6. The Main Pockets of Resistance to Supporting Stalin
by James J. Martin
Despite the rising tide of contrived pro-Stalinist sympathy, there remained pockets of obdurate opposition in the U.S., some of them anti-Stalinist throughout the war, even during the period of ardent official pro-Sovietism which reached its peak in 1943. Clerics, disaffected liberals with longstanding reputations as critics of Bolshevism, and relapsed fellow travelers with Lenin and Stalin made up most of the people involved in the public expression of this hostility. Politicians, businessmen, and the highly placed socially and culturally were noticeably absent from this contingent.
A particularly thorny case was that of the American Mercury, once the property of H.L. Mencken, and, in 1941, after a number of changes, published by Lawrence Spivak, later to become familiar as the moderator and host of the radio and television show, "Meet the Press." Its new editor was Eugene Lyons, a one time warm pro-Soviet foreign correspondent, whom Edmund Wilson had once described as having "spent some of the best years of his life whooping it up for the Soviets." Lyons now was as hostile as he had ever been favorable, and set for the Mercury a curious editorial line, hostile to Hitler, for involvement of the U.S.A. in the European war, but also probably more hostile to Stalin than Hitler, presumably on the grounds that though disliking both immensely, he felt that Hitler, having no friendly support in the country, was less formidable in the editorial assault on dictatorial systems. Tackling Stalin so resolutely was perhaps a tougher problem for Lyons, in view of the snowballing of support for the Soviet. And how he hoped to keep from benefiting Stalin by urging a pro-war course was not explained at all.
Lyons had just published what was to prove a very influential book, The Red Decade (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill) when the Reds went to war with the Nazis. Its description of the meticulous and detailed penetration of the U.S.A. by pro-Soviet influence and its spread through all the agencies of American culture in the ten years or so prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 was to be a veritable reference work for a generation after its publication. For the pro-Soviet-support elements of the Roosevelt Administration it was an awkward book, published and reviewed at an awkward time. Both Newsweek and the New York Herald Tribune had kind words for it in September 1941, the latter review being by Nicholas Roosevelt.(71) At about that time the August Mercury was being sold on the newstands, which contained a fierce Lyons article, "The End of Joseph Stalin,"(72) which anticipated his downfall at Hitler's hands, and which Lyons, though very hostile to Hitler as well, thought was richly deserved. The piece included a long catalog of the things Stalin had done which Lyons thought had made Hitler possible. Lyons was still furious at the Red boss for having rejected the "democratic allies" and signing the August 1939 Pakt with Hitler. It was Lyons' thesis that an accommodating, abject and obsequious Stalin had finally been spurned by the contemptuous Nazis. Much of this was wishful thinking and ignored entirely the possibility that the war in Eastern Europe grew out of Stalinist pressures on Hitler. Lyons' follow-up, "Some Plain Talk on Russia,"(73) was a heated blast upon the tendency to lump the Soviets with the Anglo-French-American democracies, now that Britain and the U.S.A. were offering the Reds material aid. But his striving to keep Anglo-American selfish interests in this matter in the foreground was beginning to have an effect on his judgment. Lyons in November 1941 thought that it was the height of impossibility to imagine a future Red swamping of Europe. Britain and America could assist the Russians wholeheartedly "without any fear of a Red tidal wave overwhelming Europe-because they know that a decisive Russian victory is not even a remote possibility." But he did expect another Moscow- Berlin pact between the now-warring former non-belligerents, and suggested that no guarantee of any kind made by Stalin to the Western powers was worth the paper it might be written on, adding that Stalin's "adherence to the Anglo-American 'Atlantic Charter' is a cynical joke," though from 1945 on there were many who thought the behavior of the Charter's founders no less reprehensible.
A skilled recruit to Lyons' side, adding other dimensions to the frontal attack on Communism, domestic and foreign, was another veteran one-time well-wisher of the Bolsheviks, Max Eastman. Eastman's enthusiastic review of Lyons' book was published by the New York Times on September 7, 1941.(74) In an extrapolation on Lyons' book, Eastman's Mercury essay "Stalin's American Power," which subsequently was reprinted by the far larger circulation Readers Digest, enlarged upon the Red fronts in the U.S.A. and their pushing of Russian foreign policy. But making frequent use of the term "Communist conspiracy," once the main property of the Social Democratic Federation's organ, the New Leader, Eastman confined himself to largely ideological elements, and paid no attention to the burgeoning pro-Sovietism discernible among the top business and professional layers of American society. The small Communist press in the U.S.A. took much comfort in steadily growing pro-Soviet sentiments there and elsewhere in the land, the New Masses denoucing Eastman's as "a kind of digest of Lyons' indigestible book," and "a miserably cheap attempt to throw dust into the eyes of millions who at last see the Soviet Union with clarity."(75)
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by James J. Martin
Despite the rising tide of contrived pro-Stalinist sympathy, there remained pockets of obdurate opposition in the U.S., some of them anti-Stalinist throughout the war, even during the period of ardent official pro-Sovietism which reached its peak in 1943. Clerics, disaffected liberals with longstanding reputations as critics of Bolshevism, and relapsed fellow travelers with Lenin and Stalin made up most of the people involved in the public expression of this hostility. Politicians, businessmen, and the highly placed socially and culturally were noticeably absent from this contingent.
A particularly thorny case was that of the American Mercury, once the property of H.L. Mencken, and, in 1941, after a number of changes, published by Lawrence Spivak, later to become familiar as the moderator and host of the radio and television show, "Meet the Press." Its new editor was Eugene Lyons, a one time warm pro-Soviet foreign correspondent, whom Edmund Wilson had once described as having "spent some of the best years of his life whooping it up for the Soviets." Lyons now was as hostile as he had ever been favorable, and set for the Mercury a curious editorial line, hostile to Hitler, for involvement of the U.S.A. in the European war, but also probably more hostile to Stalin than Hitler, presumably on the grounds that though disliking both immensely, he felt that Hitler, having no friendly support in the country, was less formidable in the editorial assault on dictatorial systems. Tackling Stalin so resolutely was perhaps a tougher problem for Lyons, in view of the snowballing of support for the Soviet. And how he hoped to keep from benefiting Stalin by urging a pro-war course was not explained at all.
Lyons had just published what was to prove a very influential book, The Red Decade (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill) when the Reds went to war with the Nazis. Its description of the meticulous and detailed penetration of the U.S.A. by pro-Soviet influence and its spread through all the agencies of American culture in the ten years or so prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 was to be a veritable reference work for a generation after its publication. For the pro-Soviet-support elements of the Roosevelt Administration it was an awkward book, published and reviewed at an awkward time. Both Newsweek and the New York Herald Tribune had kind words for it in September 1941, the latter review being by Nicholas Roosevelt.(71) At about that time the August Mercury was being sold on the newstands, which contained a fierce Lyons article, "The End of Joseph Stalin,"(72) which anticipated his downfall at Hitler's hands, and which Lyons, though very hostile to Hitler as well, thought was richly deserved. The piece included a long catalog of the things Stalin had done which Lyons thought had made Hitler possible. Lyons was still furious at the Red boss for having rejected the "democratic allies" and signing the August 1939 Pakt with Hitler. It was Lyons' thesis that an accommodating, abject and obsequious Stalin had finally been spurned by the contemptuous Nazis. Much of this was wishful thinking and ignored entirely the possibility that the war in Eastern Europe grew out of Stalinist pressures on Hitler. Lyons' follow-up, "Some Plain Talk on Russia,"(73) was a heated blast upon the tendency to lump the Soviets with the Anglo-French-American democracies, now that Britain and the U.S.A. were offering the Reds material aid. But his striving to keep Anglo-American selfish interests in this matter in the foreground was beginning to have an effect on his judgment. Lyons in November 1941 thought that it was the height of impossibility to imagine a future Red swamping of Europe. Britain and America could assist the Russians wholeheartedly "without any fear of a Red tidal wave overwhelming Europe-because they know that a decisive Russian victory is not even a remote possibility." But he did expect another Moscow- Berlin pact between the now-warring former non-belligerents, and suggested that no guarantee of any kind made by Stalin to the Western powers was worth the paper it might be written on, adding that Stalin's "adherence to the Anglo-American 'Atlantic Charter' is a cynical joke," though from 1945 on there were many who thought the behavior of the Charter's founders no less reprehensible.
A skilled recruit to Lyons' side, adding other dimensions to the frontal attack on Communism, domestic and foreign, was another veteran one-time well-wisher of the Bolsheviks, Max Eastman. Eastman's enthusiastic review of Lyons' book was published by the New York Times on September 7, 1941.(74) In an extrapolation on Lyons' book, Eastman's Mercury essay "Stalin's American Power," which subsequently was reprinted by the far larger circulation Readers Digest, enlarged upon the Red fronts in the U.S.A. and their pushing of Russian foreign policy. But making frequent use of the term "Communist conspiracy," once the main property of the Social Democratic Federation's organ, the New Leader, Eastman confined himself to largely ideological elements, and paid no attention to the burgeoning pro-Sovietism discernible among the top business and professional layers of American society. The small Communist press in the U.S.A. took much comfort in steadily growing pro-Soviet sentiments there and elsewhere in the land, the New Masses denoucing Eastman's as "a kind of digest of Lyons' indigestible book," and "a miserably cheap attempt to throw dust into the eyes of millions who at last see the Soviet Union with clarity."(75)
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7. American Communists as a Complication in the Soviet Aid Debate
by James J. Martin
To be sure, there were serious aspects of the domestic Communist issue for the war-bound involvement elements and the Administration, as well as for the Workers' Fatherland. The salvation of Russian Communism did not rest with the CPUSA, whose only product was words, but with the producers of tanks, planes, guns and food, as well as a thousand other items useful in Stalin's "war effort." Any U.S. Communist activity of a propaganda or agitational nature that interfered with this undoubtedly would draw a prompt frown of disapproval from the Kremlin. The U.S. Communist press swing from peace to war overnight after June 22, 1941, was a most ludicrous lurch. The conversion of all their peace fronts to violent pro-war mobs, the return of "appeaser" to indicate the genuine peace forces remaining of 1935-39, and the disappearance of "warmonger" as a description of the Anglophiles still breathing belligerence, all hardly went unnoticed on the American scene. With the Daily Worker by the end of the third month of the Russo-German war praising West Point and glorifying army life, it was easy to note what was on their mind.
For the elements which had been for war all the time, it was now their time to watch for Communists "boring from within," as it had been the problem of the "isolationists" and non- involvement committees and organizations between August 23, 1939, and June 22, 1941. The former had obstacles in going ahead with their goal of fighting a nice, clear-cut Anglo-American vs German war, with no Reds in it. The Fight For Freedom Committee was one of the first warrior civilian groups to put its members on the alert as to this difficulty.(78) Newsweek told all on September 22 that the FBI was "still carefully checking on U.S. Communist activities," though this must have been hard to do and not run afoul of the FDR camp's involvement proclivities which dealt with generous pro-Stalinist assistance plans, all vigorously championed by domestic Reds as well.(79)
The real mess however was in the ranks of labor. Communist strength in the roughly 7-year-old Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) promptly flexed its muscle. By mid- September 20 CIO unions were already demanding the U.S.A. go to war against Germany. And a curious arabesque was performed internally. The elements led by Sidney Hillman, pro-war and pro- FDR, known down to June 1941 as "the old right wing," as U.S. News put it, and confronted by labor led by John L. Lewis, anti- war and anti-FDR, "the old left wing," had by September 1941 changed identities.(78) Lewis and his cohorts now were assembled under the "right wing" tag, and Hillman and his the contrary designation. The Communists in the CIO and the Daily Worker were now both berating Lewis as an "appeaser" and "isolationist" after having praised him for the identical stands during the period of Stalinist non-involvement in the European war. Labor-watchers now were of the view that the Communists were now trying to cuddle to Hillman, who was formally rejecting a working alliance with them, though finding their support of war policies comforting.
In mid-September 1941 also, Stalin obviously had far more on his mind than Anglophile American warmongers unhappy over the CPUSA infiltrating their simon-pure pro-war fronts. But Newsweek informed its readers at that moment that Stalin had "in- directly asked" the USCP to "quiet down," and might even "publicly request it to dissolve formally," in the interests of relieving "the strain which CP activities put on U.S.-Russian and British-Russian relations." Hopkins was supposed to have suggested this course to Stalin.(79) And in truth there really was no need for an American Communist Party now. Its chores were performed by many magnitudes beyond its capacity by the majority of the conventional press and radio in the U.S.A., bellowing mightily for support of Stalin in all ways, promotional assistance to a national administration already involved in massive planning toward the achievement of this goal.
