the USSR—land originally occupied by more than one third of Russia’s population, and in spite of the “scorched earth” policy of Russia, the Nazi troops successfully extracted their supplies from the people and the land so that they were able to race forward without waiting to have supply lines established. Soon German Panzers had penetrated to a point only sixty miles from Moscow and Hitler announced exuberantly that “Russia is already broken and will never rise again.”
All of this shocked the rest of the world into the reprehensible possibility of a Nazi empire which might extend from England to Alaska. Instinctively Americans began cheering for the Russians. It was considered to be a matter of vital self interest, implemented by the traditional American tendency to cheer for the underdog.
Then the fatal dawn of Sunday, December 7, 1941, brought the devastating attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and the United States found herself in the holocaust of World War II before she was even halfway prepared. In desperation American leaders reached out in all directions for friends. It is important to remember that the black boots of Hitler’s marching Wehrmacht had pounded a paralyzing fear into the hearts of peoples on every continent. It was Nazism—not Communism—that was blotting out the light of civilization around the earth. Therefore, since Russia had already been brought within the orbit of American sympathy, it is not difficult to understand how she became an intimate U.S. ally almost over night. Somehow it seemed impossible to remember that this was the very same Russia that had joined a nonaggression pact with Hitler to turn him loose in Europe, and had joined a neutrality pact with the Japanese to turn them loose in the Pacific.
By the early spring of 1942 it was not only apparent that the war had caught U.S. military strength at a very low level, but it was also equally obvious that the Axis had practically destroyed all of America’s traditional allies. Perhaps, as George F. Kennan suggests, this may partially account for the desperate gamble taken at that time by certain U.S. diplomatic strategists in dealing with Russia.
Already the diplomatic navigators had gone from a policy of plain coexistence with Communism in 1933, to one step lower where they had decided to accept the abuse and the broken promises of the Communist leaders. Now they resolved to go even further. They decided to try to convert the Communist leaders to the American way of thinking by showering them with such overwhelming generosity that there could be no vestige of suspicion concerning the desire of the United States to gain the cooperative support of the Communist leaders in winning the war and later preserving the peace. It was assumed that they would then become permanently and sympathetically allied with the United States and the western democracies in building a “one world” of peace and prosperity.
If this plan had worked, it would have been truly a master stroke of diplomatic genius. Unfortunately, however, it turned out to be just what many military officials and heads of intelligence agencies predicted it would be—the means by which Russia would catapult herself into a world power by capitalizing on the treasure and prestige of the very nation she most desired to destroy.
Nevertheless, the program was inaugurated and America’s attitude toward Russia both during and after World War II can only be understood in terms of this policy.
In early June, 1942, Molotov came secretly to Washington and stayed at the White House. After his departure preparations were made to break the new U.S. policy to the American people. On June 22, 1942, (the anniversary of Hitler’s attack on the USSR) a Russian Aid Rally was held in New York’s Madison Square Garden. There a top government official announced: “A second front? Yes, and if necessary, a third and a fourth front…. We are determined that nothing shall stop us from sharing with you all that we have and are in this conflict, and we look forward to sharing with you the fruits of victory and peace.” Then there followed the pathetic, but blindly hopeful statement: “Generations unborn will owe a great measure of their freedom to the unconquerable power the Soviet people.”{76}
This American policy of generosity immediately began to manifest itself. Billions of dollars of Russian Lend-Lease Were authorized. Even the deliberate sacrifice of American self-interest was evident in some of the orders received by U.S. military services. An order to the Air Service Command dated January 1, 1943, carried this astounding mandate: “The modification, equipment, and movement of Russian planes have given first priority, even over planes for the U.S. Army Forces.”
The U.S. Congress was not quite as enthusiastic toward Russia as the diplomatic strategists. Congress specifically restricted Russian Lend-Lease to materials to be used for military action against the Axis enemy. It forbade the shipment of materials which would be used for civilian personnel or the rehabilitation of Russia after the war. This was in no way designed to show unfriendliness toward the Russian people. It was simply an expression of belief that U.S. resources should not be used to promote Communist Russia into a world power. Some day the Russian people would perhaps regain their freedom, and that would be the time to share resources. Meanwhile, non-military generosity would only strengthen the post-war position of the Communist dictatorship.
In spite of these legal restrictions, however, the uninhibited generosity of the diplomats dominated Lend-Lease rather than Congress or the leaders of the Military.
