Word: stalins
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What binds these strongly independent men is a warm personal admiration-and, of course, a powerful common interest in resisting Hitler. The letters graphically show how that interest leads them into their thorny alliance with Joseph Stalin. In what must be one of the harshest summit conferences ever endured, Churchill goes to Moscow in 1942 to inform Stalin that the Western Allies cannot possibly open a second front in France that year. "We argued for about two hours," Churchill reports to Roosevelt, "during which he said many disagreeable things, especially about our being too much afraid of fighting the Germans...
Roosevelt wants to reinforce the shaky new alliance by holding his own meeting with Stalin-or UJ. for Uncle Joe, as he and Churchill now call the dictator-because, as Roosevelt very bluntly puts it, "Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better." Roosevelt artfully tries to avoid a preliminary meeting with the truculent Churchill: "I do not want to give Stalin the impression that we are settling everything between ourselves before we meet him." But that is exactly what Churchill insists on: "It is grand of you to come and I will...
Thus occurs the Casablanca conference, the fourth of their eleven wartime meetings. Here Churchill gets his way, persuading Roosevelt to pursue a "Mediterranean strategy" of invading Italy rather than France, to Stalin's fury. But Churchill also begins to see how U.S. power is overtaking that of Britain. At one point he hopes that "our numbers justify increased representation for us in the high command." At another, he describes himself to Roosevelt, a little ruefully, as "your lieutenant...
...British empire fades, the chief empire builder becomes Uncle Joe, and the focal point of controversy becomes Poland. Churchill has backed one Polish exile "government" and Stalin another. Now, with the Red Army sweeping across Eastern Europe, Stalin demands and then seizes total power for his puppets. Churchill's protests go for nothing. Roosevelt, weary unto death ever since the Yalta conference early in 1945, remains all too characteristically hopeful. "I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible," he says in one of his last messages to Churchill, on April 11, 1945, "because these problems...
...capitalism, the ripping away of their markets, their profits, an end to the despotic rule of the landlords, bosses, military, and the specter of workers and peasants taking power--as was done in 1917 in Russia under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Despite the bureaucratic degeneration led by Stalin, the economic gains of the Russian Revolution remain and must be defended against imperialist counter-revolution...