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by James J. Martin
To be sure, there were serious aspects of the domestic Communist issue for the war-bound involvement elements and the Administration, as well as for the Workers' Fatherland. The salvation of Russian Communism did not rest with the CPUSA, whose only product was words, but with the producers of tanks, planes, guns and food, as well as a thousand other items useful in Stalin's "war effort." Any U.S. Communist activity of a propaganda or agitational nature that interfered with this undoubtedly would draw a prompt frown of disapproval from the Kremlin. The U.S. Communist press swing from peace to war overnight after June 22, 1941, was a most ludicrous lurch. The conversion of all their peace fronts to violent pro-war mobs, the return of "appeaser" to indicate the genuine peace forces remaining of 1935-39, and the disappearance of "warmonger" as a description of the Anglophiles still breathing belligerence, all hardly went unnoticed on the American scene. With the Daily Worker by the end of the third month of the Russo-German war praising West Point and glorifying army life, it was easy to note what was on their mind.
For the elements which had been for war all the time, it was now their time to watch for Communists "boring from within," as it had been the problem of the "isolationists" and non- involvement committees and organizations between August 23, 1939, and June 22, 1941. The former had obstacles in going ahead with their goal of fighting a nice, clear-cut Anglo-American vs German war, with no Reds in it. The Fight For Freedom Committee was one of the first warrior civilian groups to put its members on the alert as to this difficulty.(78) Newsweek told all on September 22 that the FBI was "still carefully checking on U.S. Communist activities," though this must have been hard to do and not run afoul of the FDR camp's involvement proclivities which dealt with generous pro-Stalinist assistance plans, all vigorously championed by domestic Reds as well.(79)
The real mess however was in the ranks of labor. Communist strength in the roughly 7-year-old Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) promptly flexed its muscle. By mid- September 20 CIO unions were already demanding the U.S.A. go to war against Germany. And a curious arabesque was performed internally. The elements led by Sidney Hillman, pro-war and pro- FDR, known down to June 1941 as "the old right wing," as U.S. News put it, and confronted by labor led by John L. Lewis, anti- war and anti-FDR, "the old left wing," had by September 1941 changed identities.(78) Lewis and his cohorts now were assembled under the "right wing" tag, and Hillman and his the contrary designation. The Communists in the CIO and the Daily Worker were now both berating Lewis as an "appeaser" and "isolationist" after having praised him for the identical stands during the period of Stalinist non-involvement in the European war. Labor-watchers now were of the view that the Communists were now trying to cuddle to Hillman, who was formally rejecting a working alliance with them, though finding their support of war policies comforting.
In mid-September 1941 also, Stalin obviously had far more on his mind than Anglophile American warmongers unhappy over the CPUSA infiltrating their simon-pure pro-war fronts. But Newsweek informed its readers at that moment that Stalin had "in- directly asked" the USCP to "quiet down," and might even "publicly request it to dissolve formally," in the interests of relieving "the strain which CP activities put on U.S.-Russian and British-Russian relations." Hopkins was supposed to have suggested this course to Stalin.(79) And in truth there really was no need for an American Communist Party now. Its chores were performed by many magnitudes beyond its capacity by the majority of the conventional press and radio in the U.S.A., bellowing mightily for support of Stalin in all ways, promotional assistance to a national administration already involved in massive planning toward the achievement of this goal.
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8. Time, Corporate America and "Culture" Contribute to the Confusion
by James J. Martin
In toting up the score of the forces favoring Russian Communism in its showdown with German National Socialism, one could not leave out the American industrial system as represented by its corporate giants, and their dramatically-swelling labor forces. There is a direct correlation between the steady decline of the energy and support of the non-interventionist position on the war during the last 15 months before direct American involvement, and the corresponding increasing economic stake of more and more Americans in the "defense" boom, during that same period. It was remarkably obvious in the last six months of that time span. The steady drifting away of supporters for neutrality can be less understood by reading their specious moralizing on why they had changed their minds than by noting the simultaneous stunning full page color advertisements of scores of major corporations hawking the new martial hardware being made within their walls. The wonder is that such an immense percentage of those polled in opinion surveys still opposed a declaration of war during this spell.(80) If psychic and spiritual enlistment in the war could be dated from June 1940 and de facto involvement in the war as a belligerent from March 1941, it took the vast industrial mobilization in the period after the Russians joined the war to cement down this American participation. As the summer wore into the fall in 1941, the necessity of maintaining a scrupulous distinction as to which of the anti-German belligerents one was favoring steadily eroded away, and the American hand to Stalin began to stretch in every direction it might reach there. One could understand that Stalin was risking no palpable damage in ordering the CPUSA to scuttle its profile in this critical moment. Their help really was not needed, and the function of their press could easily be confined to echoing what was broadcast from Moscow. The pro-Soviet forces of non-Communist origin were demonstrating that they could handle the job of assistance to the Kremlin and the spreading of the positive virtues and the noble attributes of Stalinism all by themselves.
It was not, therefore, in the tiny editions and limited distribution of the Stalinist press in America that one read the cheering, dramatic story of the first string of tankers arriving in Stalin's Siberian port of Vladivostok with immense cargoes of high octane gasoline from the U.S.A. for "battling Russia." It was rather in the front pages of the millionaire-run three-quarters-of-a-million circulation Time on September 15, 1941. A week earlier its opinion- saturated "news" columns had declared that the U.S.A. was in "a virtual alliance-with Russia against Germany,"(81) and with China against Japan, though the latter did not specify whether we were allied with Chiang or Mao. With the gasoline delivery, Time assured its readers that "If not actively fighting Fascism, the U.S. was helping to fuel the fight against it." No New Masses editor could have stated it any better.
In fact, Time had begun printing material directly supplied by the Soviet newspaper Red Star weeks before, without the slightest warning that it might be the purest propaganda. And it expressed general sympathy with the Soviet stories of their massive destruction of Russian communities and industry, 90% of the area in some claims, as its armies retreated in the face of the advancing Germans, thus making possible propaganda exploitation of this scorched-earth policy, with a future claim being lodged for other self-serving purposes later, of charges that the same amount of damage had all been done by the Germans.(82) It was one of many aspects of the war which found the eventual victors working both sides of the street with singular success. Though physically impossible, this contradictory story did wonders for pro-Stalinist sympathizers in the U.S.A.
For sure, the intense season of "heroic Russia" was nearly upon the American imagination, to be propelled at an increasing tempo shortly, until well after the Anglo-American and Stalinist "allies" had fallen out. And no facet of the cultural or psychic world was to be neglected in the accentuation of this campaign against the English-speaking sensibilities, music included. Late in September, Time told all that the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich had related that he was writing his Seventh Symphony, which would " 'attempt to depict the battle of Leningrad and tell the story of the city's Home Guards.'"(83) This endeavor was billed as the equivalent in this new war to Tschaikovsky's 1812 Overture, though subsequent critics were to find the former an essay in subdued trash-can bashing by comparison with the celebrated Tschaikovsky composition.
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by James J. Martin
In toting up the score of the forces favoring Russian Communism in its showdown with German National Socialism, one could not leave out the American industrial system as represented by its corporate giants, and their dramatically-swelling labor forces. There is a direct correlation between the steady decline of the energy and support of the non-interventionist position on the war during the last 15 months before direct American involvement, and the corresponding increasing economic stake of more and more Americans in the "defense" boom, during that same period. It was remarkably obvious in the last six months of that time span. The steady drifting away of supporters for neutrality can be less understood by reading their specious moralizing on why they had changed their minds than by noting the simultaneous stunning full page color advertisements of scores of major corporations hawking the new martial hardware being made within their walls. The wonder is that such an immense percentage of those polled in opinion surveys still opposed a declaration of war during this spell.(80) If psychic and spiritual enlistment in the war could be dated from June 1940 and de facto involvement in the war as a belligerent from March 1941, it took the vast industrial mobilization in the period after the Russians joined the war to cement down this American participation. As the summer wore into the fall in 1941, the necessity of maintaining a scrupulous distinction as to which of the anti-German belligerents one was favoring steadily eroded away, and the American hand to Stalin began to stretch in every direction it might reach there. One could understand that Stalin was risking no palpable damage in ordering the CPUSA to scuttle its profile in this critical moment. Their help really was not needed, and the function of their press could easily be confined to echoing what was broadcast from Moscow. The pro-Soviet forces of non-Communist origin were demonstrating that they could handle the job of assistance to the Kremlin and the spreading of the positive virtues and the noble attributes of Stalinism all by themselves.
It was not, therefore, in the tiny editions and limited distribution of the Stalinist press in America that one read the cheering, dramatic story of the first string of tankers arriving in Stalin's Siberian port of Vladivostok with immense cargoes of high octane gasoline from the U.S.A. for "battling Russia." It was rather in the front pages of the millionaire-run three-quarters-of-a-million circulation Time on September 15, 1941. A week earlier its opinion- saturated "news" columns had declared that the U.S.A. was in "a virtual alliance-with Russia against Germany,"(81) and with China against Japan, though the latter did not specify whether we were allied with Chiang or Mao. With the gasoline delivery, Time assured its readers that "If not actively fighting Fascism, the U.S. was helping to fuel the fight against it." No New Masses editor could have stated it any better.
In fact, Time had begun printing material directly supplied by the Soviet newspaper Red Star weeks before, without the slightest warning that it might be the purest propaganda. And it expressed general sympathy with the Soviet stories of their massive destruction of Russian communities and industry, 90% of the area in some claims, as its armies retreated in the face of the advancing Germans, thus making possible propaganda exploitation of this scorched-earth policy, with a future claim being lodged for other self-serving purposes later, of charges that the same amount of damage had all been done by the Germans.(82) It was one of many aspects of the war which found the eventual victors working both sides of the street with singular success. Though physically impossible, this contradictory story did wonders for pro-Stalinist sympathizers in the U.S.A.
For sure, the intense season of "heroic Russia" was nearly upon the American imagination, to be propelled at an increasing tempo shortly, until well after the Anglo-American and Stalinist "allies" had fallen out. And no facet of the cultural or psychic world was to be neglected in the accentuation of this campaign against the English-speaking sensibilities, music included. Late in September, Time told all that the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich had related that he was writing his Seventh Symphony, which would " 'attempt to depict the battle of Leningrad and tell the story of the city's Home Guards.'"(83) This endeavor was billed as the equivalent in this new war to Tschaikovsky's 1812 Overture, though subsequent critics were to find the former an essay in subdued trash-can bashing by comparison with the celebrated Tschaikovsky composition.
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9. New Voices in Behalf of Assistance to Stalin, at Home and Abroad
by James J. Martin
While the reportage on things Russian increased in warmth, the temperature of pro-Red sympathy in America soared somewhat higher. Symptomatic of this was the bellow for aid to Stalin which emanated from the American Legion convention in Milwaukee at about this same time. Time for September 29 shimmered with its eulogy of the Legion, rejoiced at its bellicosity toward Hitler Germany and its fierce desire for war, along with approval of its almost unanimous support for the creeping interventionism of Roosevelt. It even voted for one of Roosevelt's latest hobby horses, permanent universal military trainings.
Almost simultaneously with this were other indications surfacing in widely separated places. The Christian Century quoted the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News as calling upon all religious congregations in the state to expel any ministers who were in opposition to the U.S. becoming involved in the European war.(85) Apparently these anti-Communist Southern fundamentalists were unperturbed by the thought of full enlistment in a war with Stalin to make Europe one-half Red. In fact, there were elements which were of the mind that this latter appellation was a dirty political word. That same week the Toronto Globe and Mail, the city's morning paper, embarked on a sortie to persuade other Canadian papers to join it in abandoning the word "Red" as a term for Russians.(86) And a few days before, war correspondent Edgar Ansel Mowrer, in an open letter to Roosevelt published in the vigorously pro-war picture weekly Look, founded in 1937 and already sporting a circulation of two million, urged him to clean out the "professional Bolshephobes" from all government departments, since they were hindrances who could not "honestly help us to destroy Fascism."(87) Nowhere in the Communist press could anyone find a more ardent ideological call than this.
To be sure, things seemed to be looking up for the Anglo- Russian cause in September 1941. Their joint invasion of Iran had resulted in success, hailed in Time as "Victors in the fortnight-old, 80-hour Iranian war." Though Hitler's invasions of strategically- located neighbors were uniformly billed as brutal aggressions, far softer and kinder verbiage was invented to describe the same thing when undertaken by Stalin and Churchill. And Time wound up its accolade by quoting from the New York Herald Tribune's Russell Hill, who, at Kazan with Russian officers, drank bottoms- up toasts to Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and "'reunion in Berlin.' (88) Though the U.S. was still not a formal belligerent, May 1945 was brilliantly forecast and anticipated.