General John R. Deane, for example, who was in Moscow as Chief of the U.S. Military Mission, turned down a Russian request for 25 large 200-horsepower Diesel marine engines because the engines already sent to Russia were rusting in open storage and from all appearances were simply being stockpiled for post-war use. Furthermore, the engines were badly needed by General MacArthur in the South Pacific. After hearing General Deane’s decision, the Russians appealed to Harry Hopkins (head of the Lend-Lease program) who over-ruled General Deane. During the following two years a total of 1,305 of these engines were sent to Russia at a cost to the American people of $30,745,947.
After Pearl Harbor, when Navy officials were given the highest possible priority for copper wire to be used in the repair of U.S. battleships, they found the Russians had an even higher priority for an order of copper wire which was apparently to be used for post-war rehabilitation of Russian cities. The wire was turned over to the Russians in such quantities that it had to be stored on a 20-acre lot in Westchester County, New York, where it remained until the war was nearly over. A few months before the Armistice, it was shipped to Russia for the rehabilitation of their communications systems.
Since the close of World War II, the American people have gradually learned the details concerning the flood of goods and treasure which went to Russia under Lend-Lease. The lists which have been published are from Russian records. They were secured by an American officer, Major George Racey Jordan, who was the official U.S. expediter for Russian Lend-Lease at the Great Falls Air Base in Montana. An analysis of these lists showed that according to Russian records, the Communists received over eleven billion dollars worth of Lend-Lease and that in spite of the legal restrictions against it, the diplomatic strategists included $3,040,423,000 worth of American goods, paid for by American taxpayers, which definitely does not appear to be authorized by the Lend-Lease act. These lists show shipments of vast stockpiles of “non-munition” chemicals together with voluminous shipments of cigarette cases, phonograph records, ladies’ compacts, sheet music, pianos, antique furniture, $388,844 worth of “notions and cheap novelties,” women’s jewelry, household furnishings, fishing tackle, lipstick, perfumes, dolls, bank vaults, playground equipment, and quantities of many other types of illegal, non-military merchandise.
Students of Russian wartime history point out that American Lend-Lease began feeding into Russia at a time when she was almost prostrate. She had lost most of her crops as a result of the scorched earth campaign designed to slow Nazi advances. Even with Lend-Lease food the troops had to be rationed at a bare subsistence level so it is likely that without
Lend-Lease the Russian resistance might well have collapsed. Furthermore, the Germany occupation cut the Russians off from many of their major industrial centers. In addition to U.S. planes, munitions, chemicals, tools, heavy machinery, and so forth, the amazing American “Arsenal of Democracy” provided Russia with 478,899 motor vehicles. This was nearly half of all the motor vehicles used on the Soviet front.
It is an interesting commentary on the Communist psychology to note that the United States never received an official “thank you” from Russia for the eleven billion dollars worth of Lend-Lease goods which were paid for and literally “donated” to the Communist Motherland by the American people. Stalin’s excuse was that his government felt the United States made an error when it stopped Lend-Lease at the close of the war. He made it icy clear that under the circumstances his people did not feel an expression of gratitude would be either appropriate or justifiable.
Throughout World War II Russian espionage vigorously concentrated on the most important thing to come out of the War—the harnessing of atomic energy. A two-pronged thrust was employed to get the information as it was developed: one by espionage and the other by diplomatic channels. For a time the diplomatic channels were particularly productive, not only for atomic energy secrets, but for all military and industrial information.
Major Jordan first became aware of this at the Great Falls Lend-Lease Air Base when the Russians began bringing large quantities of cheap, black suitcases along with them whenever they left the United States. They refused to let Jordan see the contents on the grounds that the suitcases were pieces of “diplomatic luggage” and therefore immune to inspection.
One night the Russian commander at the base almost demanded that Jordan go into Great Falls as his dinner guest. Jordan was suspicious but accepted. About midnight he received an excited call that a plane had just landed and the Soviets were going to take off for Russia without waiting for Jordan’s clearance. Jordan raced back to the airfield. Sure enough, the plane was a joker. In it were fifty black suitcases protected by armed Russian guards. Jordan ordered a GI to hold the guards at bay and shoot to kill if they forcibly interfered with his inspection.
Jordan later testified under oath before a congressional committee that he found each suitcase to contain a file of information about U.S. industry, harbors, troops, railroads, communications, and so forth. In one suitcase Jordan said he found a letter on White House stationery signed by Harry Hopkins and addressed to the number three man in the Russian hierarchy. Attached to the letter was a map of the top-secret Manhattan (atomic energy) Project, together with descriptive data dealing with atomic energy experiments! One folder in this suitcase had written on it, “From Hiss.” At the time Jordan did not know who Hiss was. Inside the folder were numerous military documents. Another folder contained Department of State documents. Some of them were letters from the U.S. embassy in Moscow giving confidential evaluations of the Russian situation and detailed analytical impressions of Russian officials. Now they were being secretly shipped back for the Russians to read.
