Roosevelt (73 page)

The President was resting in his new bedroom when Reilly came in to say that the Marshal was on his way over. Roosevelt was quickly wheeled to his big sitting room. Stalin came in slowly, smiling, reached down, and shook hands. The President saw a short man, dignified, relaxed, dressed in a tightly buttoned, mustard-colored uniform with red facings, large gold epaulets on the shoulders, and one medal, a red-and-gold ribbon suspending a gold star. The two interpreters, V. N. Pavlov and Charles E. Bohlen, were the only others present.

“I am glad to see you,” the President said. “I have tried for a long time to bring this about.” For half an hour the two men chatted. The President led the conversation, touching on the Soviet battle front (Stalin: the Red Army was barely holding the initiative with the Germans having brought up more divisions); Chiang Kai-shek (Stalin: the Chinese soldiers fought bravely but the leadership was poor); de Gaulle (Stalin: de Gaulle acted like the head of a great state but actually commanded little power); the need to prepare Indochina for independence (Stalin: agreed); the need for reform from the bottom in India, “somewhat on the Soviet line” (Stalin: reform from the bottom would mean revolution).

“…Seems very confident, very sure of himself, moves slowly—altogether quite impressive, I’d say,” Roosevelt remarked to his son Elliott later.

The first plenary session got under way directly. Roosevelt had his full diplomatic and military staff with him, except that Marshall and Arnold had been misinformed about the schedule and were still sight-seeing. Churchill, flanked by Eden, Dill, Brooke, Cunningham, Portal, and Ismay sat to the left of the Americans. Stalin had only Molotov and Marshal Kliment Y. Voroshilov flanking him. The men sat around a ten-foot-wide oaken table specially created for the occasion by local carpenters and made round so that no one would sit at the head of the table. But Roosevelt, on the ground that he was the youngest present (and with the prior agreement of the other two), opened the proceedings by welcoming his elders to a family circle whose only object was to win the war. Churchill remarked that this was the greatest concentration of power the world had ever seen; history lay in their hands. Stalin offered a brief welcome, then said, “Let us get down to business.”

The President began with a general survey of the war, stressing first his nation’s commitment of most of its naval power and of one million men to the Pacific. He sketched out the military plans for China. Then he turned to the cross-channel invasion, which had been delayed, he said, mainly by lack of sea transport. The Channel was such a disagreeable body of water that the attack could not be launched before May 1, 1944.

“We are very glad it was such a disagreeable body of water at one time,” Churchill put in. The question, Roosevelt went on, was whether other operations—in Italy, the Adriatic, the Aegean, from Turkey—could make use of Allied forces in Italy, at the possible expense of one to three months’ delay for
OVERLORD.
He and Churchill sought the Marshal’s views.

Stalin went straight to the point. The Soviets welcomed American successes in the Pacific. He regretted that the Soviet Union had not
been able to help, but its forces were fighting Germany. His strength in the east was enough for defense but would have to be trebled for attack. Once Germany was finally defeated, “we shall be able by our common front to win.” Stalin said this casually, without raising his voice; then he abruptly turned to Europe. There, he said, he had over three hundred divisions and the Axis had 260. The Germans at the moment were trying to recapture Kiev with some thirty motorized and tank divisions. As for Italy, that was no place from which to attack Germany proper, for the Alps were an insuperable barrier, as the famous Russian General Suvorov had discovered a century and a half before. The best way to get to the heart of Germany was through northern and southern France. But he warned that the Germans would fight like devils.

Roosevelt and Stalin had now put Churchill on the defensive, but the old warrior rose to the occasion. There was no question, he said, about the cross-channel operation, which would take place in the late spring or early summer. But that was six months away. What could be done in the meantime, after the capture of Rome—which he hoped would take place in January 1944—that would help relieve the Soviet front and not delay
OVERLORD
by more than a month or two? Could Turkey be persuaded to enter the war? Could help be given to the Yugoslavs? Churchill himself denied any plan to send a large army to the Balkans; it was Roosevelt who, to the surprise of his aides, raised the possibility of an Allied drive at the head of the Adriatic to join with the Yugoslavs and push northeast in conjunction with the Soviet advance west.