In the meantime the assiduous promotion of still another wealthy pro-Stalinist, England's Sir Richard Stafford Cripps, had begun, along with serious efforts in liberal circles to bring H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw to the U.S. to assist in helping "whip up enthusiasm for aid to Russia," as Newsweek put it.(89)
Time's salute to Cripps, Ambassador to Moscow since the lonely days of 1940, when the Stalinists had nothing but ridicule for England at war, included a tribute to his being "One man who has really been right about World War II," since "From its opening gun, he maintained that Britain's interest and Russia's were the same," while calling attention to his recent "paean to the Russian people."(90)
And when Eric Estorick's puff in book form, Stafford Cripps, Prophetic Rebel (John Day), began to go the rounds a few weeks later, it was no scrubby journal of the impoverished left that hailed it, but the alleged tower of Republican strength, the Herald Tribune, at the hands of its warmly pro-Soviet foreign editor, Joseph Barnes. It was Barnes who called attention to this opulent Briton's eloquence in behalf of the Workers' Fatherland: "Outside the Communist Party, itself, no other British leader," asserted Barnes, produced such speeches, "which were like and sounded like Marxism."(91)
Not all the traffic was one-way in the burgeoning buildup of the Soviet in the fall of 1941. The Roosevelt regime was increasingly embarrassed by the continuation of the war between Finland and Russia, and dreaded non-interventionist congressmen arguing against aid to Stalin on the grounds that Russians would use American arms to shoot Finns. There were signs that a formidable residue of anti-war reservations existed among the populace and that not all the devices being used to work up war fever were effective. Pro-war Look was chagrined to learn as a result of their poll of 15,000 moving picture exhibitors at the end of the summer that "'Anti-Nazi' pictures-like 'Escape,' 'Underground' or 'Manhunt'-were rated least productive at the box office."(92) But there were hundreds more like these to come in the future. A similar conclusion was arrived at by the Gallup Audience Research Institute, headed by David Ogilvy, whose report was released the third week of July 1941. It concluded that there was no audience outside of New York City for anti-Hitler and anti- Nazi pictures, and that all propaganda movies had thus far fizzled.(93)
by James J. Martin
While the reportage on things Russian increased in warmth, the temperature of pro-Red sympathy in America soared somewhat higher. Symptomatic of this was the bellow for aid to Stalin which emanated from the American Legion convention in Milwaukee at about this same time. Time for September 29 shimmered with its eulogy of the Legion, rejoiced at its bellicosity toward Hitler Germany and its fierce desire for war, along with approval of its almost unanimous support for the creeping interventionism of Roosevelt. It even voted for one of Roosevelt's latest hobby horses, permanent universal military trainings.
Almost simultaneously with this were other indications surfacing in widely separated places. The Christian Century quoted the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News as calling upon all religious congregations in the state to expel any ministers who were in opposition to the U.S. becoming involved in the European war.(85) Apparently these anti-Communist Southern fundamentalists were unperturbed by the thought of full enlistment in a war with Stalin to make Europe one-half Red. In fact, there were elements which were of the mind that this latter appellation was a dirty political word. That same week the Toronto Globe and Mail, the city's morning paper, embarked on a sortie to persuade other Canadian papers to join it in abandoning the word "Red" as a term for Russians.(86) And a few days before, war correspondent Edgar Ansel Mowrer, in an open letter to Roosevelt published in the vigorously pro-war picture weekly Look, founded in 1937 and already sporting a circulation of two million, urged him to clean out the "professional Bolshephobes" from all government departments, since they were hindrances who could not "honestly help us to destroy Fascism."(87) Nowhere in the Communist press could anyone find a more ardent ideological call than this.
To be sure, things seemed to be looking up for the Anglo- Russian cause in September 1941. Their joint invasion of Iran had resulted in success, hailed in Time as "Victors in the fortnight-old, 80-hour Iranian war." Though Hitler's invasions of strategically- located neighbors were uniformly billed as brutal aggressions, far softer and kinder verbiage was invented to describe the same thing when undertaken by Stalin and Churchill. And Time wound up its accolade by quoting from the New York Herald Tribune's Russell Hill, who, at Kazan with Russian officers, drank bottoms- up toasts to Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and "'reunion in Berlin.' (88) Though the U.S. was still not a formal belligerent, May 1945 was brilliantly forecast and anticipated.
In the meantime the assiduous promotion of still another wealthy pro-Stalinist, England's Sir Richard Stafford Cripps, had begun, along with serious efforts in liberal circles to bring H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw to the U.S. to assist in helping "whip up enthusiasm for aid to Russia," as Newsweek put it.(89)
Time's salute to Cripps, Ambassador to Moscow since the lonely days of 1940, when the Stalinists had nothing but ridicule for England at war, included a tribute to his being "One man who has really been right about World War II," since "From its opening gun, he maintained that Britain's interest and Russia's were the same," while calling attention to his recent "paean to the Russian people."(90)
And when Eric Estorick's puff in book form, Stafford Cripps, Prophetic Rebel (John Day), began to go the rounds a few weeks later, it was no scrubby journal of the impoverished left that hailed it, but the alleged tower of Republican strength, the Herald Tribune, at the hands of its warmly pro-Soviet foreign editor, Joseph Barnes. It was Barnes who called attention to this opulent Briton's eloquence in behalf of the Workers' Fatherland: "Outside the Communist Party, itself, no other British leader," asserted Barnes, produced such speeches, "which were like and sounded like Marxism."(91)
Not all the traffic was one-way in the burgeoning buildup of the Soviet in the fall of 1941. The Roosevelt regime was increasingly embarrassed by the continuation of the war between Finland and Russia, and dreaded non-interventionist congressmen arguing against aid to Stalin on the grounds that Russians would use American arms to shoot Finns. There were signs that a formidable residue of anti-war reservations existed among the populace and that not all the devices being used to work up war fever were effective. Pro-war Look was chagrined to learn as a result of their poll of 15,000 moving picture exhibitors at the end of the summer that "'Anti-Nazi' pictures-like 'Escape,' 'Underground' or 'Manhunt'-were rated least productive at the box office."(92) But there were hundreds more like these to come in the future. A similar conclusion was arrived at by the Gallup Audience Research Institute, headed by David Ogilvy, whose report was released the third week of July 1941. It concluded that there was no audience outside of New York City for anti-Hitler and anti- Nazi pictures, and that all propaganda movies had thus far fizzled.(93)
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10. Continued Annoyance from Influential Anti-Soviet Liberal Personalities, While Pro-Aid Forces Gain in Academe
by James J. Martin
And there were a few towering holdouts among the predominantly war-bound liberal opinion-makers adding their discordant notes to the swelling chorus of Soviet tributes to be heard on the American scene. Notable was Villard, mainly reduced to a platform with the anti-war Christian Century, though Common Sense and the Progressive were still open to views such as his. He was deeply resentful of interventionist liberals now insisting that the "aggressor" nations had to be defeated "even if it meant the ruin of the whole world," though he thought that there was even less chance of the U.S.A. entering the war by way of a formal declaration than "before we became partners of the unspeakable Stalin."(94) Of the growing emphasis on Russianism instead of Communism in the Soviet Union Villard remarked, "It is a tribute to the skill with which the Bolsheviks have pumped nationalistic and patriotic doctrines into the Russian people that they are so willing to bleed to death for a government that has murdered, exiled and imprisoned innumerable Russians for the sole offense of opposing Josef Stalin's rule."(95)
Another redoubtable fixture in the anti-war liberal fold who stuck in the collective craw of the interventionists, when it came to the subject of enlisting their sentiments behind Stalin, was John Dewey. His consistent coolness toward Stalin and his unwillingness to indulge in encomiums to him as a result of the exigencies of the European war drew him repeated scoldings, but his cautions about the dangers in idealizing Stalin due to an excess of uncritical enthusiasm continued for several months after U.S. entry into the war. He was sure this would lead to Americans having to pay "too costly a price for Russia's cooperation."(96) Dewey's antagonist on the faculty of Columbia Teacher's College was Prof. John L. Childs, who uttered the standard liberal reproach to Dewey, fearful that such an attitude would affront the Reds. Childs was one of the eloquent exponents of sustained long-term pro-Soviet relations. He urged Americans to "Let's cooperate with the Reds during and after the war," and above all, he implored, "Let's not adopt a policy of isolating Russia once the war is over."(97) Dewey's courage in sticking to his views was all the more remarkable in that the organization with which he was most prominently identified, the 10,000-member Progressive Education Association, had early in July 1941 become the first organized group of American educators to support an outright declaration for full American participation in the world war, a manifesto which was also signed by 12 of the 14 editors of its journal, Frontiers of Democracy.(98)
The only sector of the academic and educational world comprised of students which matched their mentors in belligerence were the newspaper editors of the Ivy League and other elite colleges. In the twelve schools selected for examination by Time in the early fall of 1941 they were deeply gratified to notice a much more aggravated call for gore in their college newspaper editorials, though this martial posture was hardly to be reflected in the undergraduate enrollment or in any other level occupied by those in age brackets which were likely to end up in the front lines.(99) This social fact is what so incensed the intellectual leaders of the administration's budding propaganda machine, especially the likes of the new Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, a fervent and eloquent voice for world war, and the performer of probably the most spectacular intellectual somersault achieved by any American intellectual on the subject of war participation in the short six years between 1935 and 1941. There certainly was no one trying to square the strident warrior MacLeish of 1940-41 with the MacLeish who answered a questionaire of the Modern Monthly in June 1935 in these words: "I should do everything in my power to prevent the United States going into war under any [MacLeish's emphasis] circumstances. There is only one possible position against the menace of militarism: absolute hostility. Any other is romantic." But MacLeish, in the eyes of the stubborn remnant of anti-war liberals the outstanding intellectual turncoat of the pre-war period, was just one of a legion who did much the same, to be rewarded with lush posts, handsome remuneration, continuous fulsome praise and sustained promotion into a succession of even more prominent post-war careers.
While the small, quiet steps announcing each steady move toward cultural totalitarianism took place, while the pretense was maintained that the "democracies" and their new Communist "ally" were trying to overcome it, the announcements of growing technical and industrial mobilization in its behalf were to be found far closer to the front. Early in October 1941 Time devoted a substantial account to an English Midlands tank factory whose labor force stood and sang the Communist Internationale at the unveiling of a goodly batch of tanks built for the Soviet Union, bearing the names of Marx and many more recent Red bureaucrat "heroes of Soviet labor." Even Time was a little abashed to report that the British Broadcasting Corporation's broadcasts "sounded like Moscow radio" in its bawling propaganda announcements of tanks and munitions output in the just-concluded "Tanks-for- Russia" week in Great Britain.(100)
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by James J. Martin
And there were a few towering holdouts among the predominantly war-bound liberal opinion-makers adding their discordant notes to the swelling chorus of Soviet tributes to be heard on the American scene. Notable was Villard, mainly reduced to a platform with the anti-war Christian Century, though Common Sense and the Progressive were still open to views such as his. He was deeply resentful of interventionist liberals now insisting that the "aggressor" nations had to be defeated "even if it meant the ruin of the whole world," though he thought that there was even less chance of the U.S.A. entering the war by way of a formal declaration than "before we became partners of the unspeakable Stalin."(94) Of the growing emphasis on Russianism instead of Communism in the Soviet Union Villard remarked, "It is a tribute to the skill with which the Bolsheviks have pumped nationalistic and patriotic doctrines into the Russian people that they are so willing to bleed to death for a government that has murdered, exiled and imprisoned innumerable Russians for the sole offense of opposing Josef Stalin's rule."(95)
Another redoubtable fixture in the anti-war liberal fold who stuck in the collective craw of the interventionists, when it came to the subject of enlisting their sentiments behind Stalin, was John Dewey. His consistent coolness toward Stalin and his unwillingness to indulge in encomiums to him as a result of the exigencies of the European war drew him repeated scoldings, but his cautions about the dangers in idealizing Stalin due to an excess of uncritical enthusiasm continued for several months after U.S. entry into the war. He was sure this would lead to Americans having to pay "too costly a price for Russia's cooperation."(96) Dewey's antagonist on the faculty of Columbia Teacher's College was Prof. John L. Childs, who uttered the standard liberal reproach to Dewey, fearful that such an attitude would affront the Reds. Childs was one of the eloquent exponents of sustained long-term pro-Soviet relations. He urged Americans to "Let's cooperate with the Reds during and after the war," and above all, he implored, "Let's not adopt a policy of isolating Russia once the war is over."(97) Dewey's courage in sticking to his views was all the more remarkable in that the organization with which he was most prominently identified, the 10,000-member Progressive Education Association, had early in July 1941 become the first organized group of American educators to support an outright declaration for full American participation in the world war, a manifesto which was also signed by 12 of the 14 editors of its journal, Frontiers of Democracy.(98)
The only sector of the academic and educational world comprised of students which matched their mentors in belligerence were the newspaper editors of the Ivy League and other elite colleges. In the twelve schools selected for examination by Time in the early fall of 1941 they were deeply gratified to notice a much more aggravated call for gore in their college newspaper editorials, though this martial posture was hardly to be reflected in the undergraduate enrollment or in any other level occupied by those in age brackets which were likely to end up in the front lines.(99) This social fact is what so incensed the intellectual leaders of the administration's budding propaganda machine, especially the likes of the new Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, a fervent and eloquent voice for world war, and the performer of probably the most spectacular intellectual somersault achieved by any American intellectual on the subject of war participation in the short six years between 1935 and 1941. There certainly was no one trying to square the strident warrior MacLeish of 1940-41 with the MacLeish who answered a questionaire of the Modern Monthly in June 1935 in these words: "I should do everything in my power to prevent the United States going into war under any [MacLeish's emphasis] circumstances. There is only one possible position against the menace of militarism: absolute hostility. Any other is romantic." But MacLeish, in the eyes of the stubborn remnant of anti-war liberals the outstanding intellectual turncoat of the pre-war period, was just one of a legion who did much the same, to be rewarded with lush posts, handsome remuneration, continuous fulsome praise and sustained promotion into a succession of even more prominent post-war careers.