When Major Jordan reported the facts to Washington he was severely criticized for holding up the plane!
In April, 1943, the Russian liaison officer told Jordan that a very special shipment of experimental chemicals was coming through. The Russian officer called Harry Hopkins in Washington and then turned the phone over to Jordan. Major Jordan reports that Harry Hopkins told him: “I don’t want you to discuss this with anyone, and it is not to go on the records. Don’t make a big production of it, but just send it through quietly, in a hurry.”
The Russian officer later told Jordan the shipment was “bomb powder” and Jordan saw an entry in the officer’s folder which said “Uranium.” The shipment came through June 10, 1943. It was the first of several. At least 1,465 pounds of uranium salts are said to have been sent through to the Soviet Union. Metallurgists estimate that this could be reduced to 6.25 pounds of fissionable U-235. This is two pounds more than would be necessary to produce an atomic explosion. On July 24, 1945, at Potsdam, President Truman announced to Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin that the United States had finally developed a highly secret bomb. He told them this bomb possessed almost unbelievable explosive power. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes was watching Stalin and noted that he did not seem particularly surprised, or even interested in the announcement. Four years later (September 23, 1949), President Truman announced to the world that Russia had successfully exploded an atomic bomb—years ahead of U.S. expectations! Some officials wondered why, with all the help they received, the Russians had not exploded one long before.
Historically, Russia has always been stronger in defense than in attack. During World War II the Russian people displayed an incredible will to resist during the days when even Hitler thought they were completely beaten. They suffered astronomical losses: 7 million dead (including 2.5 million Russian Jews exterminated by the Nazis and 1.5 million other Soviet civilians killed by the Germans), while approximately 3 million died in combat. From 3 to 4 million were taken prisoners but the number of wounded and maimed is not given. As a result of the war there was a destruction of 1,700 Russian towns, 70,000 villages and hamlets, 31,000 factories, 84,000 schools, 40,000 miles of track, in addition to the destruction of 7 million horses, 17 million head of cattle, and 20 million hogs. This represented about one-fourth of all Soviet property.
There is no way of knowing whether or not Stalin ever forced himself to acknowledge it, but this almost incomprehensible toll of monstrous destruction might very well have been avoided if Stalin had not made the insidious mistake of deliberately signing the pact with Hitler in 1939 which triggered the opening campaign of World War II. There are leading political authorities who now state that if Hitler had been forced to delay his campaign into Poland because of a threat from Russia, it would have given the Western Nations sufficient time to build up their forces, and by restoring a balance power in Europe the entire saga of World War II might have occurred.
During World War II the President of the United States received two different interpretations of Communist policy and two different recommendations as how best to deal with the Communist leaders. One group of advisers took the historical approach, accepted the Communists as the world revolutionists which they described themselves to be, and assumed that their past conduct was the safest criterion of how they might be expected to act in the future. A second group of advisers presented a much more idealistic view of the Communist leaders. They wanted people to forget the past; to look upon Communist boorishness as nothing more than political immaturity, something which could be changed by patient endurance and expansive generosity.
To this second group, there rapidly gravitated not only theoretical idealists, but men and women who were later found to be deeply involved in outright subversion against the United States government.{77} Historians now find it difficult to define just where idealism left off and subversion took over. In any event this was the group which dominated the Lend-Lease program and set the stage for policies which controlled U.S. relations with Russia for approximately fifteen years.
This was also the group of presidential advisers who acclaimed with the greatest enthusiasm the slightest suggestion that the Communists were “changing.” For example, when the Communist International was disbanded May 22, 1943, this group hailed the announcement as incontrovertible evidence that the Communist leaders had renounced world conquest. Others suspected that this was merely a propaganda device. The latter proved to be the case, as Igor Gouzenko, the former Russian code clerk, testified: “The announcement of the dissolution of the Comintern (Communist International) was probably the greatest farce of the Communists in recent years. Only the name was liquidated, with the object of reassuring public opinion in the democratic countries. Actually the Comintern exists and continues its work, because the Soviet leaders have never relinquished the idea of establishing a Communist dictatorship.”{78}
When many high officials of the President’s own party saw the dangerous direction in which U.S. policy was moving, they hastened to warn him. One interesting conversation took place during the war between the President and his good friend, William C. Bullitt, whom the President had sent to Russia as the first U.S. ambassador in 1933. Mr. Bullitt had just finished outlining to the President many of his personal experiences with Joseph Stalin, and had warned the President to keep up his guard when dealing with the Communist leaders.
