The Allies

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II

By Winston Groom

In the fall of 1893, an event took place that unleashed the wrath of the Pashtun tribesmen, particularly in the Valley of Swat. A British diplomat named Mortimer Durand had drawn up-reportedly over a glass of gin-a somewhat arbitrary one-page document to delineate the fifteen-hundred mile boundary between India and Afghanistan. This became known as the Durand Line, which ran directly through the mountains where the Pashtun tribesmen lived. Each valley had its own tribe, but all the mountain people spoke Pashto, which was the official language of Afghanistan. From that day until this, the Durand Line remains the most deadly political boundary on earth.

[Foot Note:]

For the past decade and a half, American troops have been fighting in Afghanistan against the great-grandchildren of those same Pashtun tribesmen-men who abetted Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and who remain determined to restore Taliban rule in the country.

(Groom 2018, 31-32)

Parliament now began questioning Churchill’s competence and calling out “What’s the navy doing?” Lord Kitchener, now running the War Office, predicted that if the Germans decided to invade England the Navy would be unable to stop them. Clearly in the minds of most in the House of Commons, it was time for someone’s head to roll. The head selected, however, was not Churchill’s but that of the first sea lord, Admiral Price Louis of Battenberg. A German who had married a danger of Queen Victoria, he had become a naturalized British citizen and been an upstanding British naval officer for forty-five years. He had just learned that his son, a British infantry officer, had been killed in France when the ax fell on him most unfairly because of his German name, upbringing, and accent. Churchill, an old friend, had the onerous duty of informing Prince Louis of the decision of the liberal cabinet-news that he received “with great dignity.” Later in the war, because of increased anti-German feeling, the king suggested that Louis relinquish his German titles and change his name to something more Anglo Son sounding, He became Sir Louis Mountbatten, a surname since written starkly across the annals of British history. For its part, the British royal family changed its name as well, from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor, which it is known as to this day.

(Groom 2018, 132)

On the final day of the conference Roosevelt participated in meetings “that could have been done by the foreign ministers.” Then, without consulting or even inviting Churchill, he got down to business with Stalin, divvying up the countries of Europe after the war.

Roosevelt conceded the fate of Poland to Stalin’s Communist state, as well as that of the Baltic countries Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. He blithely explained to Stalin that if the war was still going on in 1944, he intended to run once more for the presidency, and that he would “need the votes of the six hundred million Americans of Polish descent” (there were in fact only 3 million of these). Therefore, he begged Stalin not to formally occupy the country until after the American elections.

As for the Baltic states, Roosevelt observed that they had once been a part of the old Russian Empire, and that he had no objection to the Soviets reabsorbing them after the war, provided there would be “some expression of the will of the people… perhaps not immediately after their re-occupation by the Soviet forces, but some day.”

He also seemed willing to concede Finland, with whom the Soviets had been at war. But Stalin didn’t want it. He asked for only one of its ports on the Gulf of Bothnia, and that was okay by Roosevelt.

Despite the apparent treachery of condemning these European nations to the tender mercies of Soviet communism, there was a method of sorts to Roosevelt’s seeming madness. First, he told people both within and without the U. S. Department of State that these were countries the Soviets could take at will anyway. They were all states in the far north bordering the Soviet Union, whose provenance was vaguely Russian anyway. The idea was, Roosevelt noted that if he conceded their occupation to Stalin, the Soviets would not cast an envious eye on the larger, more European states such as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans—even Germany itself. As for Poland, Roosevelt explained that he had no confidence in its government-in-exile anyway, which, he said, consisted of “landed aristocrats” who intended to rule over a feudalistic system to the detriment of the masses.

(Groom 2018, 371-372)

In his January State of the Union message, Roosevelt startled everyone when he proposed what he called a second, or economic, Bill of Rights, “under which a new basis for security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed.” These rights included for everyone:

• The right to a decent home.

• The right to a satisfactory job that would earn enough for adequate food, clothing, and recreation.

• The right to adequate medical care.

• The right to adequate protection from the fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

• The right to a good education.

This was as close as Roosevelt got to pure socialism. He laid it on Congress to pass the laws providing for these benefits, and he warned of political consequences if it did not. But legislators, already conscious of antagonisms toward the president’s mushrooming social programs, let this pie-in-the-sky “Second Bill of Rights” die a slow but sure legislative death.