While the small, quiet steps announcing each steady move toward cultural totalitarianism took place, while the pretense was maintained that the "democracies" and their new Communist "ally" were trying to overcome it, the announcements of growing technical and industrial mobilization in its behalf were to be found far closer to the front. Early in October 1941 Time devoted a substantial account to an English Midlands tank factory whose labor force stood and sang the Communist Internationale at the unveiling of a goodly batch of tanks built for the Soviet Union, bearing the names of Marx and many more recent Red bureaucrat "heroes of Soviet labor." Even Time was a little abashed to report that the British Broadcasting Corporation's broadcasts "sounded like Moscow radio" in its bawling propaganda announcements of tanks and munitions output in the just-concluded "Tanks-for- Russia" week in Great Britain.(100)
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11. October, 1941 Polls Register a Gain in Aid-to-Stalin Sentiment
by James J. Martin
The faddish aspect of this all-out help for Stalin was spreading in the U.S.A. at this moment as well, even provoking U.S. News to ask the following question of its readers: "Should U.S. Divert its Entire Arms Production to Britain and Russia for the Next Three Months?'(101) At a time when Americans were being whipsawed by pro-war propagandists into fears of imminent invasion themselves by the seemingly omnipresent and ubiquitous Germans, and the domestic "defense" agitation was indicating that elements of the newly conscripted American armed forces were conducting maneuvers in part with wooden and other play-style "weapons," it posed a contradiction for the pro-war enthusiasts. The industrial system did not seem to be capable of providing the military of the main belligerents abroad and the U.S. too with all the martial hardware they required.
The responses of the prominent political, military and other personalities were indicative of some of the conflicts sweeping opinion at the time, nevertheless. Senators Capper of Kansas and Overton of Louisiana and Rep. Karl Mundt of South Dakota, of the Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively, said no. But Capper and Mundt were for sending as much as could be spared to the British without undermining U.S. defense, while stipulating that of that total the recipients would have to decide how much was then to be sent to the Communists, "since Russia is an ally of Britain." In the process, they cautioned, "let us not have Uncle Sam become the generalissimo of the war nor the bedmate of Communism." Major General William H. Haskell, Commander of the 27th Infantry Division, also joined the "nays," saying that the weapons were needed here first of all: "I feel it is of major importance to carry forward the training of our own armies."
But James W. Gerard, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany prior to American entry into World War I, Rep. May of Kentucky, Chairman of the House Committee of Military Affairs, were for it, as well as Hiram Winternitz, Jr., President of Charles Dreifus Co., of Philadelphia. The latter insisted: "It seems to me that the diversion of practically all of our production of military goods for the next few months to Britain and Russia, particularly Russia, would be sound practice." Also favoring this was Lewis G. Harriman, prominent Buffalo banker and president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He expressed himself in complete harmony with such a diversion, fearing that Russian loss to the Germans would delay and make immensely more difficult the ultimate victory of England, while sure the argument "that such help would make Russia itself presently a greater menace to us seems too remote to cause concern." Dean Paul Andrews of the University of Syracuse College of Law favored the idea in principle but thought that the percentage of such allocations to Britain and Russia should be determined by technical people. Dean Andrews' views were additionally agitated by his fear that the Germans were about to capture all of South America while disposing of the Soviet Union.
David Lawrence apparently was not as carried away with euphoria as some of the respondents to the U.S. News query concerning the desirability of shipping off the total of three months' American war production to Russia, or to Britain as Stalin's agent. One of their requests, that they acquire "large quantities of tools and machinery to equip new war industry east of the Ural Mountains," temporarily got lodged in his craw, but not for long".(102) Though not too sure that aid to Russia involved a commitment to help the Bolsheviks develop long-term heavy industrial potential far from the war fronts (he did not take up the massive aid to the Soviet of this kind in the previous 25 years), his fears soon washed away, partially as a consequence of his October questionnaire and the mounting bad war news from the new Eastern Front. By October 24 U.S. News was sure that two-thirds of the industry in Western Russia was already in Hitler's grip, and editorially it declared with some agitation, "Russian industry in the Urals must be supported by an immense quantity of supplies from Britain and America if resistance is to continue." Gratification was also expressed over a recent Roosevelt statement that vast supplies of war goods were underway to Russia, all promised by Hopkins at Moscow too be delivered by the end of October 1941.(103) And at the end of November its war industries executive readers must have been cheered to learn that "A large United States military mission" was being "quietly organized to go to Russia," and would leave "soon," for Archangel, to gather first hand information "about how this country can help Russia.''(104) The months of wary ruminations about the wisdom of direct involvement in Russia's war fortunes were giving way to exactly the reverse, undoubtedly nurtured by the steadily growing involvement of the Roosevelt camp into matters which promised eventual belligerent status somewhere, and probably in several places.
Apparently a barrier to this scheme had been overcome in a short time since an early fall complaint had been circulated about Stalin's reserve and secrecy, and his refusal to allow any U.S. or British observers anywhere near any of the fighting or almost anywhere else. Hence had come about the joint mission of U.S.A.'s Averell Harriman and Britain's Lord Beaverbrook to seek for more frankness on Stalin's part.(105) Of this noted visit, more later.
--------------------------------------------
by James J. Martin
The faddish aspect of this all-out help for Stalin was spreading in the U.S.A. at this moment as well, even provoking U.S. News to ask the following question of its readers: "Should U.S. Divert its Entire Arms Production to Britain and Russia for the Next Three Months?'(101) At a time when Americans were being whipsawed by pro-war propagandists into fears of imminent invasion themselves by the seemingly omnipresent and ubiquitous Germans, and the domestic "defense" agitation was indicating that elements of the newly conscripted American armed forces were conducting maneuvers in part with wooden and other play-style "weapons," it posed a contradiction for the pro-war enthusiasts. The industrial system did not seem to be capable of providing the military of the main belligerents abroad and the U.S. too with all the martial hardware they required.
The responses of the prominent political, military and other personalities were indicative of some of the conflicts sweeping opinion at the time, nevertheless. Senators Capper of Kansas and Overton of Louisiana and Rep. Karl Mundt of South Dakota, of the Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively, said no. But Capper and Mundt were for sending as much as could be spared to the British without undermining U.S. defense, while stipulating that of that total the recipients would have to decide how much was then to be sent to the Communists, "since Russia is an ally of Britain." In the process, they cautioned, "let us not have Uncle Sam become the generalissimo of the war nor the bedmate of Communism." Major General William H. Haskell, Commander of the 27th Infantry Division, also joined the "nays," saying that the weapons were needed here first of all: "I feel it is of major importance to carry forward the training of our own armies."
But James W. Gerard, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany prior to American entry into World War I, Rep. May of Kentucky, Chairman of the House Committee of Military Affairs, were for it, as well as Hiram Winternitz, Jr., President of Charles Dreifus Co., of Philadelphia. The latter insisted: "It seems to me that the diversion of practically all of our production of military goods for the next few months to Britain and Russia, particularly Russia, would be sound practice." Also favoring this was Lewis G. Harriman, prominent Buffalo banker and president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He expressed himself in complete harmony with such a diversion, fearing that Russian loss to the Germans would delay and make immensely more difficult the ultimate victory of England, while sure the argument "that such help would make Russia itself presently a greater menace to us seems too remote to cause concern." Dean Paul Andrews of the University of Syracuse College of Law favored the idea in principle but thought that the percentage of such allocations to Britain and Russia should be determined by technical people. Dean Andrews' views were additionally agitated by his fear that the Germans were about to capture all of South America while disposing of the Soviet Union.
David Lawrence apparently was not as carried away with euphoria as some of the respondents to the U.S. News query concerning the desirability of shipping off the total of three months' American war production to Russia, or to Britain as Stalin's agent. One of their requests, that they acquire "large quantities of tools and machinery to equip new war industry east of the Ural Mountains," temporarily got lodged in his craw, but not for long".(102) Though not too sure that aid to Russia involved a commitment to help the Bolsheviks develop long-term heavy industrial potential far from the war fronts (he did not take up the massive aid to the Soviet of this kind in the previous 25 years), his fears soon washed away, partially as a consequence of his October questionnaire and the mounting bad war news from the new Eastern Front. By October 24 U.S. News was sure that two-thirds of the industry in Western Russia was already in Hitler's grip, and editorially it declared with some agitation, "Russian industry in the Urals must be supported by an immense quantity of supplies from Britain and America if resistance is to continue." Gratification was also expressed over a recent Roosevelt statement that vast supplies of war goods were underway to Russia, all promised by Hopkins at Moscow too be delivered by the end of October 1941.(103) And at the end of November its war industries executive readers must have been cheered to learn that "A large United States military mission" was being "quietly organized to go to Russia," and would leave "soon," for Archangel, to gather first hand information "about how this country can help Russia.''(104) The months of wary ruminations about the wisdom of direct involvement in Russia's war fortunes were giving way to exactly the reverse, undoubtedly nurtured by the steadily growing involvement of the Roosevelt camp into matters which promised eventual belligerent status somewhere, and probably in several places.
Apparently a barrier to this scheme had been overcome in a short time since an early fall complaint had been circulated about Stalin's reserve and secrecy, and his refusal to allow any U.S. or British observers anywhere near any of the fighting or almost anywhere else. Hence had come about the joint mission of U.S.A.'s Averell Harriman and Britain's Lord Beaverbrook to seek for more frankness on Stalin's part.(105) Of this noted visit, more later.
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12. President Roosevelt Creates a Diversion Over the Religious Issue
by James J. Martin
The only clashing noise in what was otherwise a symphony of effortless gliding on the part of the varied forces working in behalf of Stalinist Russia in the fall of 1941 across the United States grew out of the August 1941 Atlantic Charter and the consequences of Roosevelt adding the "point" dealing with freedom of religion. One of the first to capitalize on this was Soviet radio, commending this strategy, and joining to it the urging of the overthrow of the Germans at the earliest opportunity because Hitler was "menacing the very existence of Christianity." This even cooled off ardently pro-Russian Time, which did not think it appropriate for the Marxist regime to be hailing a force which they systematically attacked on the domestic Russian scene.(106) Even if one wished to insist that Bolshevism was a form of religion itself,(107) the Russian people as a whole hardly had abandoned their old ways, no matter what the Soviet government's League of the Militant Godless maintained. Almost twenty years after the Leninist revolution had taken over, about one half of the total population was still of the Russian Orthodox faith.(108) The dramatic decline was in the number of churches, estimated in August 1941 to be down to 8,338 from 70,000 in 1917.