So within an hour the positions had been taken: Stalin for an advance into the German heartland, Churchill for wider Mediterranean operations, and Roosevelt—as Churchill later complained—drifting to and fro. The Marshal bluntly opposed Churchill’s strategy as undue dispersion and his specific proposals as undesirable. He doubted that Turkey would enter the war except by the scruff of the neck. When Churchill kept arguing for making use of Mediterranean troops after the capture of Rome, Stalin coolly proposed again that the Anglo-Americans invade southern France in advance of
OVERLORD.
France, he said, was the weakest of all German-occupied areas. The meeting broke up inconclusively.

That evening Roosevelt had Stalin and Churchill and their top aides to dinner at his headquarters. The White House messmen, having moved into a strange kitchen only a few hours before, somehow came up with a dinner for eleven. Postwar Europe was the focus of talk. Stalin coldly wrote off Russia’s old enemies. The French ruling class was rotten to the core. Roosevelt said he agreed in part; it would be well to eliminate in any future government of France anyone over forty. Stalin said the Reich must be
dismembered and rendered impotent ever again to plunge the world into war. Roosevelt proposed an international trusteeship over the approaches to the Baltic; Stalin misunderstood at first, thought Roosevelt was proposing a trusteeship for the Baltic nations, and absolutely ruled this out.

The President felt ill after dinner and retired early. The atmosphere there became even cooler after he left. Stalin was obviously dissatisfied with Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s proposals for Germany. He had no faith in the notion of reforming the German people. He did not share the President’s view, he told Churchill, that the Führer was mentally unbalanced. He was an able man but not basically intelligent, lacking in culture and with a primitive approach to politics. And the Marshal questioned the unconditional-surrender doctrine, which served merely to unite the German people. Much better to draw up harsh terms and simply tell the Germans to accept them. That would hasten the day of German surrender.

Afterward, back at the British Legation, Churchill was in a black depression. “Stupendous issues are unfolding before our eyes, and we are only specks of dust that have settled in the night on the map of the world.” The President had remarked to him, he went on, “You may go at the election, but I shan’t.” Had the President said much in the conference? someone asked. Churchill hesitated. “Harry Hopkins said that the President was inept. He was asked a lot of questions and gave the wrong answers.”

Next day Roosevelt seemed fully recovered. Churchill sent word proposing that they lunch together; to Churchill’s dismay Roosevelt declined because he feared Stalin would suspect they were hatching some scheme if they met privately. But after lunch he met privately with Stalin and Molotov. The President wanted to sound out the Russians on postwar organization. He proposed his plan for the Four Policemen with power to deal quickly with threats to peace; a ten-nation executive committee to consider nonmilitary questions; an assembly representing all the United Nations. Stalin doubted that the small nations of Europe would like an organization of the Four Policemen. He doubted that China would be very powerful at the end of the war. He doubted that the United States Congress would agree to American participation in an exclusively European committee which might be able to force the dispatch of American troops to Europe. On the last point Roosevelt agreed; it would take a terrible crisis, he said, for Congress to agree to that. He had envisaged sending only American planes and ships to Europe; Britain and Russia would handle the land armies against a threat to peace. On China, Roosevelt disagreed with the Russian. “After all,” he said, “China is a nation of 400 million people, and
it is better to have them as friends than as a potential source of trouble.”

A brilliant ceremony now intervened. Between rows of towering British and Soviet soldiers in the big conference room Churchill presented Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad, forged by English craftsmen and given by King George to the “steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad.” His eyes glistening, Stalin raised the sparkling blade to his lips and kissed it, then walked over and showed the weapon to the President, who drew the long blade from the scabbard and held it aloft. His big hands barely covered the hilt. Then he returned the sword to the scabbard with a clang, and it was carried off by an escort.

But no sword of honor could cut through the knotted differences among the three leaders. At the second plenary session, after a report from the CCS reflecting little progress at its morning session, Stalin opened the discussion with an abrupt question:

“Who will command Overlord?”

“It has not been decided,” Roosevelt said.