“Bill,” replied the President, “I don’t dispute your facts; they are accurate. I don’t dispute the logic of your reasoning. I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. Harry (Hopkins) says he’s not, and that he doesn’t want anything but security for his country. And I think that if I give him everything that I can, and ask nothing from him in return… he won’t try to annex anything, and will work with me for a world peace and democracy.”{79}
The philosophy reflected in this statement is the keynote to an understanding of the conferences held by the “Big Three” toward the close of the war. By that time the diplomatic strategy of the United States (which began with simple co-existence in 1933) had passed into its fourth phase—the complete acceptance of the Russian Communists as full partners the plans for preserving future world peace.
During August and September 1944, the representatives of Britain, China, Russia and the United States, met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. At this conference the constitutional foundation for the United Nations was laid. In it Russia was not only made a full partner, but a dominant stockholder. A most significant development was the fact that, while other nations objected, Russia insisted on the right to exercise the veto power even if she were a party to the dispute. This violated the very foundation of international jurisprudence but the democracies consented. They were ready to pay almost any price to get Russia to participate.
By December 28, 1944, the American Ambassador to Russia began to express misgivings about U.S.-Soviet relations and the part Russia would play in the post-war period: “The Soviets have definite objectives in their future foreign policy, all of which we do not as yet fully understand…. From Soviet actions so far, the terms ‘friendly’ and ‘independent’ appear to mean something quite different from our own interpretation.”{80}
Once the tide of war had turned, there was an increased arrogance in Soviet treatment of U.S. officials. General Deane wrote to Washington about Lend-Lease and said: “Even our giving is viewed with suspicion…. The party of the second part (the U.S.) is either a shrewd trader to be admired or a sucker to be despised…. I have yet to see the inside of a Russian home. Officials dare not become too friendly with us, and others are persecuted for this offense.”{81}
By the following April the Prime Minister of England was becoming fed up with the whole Russian picture. He appealed to President Roosevelt: “I deem it of the highest importance that a firm and blunt stand should be made at this juncture by our two countries in order that the air may be cleared and they (the Russians) realize that there is a point beyond which we will not tolerate insult.”{82}
There is some evidence that the President of the United States was also beginning to awaken to the realities of the situation, but one week after this message was written, President Roosevelt died. The monumental task of finishing the war and building the United Nations fell into the hands of those who still insisted that the Russians were being misunderstood and that a successful partnership could be definitely achieved.
On April 25, 1945, 1,400 representatives from 46 nations met in San Francisco, and after due deliberation agreed upon a United Nations Charter.
Anyone familiar with the Communist Constitution of Russia will recognize in the United Nations Charter a similar format. It is characterized by a fervent declaration of democratic principles which are sound and desirable; this is then followed by a constitutional restriction or procedural limitation which completely nullifies the principles just announced. For example, the Russian Constitution provides for universal suffrage and voting by secret ballot. Then, in Article 126, it provides for a single political party (the Communist Party) which will furnish the voters with a single roster of candidates. This, of course renders completely meaningless all the high-flown phrases dealing with universal suffrage and secret ballots. Freedom of the press is likewise guaranteed, and then wiped out by the provision that all writings must be “in the interest of the workers.”
In precisely this same way the United Nations Charter provides for “the sovereign equality of all its members” (Article 1) and then sets up a Security Council which is dominated by five permanent members (Britain, Russia, China, France and the United States) any one of which can nullify the expressed desires of all other member nations by the simple device of exercising the veto power.
The Charter allows each member nation to have one vote in the General Assembly. This sounds like democracy, but then it provides that the General Assembly can do nothing more than make recommendations, and must refer all of its suggestions to the Security Council for action! (Articles 11–14). This makes the Security Council the only legally binding legislative body in the U.N. To make this absolutely crystal clear the Charter provides in Article 24 that any nation which joins the U.N. must “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.”
This means that in spite of the bold declaration that the U.N. is “based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” the cold fact is that the members are all committed to obey the will of a handful of nations in the Security Council. As the next ten years dramatically demonstrated, all members of the U.N.—particularly the little nations—could be subjected to the choke-hold which the USSR had provided for herself by holding membership in the Security Council and dominating that body through the frequent use of the veto power.