Not much had been said at the time the so-called "Four Freedoms" had been launched from the deck of the British battle- ship Prince of Wales off Argentia, Newfoundland, which included the religious freedom concept. Even the noted Protestant layman John Foster Dulles, not a part of the Roosevelt regime, and mainly involved in labors in behalf of a group of prominent churchmen and laymen called the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, had nothing to say about it in particular when he drafted his famous negative dissection of the celebrated Eight Points of Churchill and Roosevelt. Dulles, a party to the American presence at Versailles in 1919, condemned the Churchill- Roosevelt vision of the postwar world as following "too closely the pattern of Versailles" and saw their August 1941 product as mainly a prop for a self-satisfied pro-status quo crowd, and a prelude to a new war when the one going on was over, not an outline for "the development of some international mechanism for effecting peaceful change," which recalled the book he had published two years before, War, Peace and Change (Harper).(109) The mobilization of religion in the impending worldwide martial cataclysm was inevitable, but the maneuvering had been going on for years prior to 1941. Americans, with their separation-of- church-and-state tradition, knew nothing of the realities of the religious scene in Europe, and the propagandistic forces seeking to enroll their sentiments and sensibilities preferred to keep them that way. Few knew of the state relationships of the Russian Orthodox Catholic clergy, nor that the German congregations, roughly half Roman Catholic and half Lutheran, were the recipients of sizable subventions from the Hitler government, as they had been recipients from previous German regimes. For that matter, probably no more than a platoon of Americans realized that the clergy of the official state-supported church in northern Europe were actually public functionaries drawing the equivalent of civil service salaries, in American parlance. The emphasis in the propaganda war in the U.S. was entirely away from these facts and entirely upon emotional and denominational loyalties, with such overtones of general substance as were unavoidable, given the general knowledge of world affairs prevailing. One aspect of the latter involved the universal conviction in the U.S. that all organized religion was in a bad way in Soviet Russia, a regime with a formal policy of hostility to this and a corresponding policy of encouraging organized disbelief, in harmony with Marxist materialism, the Soviet state's religion.
In the word war waged against Hitler and Mussolini, American liberals especially esteemed the descriptive epithet "clerico- fascist," finding it useful also to apply to Franco Spain and to the breakaway Slovakian state headed by Monsignor Josef Tiso. This stands in strange contradiction to the simultaneous charge by the same propaganda voices that these hated dictators were trying to abolish religion. Though it was known that the Russian Orthodox Church leaders were fully behind Stalin, it struck them as painfully distasteful to have to apply the same criteria to their warmly esteemed Stalin, so one heard nothing about "clerico-fascist Russia."
The relative detachment or apathy of most clergy in Europe was not a subject for much commentary after Russia joined the European war. The self-righteous militarism of the clergy everywhere in World War I was not repeated, most of such figures being found associating mainly with leftists in Europe and America, in the latter their numbers being also swelled by German and British expatriates. The likes of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich(110) and William Temple, Archbishop of York and Canterbury, typified the former, and the one-time Marxist enthusiast Reinhold Niebuhr standing out among church notables flourishing their verbal armament in the U.S.,(111) though the American warrior clergy in general were far more identified with secular ideological politics than with the pulpit.(112) It became obvious to the clerical friends of Stalin, however, that the most profitable tactics consisted of negative material, which was the very largest part of "anti-fascism" at all times, even at the peak period of ardent admiration of Communist Russia, in 1943. It was easier to crow and gloat over failure among the Soviet's enemies than it was to attempt to sell the view that there were positive and affirmative things happening in the Workers' Fatherland, and which under the renewed patriotic pressure of the Stalinist machine, desperate for public support, was even becoming spoken of occasionally once more as "Mother Russia." Such an occasion was the exultation, even in Time, when it was claimed that the new premier of Norway under the German occupation, Vidkun Quisling, was able to get only 27 of Norway's 700 Lutheran pastors to support Germany's "crusade against Russia.''(113) A few days later, Roosevelt himself tossed a grenade into the middle of this essentially successful anti-Hitler and pro- Soviet campaign on the religious front by his casual remark during a press conference in the second week of October 1941 alleging the existence of religious freedom in Stalinist Russia.
Few remarks by Roosevelt before or after, during the war era, drew as much comment, including analyses, guesses and glosses as to its real intent, attacks, excuses and a rare defense. Walter Lippmann, one of FDR's strongest journalistic supporters, delivered a harsh scolding, and Lippmann's paper, the New York Herald Tribune, called it "whitewashing the Kremlin." Time's lead story was devoted to deep analysis of the act, ascribing political objectives to it all. Roosevelt was thought to have advanced this trial balloon, seeking to get the Russians to "guarantee religious liberty" in case they were not doing it in exchange for gaining a spot on the American Lend-Lease bandwagon. This in turn he was thought to exchange for the support of Pope Pius XII, thinking such a Russian concession might gain his endorsement of the "democracies" and Russian cause as "just," soften up Eire to allow British and U.S. bases on its territory, create discomfiture among the Catholic populations of Italy and Germany, and get the support of U.S. Catholics behind the administration's pro-Russian course. Thus, his motivation in their view had really nothing to do with religion at all.(114)
U.S. News gave lengthy attention to the brawl stirred up by the President, originally trying to make FDR look as good as possible and his critics as evil as possible,(115) but in its summary a week later, it was conceded that a presidential gaffe of substantial proportions had occurred. After a broad sampling of the nation's press, David Lawrence's weekly organ conceded that a consensus indicated Roosevelt "showed poor judgment in making his in cautious remark about the Russian constitution and religious liberty."
The Protestant Christian Century scalded Roosevelt for his soothing pronouncement on religious freedom in Russia, and recalled his words before a Christian youth assembly in 1939 when he declared, how much he detested "the banishment of religion" from Russia. The editors also divined the intent of the statement as one of trying to woo Catholics in the U.S. to support his aid to Russia program, but insisted that "Instead of winning the Catholics, the President's careless words have made them more than ever critical of his Russia policy." Furthermore, the editors considered the presidential remark an adverse reflection upon his widely hailed "freedoms" in the Atlantic Charter: "The President gave the nation an opportunity to test his conception of one of these essential freedoms, and the test gave forth a hollow, empty sound.''
There was no doubt that the national mood, despite the stunning attack upon their sensibilities by a rising din of pro-war propaganda, was still quite alien to receptivity to puffs about another non-existent beauty supposedly existing in Soviet Russia. In this moment of disaster only the New Masses came up with a supporting strike, a long three-column editorial in which Roosevelt's prominent Catholic critics, such as Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen and Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University, were subjected to personal abuse. The Communist editors cited in warm approval the vociferous criticism of veteran pro-Soviet divines such as Paul Tillich, Kenneth Leslie, Pierre van Paassen and James Luther Adams, deploring "the attempt to create a religious issue regarding the USSR." The editors concluded by returning to the offense, emphasizing their charge that Hitler Germany was attacking religion, and that any suppression of clergy or religious persecution in the Soviet Union were just "police measures taken by the government against reactionary clerics who secretly conspired against the Soviet regime."
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by James J. Martin
The only clashing noise in what was otherwise a symphony of effortless gliding on the part of the varied forces working in behalf of Stalinist Russia in the fall of 1941 across the United States grew out of the August 1941 Atlantic Charter and the consequences of Roosevelt adding the "point" dealing with freedom of religion. One of the first to capitalize on this was Soviet radio, commending this strategy, and joining to it the urging of the overthrow of the Germans at the earliest opportunity because Hitler was "menacing the very existence of Christianity." This even cooled off ardently pro-Russian Time, which did not think it appropriate for the Marxist regime to be hailing a force which they systematically attacked on the domestic Russian scene.(106) Even if one wished to insist that Bolshevism was a form of religion itself,(107) the Russian people as a whole hardly had abandoned their old ways, no matter what the Soviet government's League of the Militant Godless maintained. Almost twenty years after the Leninist revolution had taken over, about one half of the total population was still of the Russian Orthodox faith.(108) The dramatic decline was in the number of churches, estimated in August 1941 to be down to 8,338 from 70,000 in 1917.
Not much had been said at the time the so-called "Four Freedoms" had been launched from the deck of the British battle- ship Prince of Wales off Argentia, Newfoundland, which included the religious freedom concept. Even the noted Protestant layman John Foster Dulles, not a part of the Roosevelt regime, and mainly involved in labors in behalf of a group of prominent churchmen and laymen called the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, had nothing to say about it in particular when he drafted his famous negative dissection of the celebrated Eight Points of Churchill and Roosevelt. Dulles, a party to the American presence at Versailles in 1919, condemned the Churchill- Roosevelt vision of the postwar world as following "too closely the pattern of Versailles" and saw their August 1941 product as mainly a prop for a self-satisfied pro-status quo crowd, and a prelude to a new war when the one going on was over, not an outline for "the development of some international mechanism for effecting peaceful change," which recalled the book he had published two years before, War, Peace and Change (Harper).(109) The mobilization of religion in the impending worldwide martial cataclysm was inevitable, but the maneuvering had been going on for years prior to 1941. Americans, with their separation-of- church-and-state tradition, knew nothing of the realities of the religious scene in Europe, and the propagandistic forces seeking to enroll their sentiments and sensibilities preferred to keep them that way. Few knew of the state relationships of the Russian Orthodox Catholic clergy, nor that the German congregations, roughly half Roman Catholic and half Lutheran, were the recipients of sizable subventions from the Hitler government, as they had been recipients from previous German regimes. For that matter, probably no more than a platoon of Americans realized that the clergy of the official state-supported church in northern Europe were actually public functionaries drawing the equivalent of civil service salaries, in American parlance. The emphasis in the propaganda war in the U.S. was entirely away from these facts and entirely upon emotional and denominational loyalties, with such overtones of general substance as were unavoidable, given the general knowledge of world affairs prevailing. One aspect of the latter involved the universal conviction in the U.S. that all organized religion was in a bad way in Soviet Russia, a regime with a formal policy of hostility to this and a corresponding policy of encouraging organized disbelief, in harmony with Marxist materialism, the Soviet state's religion.
In the word war waged against Hitler and Mussolini, American liberals especially esteemed the descriptive epithet "clerico- fascist," finding it useful also to apply to Franco Spain and to the breakaway Slovakian state headed by Monsignor Josef Tiso. This stands in strange contradiction to the simultaneous charge by the same propaganda voices that these hated dictators were trying to abolish religion. Though it was known that the Russian Orthodox Church leaders were fully behind Stalin, it struck them as painfully distasteful to have to apply the same criteria to their warmly esteemed Stalin, so one heard nothing about "clerico-fascist Russia."
The relative detachment or apathy of most clergy in Europe was not a subject for much commentary after Russia joined the European war. The self-righteous militarism of the clergy everywhere in World War I was not repeated, most of such figures being found associating mainly with leftists in Europe and America, in the latter their numbers being also swelled by German and British expatriates. The likes of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich(110) and William Temple, Archbishop of York and Canterbury, typified the former, and the one-time Marxist enthusiast Reinhold Niebuhr standing out among church notables flourishing their verbal armament in the U.S.,(111) though the American warrior clergy in general were far more identified with secular ideological politics than with the pulpit.(112) It became obvious to the clerical friends of Stalin, however, that the most profitable tactics consisted of negative material, which was the very largest part of "anti-fascism" at all times, even at the peak period of ardent admiration of Communist Russia, in 1943. It was easier to crow and gloat over failure among the Soviet's enemies than it was to attempt to sell the view that there were positive and affirmative things happening in the Workers' Fatherland, and which under the renewed patriotic pressure of the Stalinist machine, desperate for public support, was even becoming spoken of occasionally once more as "Mother Russia." Such an occasion was the exultation, even in Time, when it was claimed that the new premier of Norway under the German occupation, Vidkun Quisling, was able to get only 27 of Norway's 700 Lutheran pastors to support Germany's "crusade against Russia.''(113) A few days later, Roosevelt himself tossed a grenade into the middle of this essentially successful anti-Hitler and pro- Soviet campaign on the religious front by his casual remark during a press conference in the second week of October 1941 alleging the existence of religious freedom in Stalinist Russia.
Few remarks by Roosevelt before or after, during the war era, drew as much comment, including analyses, guesses and glosses as to its real intent, attacks, excuses and a rare defense. Walter Lippmann, one of FDR's strongest journalistic supporters, delivered a harsh scolding, and Lippmann's paper, the New York Herald Tribune, called it "whitewashing the Kremlin." Time's lead story was devoted to deep analysis of the act, ascribing political objectives to it all. Roosevelt was thought to have advanced this trial balloon, seeking to get the Russians to "guarantee religious liberty" in case they were not doing it in exchange for gaining a spot on the American Lend-Lease bandwagon. This in turn he was thought to exchange for the support of Pope Pius XII, thinking such a Russian concession might gain his endorsement of the "democracies" and Russian cause as "just," soften up Eire to allow British and U.S. bases on its territory, create discomfiture among the Catholic populations of Italy and Germany, and get the support of U.S. Catholics behind the administration's pro-Russian course. Thus, his motivation in their view had really nothing to do with religion at all.(114)
U.S. News gave lengthy attention to the brawl stirred up by the President, originally trying to make FDR look as good as possible and his critics as evil as possible,(115) but in its summary a week later, it was conceded that a presidential gaffe of substantial proportions had occurred. After a broad sampling of the nation's press, David Lawrence's weekly organ conceded that a consensus indicated Roosevelt "showed poor judgment in making his in cautious remark about the Russian constitution and religious liberty."