“Then nothing will come out of these operations,” Stalin said. Somebody had to be in charge. Once again Churchill launched into a long defense of Mediterranean possibilities; once again the Marshal insisted that they were only diversionary; once again the President referred favorably to Mediterranean alternatives but worried that they might delay
OVERLORD
unduly—here again was the old suction pump that Marshall had long feared. The President proposed that
OVERLORD
take place not later than mid-May; Churchill said he could not agree. Roosevelt proposed an
ad-hoc
committee to consider the matter. Stalin balked. What could a committee do that they could not?

“Do the British really believe in Overlord,” he asked, “or are they only saying so to reassure the Soviet Union?”

The meeting broke up in disagreement. That evening Stalin was host at a small dinner. He taunted and twitted Churchill, while the President looked on. The Prime Minister, he said, had a secret affection for Germany. He wanted a soft peace. He thought that just because the Russians were a simple people they were also blind. Later in the evening, after innumerable toasts, Stalin returned to his theme. Fifty thousand Germans had to be rounded up and liquidated after the war. Churchill retorted that he and his country would not stand for such butchery. Stalin repeated: “Fifty thousand must be liquidated.”

Here the President spoke up. He had a compromise: only 49,000 should be shot. Elliott Roosevelt protested that all this was academic; the soldiers on the field would take care of more than 50,000. At this Churchill rose from the table and stalked out of the
room, only to be followed by a grinning Stalin, who clapped his hand on Churchill’s shoulder and persuaded him to return.

The conferences went on the next day, Stalin doodling, smoking, scratching words on square-crossed pieces of paper, speaking quietly, arguing bluntly; Churchill glowering behind his glasses, gesticulating with his cigar, lofting into flights of oratory; Roosevelt listening, measuring, interposing, placating. The discussions flowed on, but at some point on November 30, the third day of discussions, the balance swung slowly but inexorably against Churchill and peripheralism. It was partly because the CCS had met in the morning and hammered out a recommendation for
OVERLORD,
combined with a landing in southern France; partly because Stalin, in a tête-à-tête, had warned Churchill sharply that an Allied failure to invade in May would cause a bad reaction and “feeling of isolation” in the Red Army; partly because Churchill was increasingly hopeful that if the Mediterranean effort had to be subordinated to
OVERLORD,
Bay of Bengal plans could be subordinated to the Mediterranean,
“OVERLORD
in May” was confirmed at a “Three Only” (plus interpreters) luncheon shortly thereafter, and at the third plenary session in the afternoon. Stalin promised to launch a major attack from the east at the same time.

That evening Churchill celebrated his sixty-ninth birthday at a dinner for thirty-three at his legation. Roosevelt sat directly on his right, Stalin on his left. Spirits ran high. Roosevelt had learned how to make a small glass last for a dozen toasts. He saluted George VI; Churchill toasted Roosevelt as defender of democracy and Stalin as Stalin the Great; the Marshal saluted the Russian people and American production—especially of 10,000 planes a month. “Without these planes from America the war would have been lost.” He ended with a toast to the President. At two in the morning Roosevelt asked for the privilege of the last word.

“There has been discussion here tonight,” he said, “of our varying colors of political complexion. I like to think of this in terms of the rainbow. In our country the rainbow is a symbol of good fortune and of hope. It has many varying colors, each individualistic, but blending into one glorious whole.

“Thus with our nations. We have differing customs and philosophies and ways of life. Each of us works out our scheme of things according to the desires and ideas of our own peoples.

“But we have proved here at Teheran that the varying ideals of our nations can come together in a harmonious whole, moving unitedly for the common good of ourselves and of the world….”

The conference might well have ended on this note of harmony, but political questions lay always in the background. At a series of
meetings the next day Stalin agreed to help persuade the Turks to enter the war, though he still doubted that they would. He argued for the dismemberment and crushing of Germany. He would demand heavy reparations from Finland and the restoration of the treaty of 1940, with the possible exchange of Petsamo for Hangö. Roosevelt and Churchill jousted with him innocuously on these questions. But Poland, as always, was the pinch, and Roosevelt knew that he would have to come back to it.