The Charter further provides that membership in the U.N. shall be restricted to “peace-loving” states (Article 4). This was thoroughly discussed at San Francisco, and Secretary John Foster Dulles has emphasized that the U.N. was designed to be a collective organization of friendly nations to preserve peace rather than an assemblage of all the nations in the world. In other words, the United Nations was built on the premise that its members would only include those nations which had had a demonstrated history of being “peace-loving.” Eight years after the adoption of the U.N. Charter, Secretary lies explained to the American Bar Association why the United Nations had failed to preserve the peace: “Now we see the inadequacy of an organization whose effective functioning depends upon cooperation with a nation which is dominated by international party seeking world dominion.”{83}
As some authorities have since pointed out, the U.N. provided for a world-wide police commission and then made the top international gangster a member of that commission. It was like setting up a fire department to put out the conflagration of war and then putting the world-community’s foremost firebug on the department. From the point of view of the little nations, it was like promising to provide a good shepherd to protect the small, weak countries, and then appointing the wolf and all her pups to protect the flock.
All this became apparent during the “decade of disillusionment” which immediately followed. In 1945, however, a war-weary, hopeful free world felt the United Nations was all it purported to be—an organization for collective security designed to stand like a bastion against aggressor nations.
A clear indication of what the United States could expect from post-war Communism came on May 24, 1945, when the leading French Communist, Jacques Duclos, wrote a letter on behalf of his Russian superiors demanding that the Communists in the United States be required to immediately abandon their policy of friendly collaboration with capitalism and return to their historic mission of world revolution. Back in 1940 the Communist Party of America had formally withdrawn from the Third International to avoid having to register as a foreign agent under the Voorhis Act. Later the Communist Party of America was dissolved in an attempt to attach the Communist membership to one of the major U.S. political parties. For this purpose they called themselves the Communist Political Association.
All of this twisting and turning was in complete harmony with Soviet policy until 1945. After World War II, the announced policy reverted to traditional Marxism. To justify the complete switch in policy, Earl Browder, the American Communist leader, was accused of being personally responsible for the “errors” of the former policy. He was expelled from the party.
The party leadership was immediately taken over by William Z. Foster. Foster, it will be recalled, had written an inflammatory book in 1932 called Toward Soviet America. Just before World War II he had testified before a Congressional Committee: “When a Communist heads a government of the United States, and that day will come just as surely as the sun rises, that government will not be a capitalistic government, but a Soviet government, and behind this government will stand the Red Army to enforce the dictatorship of the proletariat.”{84}
It is no longer difficult to understand why Moscow wanted men like Foster at the head of its Communist parties throughout the world. We now know that the Russian leaders approached the conclusion of the world’s greatest war with the conviction that World War III might be in the near offing. In their secret circles they hopefully speculated that this next war might be Communism’s final death struggle with capitalism.
Igor Gouzenko states that after the armistice, he and the other employees in the Russian Embassy at Ottawa, Canada, were warned against an attitude of complacency. Colonel Zabotin gathered the employees together and then referred to the free-world democracies as follows: “Yesterday they were our allies, today they are our neighbors, tomorrow they will be our enemies!”{85}
Remarkable insight into the Communist mind during this Period can also be obtained from a speech delivered to an intimate circle of Communist leaders by Marshal Tito, head the party in Yugoslavia:
“The second capitalist war, in which Russia was attacked by her most dangerous and strongest fascist enemy, has ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet Union. But this does not mean that Marxism has won a final victory over capitalism…. Our collaboration with capitalism during the war which has recently ended, by no means signifies that we shall prolong our alliance with it in the future. On the contrary, the capitalist forces constitute our natural enemy despite the fact that they helped us to defeat their most dangerous representative. It may happen that we shall again decide to make use of their aid, but always with the sole aim of accelerating their final ruin….
“The atomic bomb is a new factor by means of which the capitalist forces wish to destroy the Soviet Union and the victorious prospects of the working class. It is their only remaining hope…. Our aims have not been realized in the desired form because the construction of the Atomic bomb was speeded up and perfected as early as 1945. But we are not far from the realization of our aims. We must gain a little more time for the reorganization of our ranks and the perfecting of our preparations in arms and munitions.
“Our present policy should, therefore, be to follow a moderate line, in order to gain time for the economic and industrial reconstruction of the Soviet Union and of the other states under our control. Then the moment will come when we can hurl ourselves into the battle for the final annihilation of reaction.”{86}
Such were the reflections of Communist leaders as they emerged from World War II as the second greatest political power on earth. They felt Communism might have unprecedented possibilities as the “brave new world” entered the post-war period.