The Protestant Christian Century scalded Roosevelt for his soothing pronouncement on religious freedom in Russia, and recalled his words before a Christian youth assembly in 1939 when he declared, how much he detested "the banishment of religion" from Russia. The editors also divined the intent of the statement as one of trying to woo Catholics in the U.S. to support his aid to Russia program, but insisted that "Instead of winning the Catholics, the President's careless words have made them more than ever critical of his Russia policy." Furthermore, the editors considered the presidential remark an adverse reflection upon his widely hailed "freedoms" in the Atlantic Charter: "The President gave the nation an opportunity to test his conception of one of these essential freedoms, and the test gave forth a hollow, empty sound.''
There was no doubt that the national mood, despite the stunning attack upon their sensibilities by a rising din of pro-war propaganda, was still quite alien to receptivity to puffs about another non-existent beauty supposedly existing in Soviet Russia. In this moment of disaster only the New Masses came up with a supporting strike, a long three-column editorial in which Roosevelt's prominent Catholic critics, such as Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen and Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University, were subjected to personal abuse. The Communist editors cited in warm approval the vociferous criticism of veteran pro-Soviet divines such as Paul Tillich, Kenneth Leslie, Pierre van Paassen and James Luther Adams, deploring "the attempt to create a religious issue regarding the USSR." The editors concluded by returning to the offense, emphasizing their charge that Hitler Germany was attacking religion, and that any suppression of clergy or religious persecution in the Soviet Union were just "police measures taken by the government against reactionary clerics who secretly conspired against the Soviet regime."
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13. Diplomatic Moves Toward Vastly Increased Military Aid to Stalin
by James J. Martin
In the meantime, however, simultaneously with its losing effort on the pro-Soviet propaganda circuit, the administration was moving ahead rapidly and successfully in its military aid program for Stalin. The same issue of Time which unfolded the details of Roosevelt's lighthearted encomium to religious freedom in the USSR described the famous meeting in Moscow of the U.S.A.'s Averell Harriman, Britain's Lord Beaverbrook and Stalinist diplomat Molotov. No one saw the incongruity of the spectacle of two capitalist millionaires collaborating with a Bolshevik super-bureaucrat potentate dedicated to their destruction, in the creation of what Time hailed as an "Anti-Hitler Front," even if the U.S.A. still was not formally in the war. (It was fifteen years later that Molotov described the start of World War Two as the result of a successful stunt by the Soviet Union in precipitating a civil war among the capitalist states.(119)
The preparation of this famous semi-summit meeting was well shielded from public attention, as were almost all pro-war maneuvers by the FDR regime, though a report on Harriman's famous pledge of American backing for Stalin on September 29, 1941, was printed deep in the back pages of Newsweek at the same moment Time was exulting over the Moscow meeting: "I am in- structed to pledge you the very fullest support today, tomorrow and as long as the struggle lasts and until ultimate victory comes.''(120) It surely was obvious by now that capitalism and Communism had no trouble getting along in a time of trial, as later scholarship demonstrated took place at the very moment the Bolshevik revolution was precipitated.
It is amazing that hardly any mention took place of the administration extending to Stalin the benefits of Lend-Lease on the same terms as were enjoyed by Britain and Nationalist China, surely one of the most fateful events of World War II. A billion dollar credit was established on October 30, 1941, following the drawing up of the first Russian protocol in Moscow October 1. But most news sources in America spent their space on the growing warmness of the administration toward the Soviet, in non- material gestures, and a parallel program of glamorizing Stalin, which started at a strong clip in mid-autumn of 1941.
Roosevelt figured prominently in the sensational news from Moscow related to the extension of unlimited American aid to the Stalinist war machine. Time on October 20 highlighted his announcement that vast supplies were already on their way, and added something unexpected, a reproduction of FDR's cordial personal letter to Stalin, which apparently the administration hoped to conceal. It actually was leaked by the German news agency, DNB, which was followed by what Time called a "wry admission" that it was authentic despite the source which revealed it.(121) A great flurry over how it had been leaked out took place, with all hands in Washington and Moscow denying any part in divulging this secret. It is significant that the letter was not transmitted to Stalin by an American worker with high regard for the Workers' Fatherland, but by another millionaire, Ambassador Steinhardt, to Harriman, and then to the Red premier, whom few in these agitated days any longer chose to call a "dictator," a word now reserved only for the leaders of the enemy. This letter summarized the attitudes of the admirers of the Red Army in particular, closing with the fervent promise of material support: "I would like to express my great confidence that your armies will be victorious in the end over Hitler and to assure you of the greatest determination to afford the necessary material assistance."
This letter should have left no doubt whatever in the minds of all Americans as to where their President stood now, and it is mystifying that so little was done with this by the opponents of involvement in the war. Obsessed with actual moves committing the U.S.A. to direct involvement in the shooting, they neglected to size up the full implications of what went on in Moscow in October 1941. And despite the increasingly ominous buildup of pro- belligerence in the Pacific, one could hardly consider the U.S.A. under Roosevelt a non-participant in what was happening in Eastern Europe. Time gave top billing the following week to a survey of the impressions of the Soviet Union by the U.S. mission "headed by slick, handsome William Averell Harriman," whose associates as well as himself were described as "eagle-eyed fact- minded men." Among their observations was reported their impressions of Communist censorship, which they thought made that of the Germans "look like children playing with paper dolls," a statement which actually seriously undermined several years of horror stories by German emigres in America. The meat of this new message was a recommendation from them that "a real agreement or treaty of alliance with Great Britain and Russia" be drawn up as soon as it was "politically possible."(122)
by James J. Martin
In the meantime, however, simultaneously with its losing effort on the pro-Soviet propaganda circuit, the administration was moving ahead rapidly and successfully in its military aid program for Stalin. The same issue of Time which unfolded the details of Roosevelt's lighthearted encomium to religious freedom in the USSR described the famous meeting in Moscow of the U.S.A.'s Averell Harriman, Britain's Lord Beaverbrook and Stalinist diplomat Molotov. No one saw the incongruity of the spectacle of two capitalist millionaires collaborating with a Bolshevik super-bureaucrat potentate dedicated to their destruction, in the creation of what Time hailed as an "Anti-Hitler Front," even if the U.S.A. still was not formally in the war. (It was fifteen years later that Molotov described the start of World War Two as the result of a successful stunt by the Soviet Union in precipitating a civil war among the capitalist states.(119)
The preparation of this famous semi-summit meeting was well shielded from public attention, as were almost all pro-war maneuvers by the FDR regime, though a report on Harriman's famous pledge of American backing for Stalin on September 29, 1941, was printed deep in the back pages of Newsweek at the same moment Time was exulting over the Moscow meeting: "I am in- structed to pledge you the very fullest support today, tomorrow and as long as the struggle lasts and until ultimate victory comes.''(120) It surely was obvious by now that capitalism and Communism had no trouble getting along in a time of trial, as later scholarship demonstrated took place at the very moment the Bolshevik revolution was precipitated.
It is amazing that hardly any mention took place of the administration extending to Stalin the benefits of Lend-Lease on the same terms as were enjoyed by Britain and Nationalist China, surely one of the most fateful events of World War II. A billion dollar credit was established on October 30, 1941, following the drawing up of the first Russian protocol in Moscow October 1. But most news sources in America spent their space on the growing warmness of the administration toward the Soviet, in non- material gestures, and a parallel program of glamorizing Stalin, which started at a strong clip in mid-autumn of 1941.
Roosevelt figured prominently in the sensational news from Moscow related to the extension of unlimited American aid to the Stalinist war machine. Time on October 20 highlighted his announcement that vast supplies were already on their way, and added something unexpected, a reproduction of FDR's cordial personal letter to Stalin, which apparently the administration hoped to conceal. It actually was leaked by the German news agency, DNB, which was followed by what Time called a "wry admission" that it was authentic despite the source which revealed it.(121) A great flurry over how it had been leaked out took place, with all hands in Washington and Moscow denying any part in divulging this secret. It is significant that the letter was not transmitted to Stalin by an American worker with high regard for the Workers' Fatherland, but by another millionaire, Ambassador Steinhardt, to Harriman, and then to the Red premier, whom few in these agitated days any longer chose to call a "dictator," a word now reserved only for the leaders of the enemy. This letter summarized the attitudes of the admirers of the Red Army in particular, closing with the fervent promise of material support: "I would like to express my great confidence that your armies will be victorious in the end over Hitler and to assure you of the greatest determination to afford the necessary material assistance."
This letter should have left no doubt whatever in the minds of all Americans as to where their President stood now, and it is mystifying that so little was done with this by the opponents of involvement in the war. Obsessed with actual moves committing the U.S.A. to direct involvement in the shooting, they neglected to size up the full implications of what went on in Moscow in October 1941. And despite the increasingly ominous buildup of pro- belligerence in the Pacific, one could hardly consider the U.S.A. under Roosevelt a non-participant in what was happening in Eastern Europe. Time gave top billing the following week to a survey of the impressions of the Soviet Union by the U.S. mission "headed by slick, handsome William Averell Harriman," whose associates as well as himself were described as "eagle-eyed fact- minded men." Among their observations was reported their impressions of Communist censorship, which they thought made that of the Germans "look like children playing with paper dolls," a statement which actually seriously undermined several years of horror stories by German emigres in America. The meat of this new message was a recommendation from them that "a real agreement or treaty of alliance with Great Britain and Russia" be drawn up as soon as it was "politically possible."(122)
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14. Culture, Big Names and the Well-Placed Lend Their Assistance to the Building Pro-Soviet Bandwagon
by James J. Martin
October, the symbolic month of the Bolshevik revolution, was memorialized in many ways in America. The main feature of an assault on the citizenry in behalf of Russia was the glamorization of Stalin in interventionist organs. On the 27th Time ran a long and ludicrously sentimental portrait of the Red chief. This piece was accompanied by a cover portrait of "Good Old Joe" by the artist Artzybasheff, and an ingenious attempt to whitewash Stalin for his diplomatic coup with Germany in August 1939.(123) Time's political retouching of that event credited it to his "peasant cunning," though granting that he was rudely upset by Hitler in June 1941 "before he was ready," which suggested that Hitler had anticipated a Russian attack on Germany by his action Meanwhile, the publishing world that same week quietly mulled over the news that still another effort in behalf of the USSR by a millionaire lay in the offing: a book by ex-ambassador Joseph E. Davies, in which the latter was said to have extolled Stalin as a predictor of "singular accuracy" on current events,(124) while advancing an apology for and explanation of the 1936-38 purge trials which was guaranteed to stun the world of political analysis.
While the big-ticket items relating to overall Communist comfort and welfare were being handled and arranged by upper-level capitalist opulents, the New Masses brought up the rear in the culture department. The day after Time's cover story on Stalin, the Communist weekly published a cable from Shostakovich in which he announced that he was still at work on his Seventh Symphony "in the midst of battle."(125) And the whole period was fittingly climaxed by a stirring Russian War Relief Benefit (126) staged at New York City's Madison Square Garden which managed to include elements of almost the whole spectrum of pro-Sovietism in the neighborhood. Among the speakers were Walter Duranty, whose genial pro-Soviet cables had long been featured in the New York Times, the fervent French "anti-fascist" refugee, Genevieve Tabouis, Andrei Gromyko, Soviet charge d'affaires in the city, and Clark Eichelberger, national chairman of the fiercely pro-war Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The principal attraction however was ex-Ambassador Davies, delivering his first public address since returning from Moscow. Speaking to this overflow "Testimony for Unity," Davies delivered a stirring pro- Soviet speech which among other things defended the Soviet on the recent religious issue. Particularly impressive was his vindica- tion, according to the New Masses report, "of much in Soviet policy that has been distorted and vilified in recent years."(127)
Even the lavish resources of the Luce publishing empire's upper-level business-oriented Fortune magazine were mobilized in this month to advancing a nation-wide pro-Sovietism. Its October Survey was devoted to trying to prove that Americans at large were swallowing their fear and dislike of Communism, and that a great majority were in favor of aiding the Reds against Hitler, and asserting that 20% were already willing to accept the USSR "as a full partner." The poll, conducted as others before by Elmo Roper, concluded that in general the U.S. was "incurably conditioned against Communism," and that even the Red military performance as reported in America had not deterred 35.1% of the respondents from replying in the affirmative to the poll statement, "The Russian Government and the German Government are equally bad," and that 4.6% had said that the former was worse. But 32% were of the opinion the Stalinists were "slightly better" and 8.5% declared they were "far better" than the Hitlerites. Despite all this, nearly 30% were in favor of deporting or jailing "Communist sympathizers" here in the U.S., and 54% were for close surveillance of same, recommending prohibition of pro- Communist "agitating and organizing," preparatory to rounding them up "if necessary." But at the same time, 73.3% were willing to help the Soviet bring about the defeat of Hitler, with 22% of this group willing to accept Stalin "as a full partner" with Great Britain in this fight. It was deplorable that Roper did not include a question dealing with American response to the likely outcome of a Communist victory in Europe, which such a commanding majority of those polled obviously were voting for.
It was significant that Roper, in discussing socio-economic status, indicated that the percentage of the "wealthy" was somewhat more in favor than the general average when questioned as to "cooperation with Stalin and for accepting him as a partner." And once more that part of the populace located in the South Atlantic states, the consistently most belligerent sector of the country since the outbreak of the war in 1939, demonstrated their zeal for gore by exceeding all other regions in their enthusiasm for joining with Stalin, 32.7%
The rush to join the pro-Stalinist bandwagon on the part of the opulent and well-placed in the U.S. in the fall of 1941 involved an impressive number of people, with perhaps the best known of their persuasion, the defeated Republican standard-bearer in the 1940 election, Wendell Willkie, not endorsing this choice. However, having swiftly abandoned his campaigning oratory in favor of non-intervention for exactly the opposite within weeks of defeat, his enthusiasm for defense of the enemies of the Germans indicated to critics that sooner or later he was sure to accompany the others in climbing aboard the Moscow Express. William Henry Chamberlin summarized the moral problem facing Willkie in a curt piece in the non-interventionist Christian Century:
We cannot, so Mr. Willkie tells us, maintain the American way of life unless we also maintain the British way, the Chinese way, the Greek way. So far as I know, Mr. Willkie has remained silent on the somewhat delicate point of whether the American way of life is also dependent on the maintenance of the Stalinite way . . . or the Chinese brand of Communism (129)
Chamberlain and the others studying Willkie got their answer a little over a year later with the publication of the book by Willkie, One World.
------------------------------------------------
by James J. Martin
October, the symbolic month of the Bolshevik revolution, was memorialized in many ways in America. The main feature of an assault on the citizenry in behalf of Russia was the glamorization of Stalin in interventionist organs. On the 27th Time ran a long and ludicrously sentimental portrait of the Red chief. This piece was accompanied by a cover portrait of "Good Old Joe" by the artist Artzybasheff, and an ingenious attempt to whitewash Stalin for his diplomatic coup with Germany in August 1939.(123) Time's political retouching of that event credited it to his "peasant cunning," though granting that he was rudely upset by Hitler in June 1941 "before he was ready," which suggested that Hitler had anticipated a Russian attack on Germany by his action Meanwhile, the publishing world that same week quietly mulled over the news that still another effort in behalf of the USSR by a millionaire lay in the offing: a book by ex-ambassador Joseph E. Davies, in which the latter was said to have extolled Stalin as a predictor of "singular accuracy" on current events,(124) while advancing an apology for and explanation of the 1936-38 purge trials which was guaranteed to stun the world of political analysis.
While the big-ticket items relating to overall Communist comfort and welfare were being handled and arranged by upper-level capitalist opulents, the New Masses brought up the rear in the culture department. The day after Time's cover story on Stalin, the Communist weekly published a cable from Shostakovich in which he announced that he was still at work on his Seventh Symphony "in the midst of battle."(125) And the whole period was fittingly climaxed by a stirring Russian War Relief Benefit (126) staged at New York City's Madison Square Garden which managed to include elements of almost the whole spectrum of pro-Sovietism in the neighborhood. Among the speakers were Walter Duranty, whose genial pro-Soviet cables had long been featured in the New York Times, the fervent French "anti-fascist" refugee, Genevieve Tabouis, Andrei Gromyko, Soviet charge d'affaires in the city, and Clark Eichelberger, national chairman of the fiercely pro-war Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The principal attraction however was ex-Ambassador Davies, delivering his first public address since returning from Moscow. Speaking to this overflow "Testimony for Unity," Davies delivered a stirring pro- Soviet speech which among other things defended the Soviet on the recent religious issue. Particularly impressive was his vindica- tion, according to the New Masses report, "of much in Soviet policy that has been distorted and vilified in recent years."(127)
Even the lavish resources of the Luce publishing empire's upper-level business-oriented Fortune magazine were mobilized in this month to advancing a nation-wide pro-Sovietism. Its October Survey was devoted to trying to prove that Americans at large were swallowing their fear and dislike of Communism, and that a great majority were in favor of aiding the Reds against Hitler, and asserting that 20% were already willing to accept the USSR "as a full partner." The poll, conducted as others before by Elmo Roper, concluded that in general the U.S. was "incurably conditioned against Communism," and that even the Red military performance as reported in America had not deterred 35.1% of the respondents from replying in the affirmative to the poll statement, "The Russian Government and the German Government are equally bad," and that 4.6% had said that the former was worse. But 32% were of the opinion the Stalinists were "slightly better" and 8.5% declared they were "far better" than the Hitlerites. Despite all this, nearly 30% were in favor of deporting or jailing "Communist sympathizers" here in the U.S., and 54% were for close surveillance of same, recommending prohibition of pro- Communist "agitating and organizing," preparatory to rounding them up "if necessary." But at the same time, 73.3% were willing to help the Soviet bring about the defeat of Hitler, with 22% of this group willing to accept Stalin "as a full partner" with Great Britain in this fight. It was deplorable that Roper did not include a question dealing with American response to the likely outcome of a Communist victory in Europe, which such a commanding majority of those polled obviously were voting for.
It was significant that Roper, in discussing socio-economic status, indicated that the percentage of the "wealthy" was somewhat more in favor than the general average when questioned as to "cooperation with Stalin and for accepting him as a partner." And once more that part of the populace located in the South Atlantic states, the consistently most belligerent sector of the country since the outbreak of the war in 1939, demonstrated their zeal for gore by exceeding all other regions in their enthusiasm for joining with Stalin, 32.7%
The rush to join the pro-Stalinist bandwagon on the part of the opulent and well-placed in the U.S. in the fall of 1941 involved an impressive number of people, with perhaps the best known of their persuasion, the defeated Republican standard-bearer in the 1940 election, Wendell Willkie, not endorsing this choice. However, having swiftly abandoned his campaigning oratory in favor of non-intervention for exactly the opposite within weeks of defeat, his enthusiasm for defense of the enemies of the Germans indicated to critics that sooner or later he was sure to accompany the others in climbing aboard the Moscow Express. William Henry Chamberlin summarized the moral problem facing Willkie in a curt piece in the non-interventionist Christian Century:
We cannot, so Mr. Willkie tells us, maintain the American way of life unless we also maintain the British way, the Chinese way, the Greek way. So far as I know, Mr. Willkie has remained silent on the somewhat delicate point of whether the American way of life is also dependent on the maintenance of the Stalinite way . . . or the Chinese brand of Communism (129)
Chamberlain and the others studying Willkie got their answer a little over a year later with the publication of the book by Willkie, One World.
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15. Echoes of the Religious Dust Up Reverberate
by James J. Martin
The Christian Century was far more exercised by the increasing belligerence of key churchmen in behalf of Stalin than they were by the steady movement of big capitalists to his succor in the war with the Germans. Singled out for special reproach were the Archbishop of Canterbury in Britain and prestigious Reinhold Niebuhr in the U.S. Repelled by the former's flattering estimate of the Reds in late October, the editors remarked disparagingly, "It is slightly nauseating to hear those who have never been able to find words hard enough to express their opinion of the Soviets now cooing compliments, and almost, if not quite, conferring benedictions."(130) The editors had not taken up the new fashion of fawning on an old enemy turned into an "ally" via the fortunes of war.
In Niebuhr's case, they were dealing with someone whose long campaign in behalf of Marx and Mars had undergone some modification; the former had been replaced by the Deity. In the magazine Christianity and Crisis, newly formed mainly to accommodate the war cries of a class of divine not previously noted for truculence toward Stalin, Niebuhr had registered the growing insolence of this kind of warrior parson with a ferocious editorial which attacked neutrality in any war as immoral. On November 12 the Christian Century ran one of its most lengthy and memorable editorials in decades, a five-column incensed raking of Niebuhr probably unmatched in any journal before. Its summary of his message was calculated to create serious qualms among the Men of God in the seminaries whose first allegiance had always been to the Prince of Peace: It is the baldest apologetic for war that has appeared in either secular or religious contemporary writing. It is not merely an apologetic for this war and for America's participation in it, but for war in general. Under its thesis the United States would become responsible for participation in any war waged anywhere in the world.(131)
It would appear that Rev. Niebuhr had written a manifesto which far more than not set the course for U.S. foreign policy which by and large is still in effect over 40 years later. It was a message for soldiers, money, business and industry, and politicians, not clergymen. Rev. Niebuhr, a not-so-closet-Marxist, was another of their most eloquent and articulate voices who saw no serious conflict in the way of planetary cooperation between Stalinist Russia and the new form of corporate state taking shape rapidly in the U.S.A.
But the green light for war participation did not shine down all the avenues of organized religion. Though several Catholic leaders in prominent positions had endorsed Roosevelt's pro- intervention drive, it was a view hardly shared with the parish priesthood, who dealt with people and not with the symbols of power. A poll of 34,616 Catholic priests which was responded to by 13,155 of them revealed that 91.5% were opposed to a shooting war outside the Western Hemisphere for Americans (only 6.7% were for it), and that 90.5% opposed any aid to the "Communist Russian government" (7% favored it). The liberal and pro-war Catholic weekly Commonweal was very unhappy about the results,(132) while Commonweal's opposite number, the anti-war Protestant Christian Century, confined itself to observing: "The President's sedulous wooing of Catholic approval does not seem to have produced very gratifying results."(133)
Part of the impact of this thundering voice of disapproval was negated a month later. The last week of November 1941 a statement by ten Bishops and Archbishops on the administrative board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference contained a vaguely pro-interventionist pronouncement which contributed in a minor way to refurbishing the Communist aid cause. Utilizing the clever ploy fashioned by Woodrow Wilson in 1918 in setting up a distinction between the peoples and political systems of Germany and Russia, in this new case, it seemed to be sufficient grounds, in the view of the prelates, to enable Catholics "to back U.S. aid to Russia" and not feel seriously in error while so doing. Time called it "a prime example of ecclesiastical double talk," but since it supported a policy heatedly promoted by the editors, the magazine was far from displeased by it all. (134)
-----------------------------------------
by James J. Martin
The Christian Century was far more exercised by the increasing belligerence of key churchmen in behalf of Stalin than they were by the steady movement of big capitalists to his succor in the war with the Germans. Singled out for special reproach were the Archbishop of Canterbury in Britain and prestigious Reinhold Niebuhr in the U.S. Repelled by the former's flattering estimate of the Reds in late October, the editors remarked disparagingly, "It is slightly nauseating to hear those who have never been able to find words hard enough to express their opinion of the Soviets now cooing compliments, and almost, if not quite, conferring benedictions."(130) The editors had not taken up the new fashion of fawning on an old enemy turned into an "ally" via the fortunes of war.
In Niebuhr's case, they were dealing with someone whose long campaign in behalf of Marx and Mars had undergone some modification; the former had been replaced by the Deity. In the magazine Christianity and Crisis, newly formed mainly to accommodate the war cries of a class of divine not previously noted for truculence toward Stalin, Niebuhr had registered the growing insolence of this kind of warrior parson with a ferocious editorial which attacked neutrality in any war as immoral. On November 12 the Christian Century ran one of its most lengthy and memorable editorials in decades, a five-column incensed raking of Niebuhr probably unmatched in any journal before. Its summary of his message was calculated to create serious qualms among the Men of God in the seminaries whose first allegiance had always been to the Prince of Peace: It is the baldest apologetic for war that has appeared in either secular or religious contemporary writing. It is not merely an apologetic for this war and for America's participation in it, but for war in general. Under its thesis the United States would become responsible for participation in any war waged anywhere in the world.(131)
It would appear that Rev. Niebuhr had written a manifesto which far more than not set the course for U.S. foreign policy which by and large is still in effect over 40 years later. It was a message for soldiers, money, business and industry, and politicians, not clergymen. Rev. Niebuhr, a not-so-closet-Marxist, was another of their most eloquent and articulate voices who saw no serious conflict in the way of planetary cooperation between Stalinist Russia and the new form of corporate state taking shape rapidly in the U.S.A.
But the green light for war participation did not shine down all the avenues of organized religion. Though several Catholic leaders in prominent positions had endorsed Roosevelt's pro- intervention drive, it was a view hardly shared with the parish priesthood, who dealt with people and not with the symbols of power. A poll of 34,616 Catholic priests which was responded to by 13,155 of them revealed that 91.5% were opposed to a shooting war outside the Western Hemisphere for Americans (only 6.7% were for it), and that 90.5% opposed any aid to the "Communist Russian government" (7% favored it). The liberal and pro-war Catholic weekly Commonweal was very unhappy about the results,(132) while Commonweal's opposite number, the anti-war Protestant Christian Century, confined itself to observing: "The President's sedulous wooing of Catholic approval does not seem to have produced very gratifying results."(133)
Part of the impact of this thundering voice of disapproval was negated a month later. The last week of November 1941 a statement by ten Bishops and Archbishops on the administrative board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference contained a vaguely pro-interventionist pronouncement which contributed in a minor way to refurbishing the Communist aid cause. Utilizing the clever ploy fashioned by Woodrow Wilson in 1918 in setting up a distinction between the peoples and political systems of Germany and Russia, in this new case, it seemed to be sufficient grounds, in the view of the prelates, to enable Catholics "to back U.S. aid to Russia" and not feel seriously in error while so doing. Time called it "a prime example of ecclesiastical double talk," but since it supported a policy heatedly promoted by the editors, the magazine was far from displeased by it all. (134)
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16. British Propaganda Diversions, and Related American Anglophile Support for the Growing Enhancement of Stalin
by James J. Martin
Almost everything seemed to be favoring pro-Stalinist moves and gestures in the last five or six weeks of formal American neutrality in the late fall of 1941. The only obstacle, and a very large one, continued to be the persistence of large popular majorities against American involvement in a shooting war outside the continental U.S., and the stubborn front against involvement in the war on any terms waged by the America First Committee. Here, however, the major opposition was being furnished not bar Soviet partisans of American nationality but the large British secret intelligence apparatus, about which few Americans knew, and even fewer talked. Newsweek in July had published a quiet tid- bit, remarking that there were "more British in Washington than captured and burned it in 1814," but the real center of British espionage was New York, lodged in the Rockefeller Center, from which they created false pro-war organizations, sabotaged American antiwar political leaders, and even murdered enemy espionage agents also in the U.S. Over 40 years after the war broke out, Americans were aware of just a part of the story of British espionage work in the U.S.A., 1939-1945. Its principal cover prior to Pearl Harbor and American belligerence was a totally cooperating Roosevelt administration and its own massive amateur spy organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which through its head William J. Donovan, worked smoothly in harmony with the British Security Coordination (BSC) headed by the Canadian millionaire, William Stephenson. (It was Stephenson who quoted Roosevelt with some relish over 30 years after the end of the war as saying in mid-1940, "I'm your biggest undercover agent.")(135) But in 1940-1941 no U.S. printed source even breathed the slightest hint that the troubles of such prominent America First speakers as Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D.-Mont.) and the globally-famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (136) were partially the work of undercover sabotage by British intelligence in the U.S.A. Time gloated when Sen. Wheeler was denied the right to speak in Atlanta in July l941 (137) when he was to argue for a neutral course for the U.S.A., which made embarrassing accompanying copy to the hypocritical groans over the suspension of free speech in Germany, Soviet Russia and Vichy France. Time did print Sec. of War Stimson's apology to Wheeler in August after Stimson had referred to Wheeler's public views as ''near-treason,''(138) but it was back the following month with a subliminal vote of approval when Lindbergh was similarly denied the right to speak on the same subject as Wheeler in Oklahoma City.(139) Its subsequent reaction to the Lindbergh speech in Des Moines in early October 1941, when Lindbergh was reported as "charging that the British, the Administration, and Jews [the Time story contained no article "the" before "Jews"] were pushing the U.S. towards war,"(140) had much to do with singling out Lindbergh for contumely on a scale rarely experienced by any other American, and which was still accruing to his memory nearly 60 years after his famous solo airplane crossing of the Atlantic in l927. (141)
In the meantime the millionaire and Communist press pursued their joint though uncoordinated adulation and idealization of Stalin and Red Russia. One especially influential campaign was carried out by Ralph Ingersoll, editor and publisher of Chicago tycoon Marshall Field's New York City tabloid, PM, an urgent voice of belligerence. He authored a sensational series in November 1941 for three weeks, on his return from the Soviet after a visit of less than a month. His articles were widely syndicated in other U.S. cities and in Canada, and reached hundreds of thousands of readers. Time imperturbably described it all as "the first uncensored first hand report on fighting Russia by a capable U.S. journalist,"(142) thereby adding another to their string of breath-taking whoppers, in view of already published testimony by Harriman that Soviet censorship exceeded in tightness that of any nation on earth by a very wide margin.
To some, Ingersoll's writing sounded like Daily Worker fare though somewhat toned down. In actuality, Ingersoll described no battle scenes, which no other Anglo-American reporter in Russia ever did either, and was obviously much curtailed in his movements, despite his Stalinophile fixations. The Communist press received his work warily, gratified by his contribution to their cause, but not quite yet sure that what they were seeing was not a hoax or trap being sprung on them by the "capitalist gutter- reptile press." A.B. Magil's cautious reaction in the New Masses was typical, not thoroughly sold by Ingersoll, but willing to concede that the latter had "brought back more of the truth about the Soviet Union than any American capitalist journalist in years" Magil was especially pleased with his portrait of Stalin, and that he had made his interview with the Red premier "exciting and dramatic, radiant with the greatness of the man." No Communist in America wrote anything later more influential among Americans about Stalin than did Ingersoll in this last month before U.S. entry into World War II. But in that same period two other affluent Americans, Harriman and Davies, tried, only to be outdone by the British mogul, Lord Beaverbrook.
Harriman's glorious tribute to Stalin during his October 12 radio address broadcast from London was matched by that of Beaverbrook that same night, but was well surpassed by Beaverbrook's speech at Manchester the following month, in which he testified, "I put my faith in Stalin's leadership," though Time thought his audience a few paces in advance of him in ardent emotion toward the Soviet. "When the Beaver mentioned Russia," its story noted, "the applause was violent." Harriman was quoted by Newsweek as saying of Stalin, "He is a human fellow to deal with. He has a keen sense of humor, which he allowed full play even in conference."(143)
Davies specialized in tributes to Stalin's acumen retroactively, mainly substantiating Party explanations for the purge trials of 1936-1938, when most of the Old Bolsheviks and half of the Red Army's officer corps were killed or hustled to concentration camps. His testimony supporting the official Stalinist line was quoted and requoted by American Reds and their sympathizers, and appeared at times in the Communist press in columns parallel to the identical line being launched by Earl Browder, the CPUSA chief in the fall of 1941.(144) Liberal enemies of the American CP, who had been foremost in vociferous denunciation of the trials when they took place, now were much discomfited by what the new political expedience called for, and were further anguished that now that they were on Mr. Roosevelt's war wagon, they had to keep quiet during this latest tribute to Stalin's probity. That the ex-Ambassador to Moscow should appear in Stalin's corner in such good voice simply made the entire affair that much more unbearable. But the season of profound Stalinophilia had just begun.
by James J. Martin
Almost everything seemed to be favoring pro-Stalinist moves and gestures in the last five or six weeks of formal American neutrality in the late fall of 1941. The only obstacle, and a very large one, continued to be the persistence of large popular majorities against American involvement in a shooting war outside the continental U.S., and the stubborn front against involvement in the war on any terms waged by the America First Committee. Here, however, the major opposition was being furnished not bar Soviet partisans of American nationality but the large British secret intelligence apparatus, about which few Americans knew, and even fewer talked. Newsweek in July had published a quiet tid- bit, remarking that there were "more British in Washington than captured and burned it in 1814," but the real center of British espionage was New York, lodged in the Rockefeller Center, from which they created false pro-war organizations, sabotaged American antiwar political leaders, and even murdered enemy espionage agents also in the U.S. Over 40 years after the war broke out, Americans were aware of just a part of the story of British espionage work in the U.S.A., 1939-1945. Its principal cover prior to Pearl Harbor and American belligerence was a totally cooperating Roosevelt administration and its own massive amateur spy organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which through its head William J. Donovan, worked smoothly in harmony with the British Security Coordination (BSC) headed by the Canadian millionaire, William Stephenson. (It was Stephenson who quoted Roosevelt with some relish over 30 years after the end of the war as saying in mid-1940, "I'm your biggest undercover agent.")(135) But in 1940-1941 no U.S. printed source even breathed the slightest hint that the troubles of such prominent America First speakers as Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D.-Mont.) and the globally-famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (136) were partially the work of undercover sabotage by British intelligence in the U.S.A. Time gloated when Sen. Wheeler was denied the right to speak in Atlanta in July l941 (137) when he was to argue for a neutral course for the U.S.A., which made embarrassing accompanying copy to the hypocritical groans over the suspension of free speech in Germany, Soviet Russia and Vichy France. Time did print Sec. of War Stimson's apology to Wheeler in August after Stimson had referred to Wheeler's public views as ''near-treason,''(138) but it was back the following month with a subliminal vote of approval when Lindbergh was similarly denied the right to speak on the same subject as Wheeler in Oklahoma City.(139) Its subsequent reaction to the Lindbergh speech in Des Moines in early October 1941, when Lindbergh was reported as "charging that the British, the Administration, and Jews [the Time story contained no article "the" before "Jews"] were pushing the U.S. towards war,"(140) had much to do with singling out Lindbergh for contumely on a scale rarely experienced by any other American, and which was still accruing to his memory nearly 60 years after his famous solo airplane crossing of the Atlantic in l927. (141)
In the meantime the millionaire and Communist press pursued their joint though uncoordinated adulation and idealization of Stalin and Red Russia. One especially influential campaign was carried out by Ralph Ingersoll, editor and publisher of Chicago tycoon Marshall Field's New York City tabloid, PM, an urgent voice of belligerence. He authored a sensational series in November 1941 for three weeks, on his return from the Soviet after a visit of less than a month. His articles were widely syndicated in other U.S. cities and in Canada, and reached hundreds of thousands of readers. Time imperturbably described it all as "the first uncensored first hand report on fighting Russia by a capable U.S. journalist,"(142) thereby adding another to their string of breath-taking whoppers, in view of already published testimony by Harriman that Soviet censorship exceeded in tightness that of any nation on earth by a very wide margin.
To some, Ingersoll's writing sounded like Daily Worker fare though somewhat toned down. In actuality, Ingersoll described no battle scenes, which no other Anglo-American reporter in Russia ever did either, and was obviously much curtailed in his movements, despite his Stalinophile fixations. The Communist press received his work warily, gratified by his contribution to their cause, but not quite yet sure that what they were seeing was not a hoax or trap being sprung on them by the "capitalist gutter- reptile press." A.B. Magil's cautious reaction in the New Masses was typical, not thoroughly sold by Ingersoll, but willing to concede that the latter had "brought back more of the truth about the Soviet Union than any American capitalist journalist in years" Magil was especially pleased with his portrait of Stalin, and that he had made his interview with the Red premier "exciting and dramatic, radiant with the greatness of the man." No Communist in America wrote anything later more influential among Americans about Stalin than did Ingersoll in this last month before U.S. entry into World War II. But in that same period two other affluent Americans, Harriman and Davies, tried, only to be outdone by the British mogul, Lord Beaverbrook.
Harriman's glorious tribute to Stalin during his October 12 radio address broadcast from London was matched by that of Beaverbrook that same night, but was well surpassed by Beaverbrook's speech at Manchester the following month, in which he testified, "I put my faith in Stalin's leadership," though Time thought his audience a few paces in advance of him in ardent emotion toward the Soviet. "When the Beaver mentioned Russia," its story noted, "the applause was violent." Harriman was quoted by Newsweek as saying of Stalin, "He is a human fellow to deal with. He has a keen sense of humor, which he allowed full play even in conference."(143)
Davies specialized in tributes to Stalin's acumen retroactively, mainly substantiating Party explanations for the purge trials of 1936-1938, when most of the Old Bolsheviks and half of the Red Army's officer corps were killed or hustled to concentration camps. His testimony supporting the official Stalinist line was quoted and requoted by American Reds and their sympathizers, and appeared at times in the Communist press in columns parallel to the identical line being launched by Earl Browder, the CPUSA chief in the fall of 1941.(144) Liberal enemies of the American CP, who had been foremost in vociferous denunciation of the trials when they took place, now were much discomfited by what the new political expedience called for, and were further anguished that now that they were on Mr. Roosevelt's war wagon, they had to keep quiet during this latest tribute to Stalin's probity. That the ex-Ambassador to Moscow should appear in Stalin's corner in such good voice simply made the entire affair that much more unbearable. But the season of profound Stalinophilia had just begun.
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