The Piper

The Barnes Review
A Journal of Nationalist Thought & History

Volume XI Number 6...November/December 2005....www.barnesreview.org

P. 52. FDR: JOE STALIN'S BEST FRIEND Michael Collins Piper
If Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a Communist, he was the best "fellow traveler" any Red could have asked for. Thanks to this monster in the White House, such fiends as Stalin and Mao — the worst mass murderers in history — were enabled to slaughter 85 million to 100 million people....

RE-EXAMINING FDR

FDR: Stalin's Best Pal

Franklin D. Roosevelt Facilitates
the Soviet Subjugation of Europe

November 17, 2006, marks the 73rd anniversary of what may well be the greatest and most tragic error in American diplomatic history. On that date, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered diplomatic recognition to the Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union. This single act provided legitimacy to the worldwide imperialistic drive of the Soviet regime, which installed itself in power after a revolution and civil war that resulted in the deaths of well in excess of 14 million. Scores of millions of others later died as a result of the Soviet power grab and the policies of the Communist regime, and in turn the murderous Red Chinese regime.

By Michael Collins Piper

T he history of the events leading up to FDR's nod of support to the Soviets is nothing less than a chronicle of the deceit and treachery that are hallmarks of the Roosevelt record — a record which has led one historian, Dr. Martin Larson, to call FDR "the most evil man ever to occupy a high political office in the history of the world." There was, said Larson, "no better liar and deceiver."

Roosevelt chose to recognize the Soviet dictators despite the fact that four previous presidents, including the liberal internationalist Democrat Woodrow Wilson, had refused to recognize diplomats from the Communist police state, fearing (correctly) that American recognition of the Soviet regime would provide respectability to the worldwide subversive efforts of the Red imperialists.

I think that if I give Stalin everything I possibly can, and then ask for nothing in return, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of peace and democracy. — FDR AT YALTA

Soviet subversion and political intrigue were rampant worldwide, and Communist political leaders were making vast gains in depression-wracked Europe. Soviet-backed Rosa Luxemberg had established a temporary German Socialist Republic; and Hungary's Bela Kun had seized power in that Balkan country and had set himself up as a pro-Soviet force for Communist expansion throughout Europe.

Elsewhere, other Communist parties were expanding in power. In America herself, Soviet agents were active, infiltrating government agencies and stirring discontent, right under the eyes of Roosevelt.

(Perhaps the most famous suspected Soviet spy who served in the New Deal was Alger Hiss, the Harvard-educated protege of Roosevelt-appointed Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter's well-known sympathies for the Soviet revolutionaries were documented in American intelligence reports prepared after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. To his death, Hiss proclaimed his innocence, despite extensive evidence to the contrary. FDR had at least two other Soviet spies in his government: Harry Dexter White and Laughlin Currie.)

In a July 27, 1933 memorandum to the president, Robert F. Kelley, chief of the State Department's Division of Eastern European affairs, indicated that he believed recognition of the Soviet regime would present numerous problems: Soviet subversive activities worldwide, numerous instances of ill treatment of American nationals within Soviet confines, the Soviet failure to shoulder debts to America incurred by the czarist regime, and the general brutality of the Communist government were all cited as conflicts that Kelley believed should be resolved before America extended recognition to USSR.

Photograph of Churchill, FDR, and Stalin at Yalta Caption: "Warren F. Kimball, author of Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War, dismisses the charge that FDR `gave away' Eastern Europe and too much of the Far East to Stalin at Yalta `because he was a frail, sick, dying man.' On the contrary, he says, `nothing he did at Yalta ... altered the approach he had taken throughout the war, an approach toward a postwar settlement that by the time of the Yalta talks had been outlined in some detail.' Many historians have speculated about the cause of Roosevelt's death, and rumors have persisted for years that he died of a brain tumor or cancer. Roosevelt's defenders have tried to claim that his concessions were necessary to bribe Stalin to enter the war against Japan. The Yalta papers prove that was false: Three-and-a-half months before the Yalta meeting, Ambassador Averell Harriman had relayed to Roosevelt a `full agreement from Stalin not only to participate in the Pacific war, but to enter the war with full effort.' Above, one of many famous photographs of `the Big Three' at Yalta. Although quite ill, FDR still smokes a cigarette, of habit of which he was quite fond."

Secretary of State Cordell Hull was also warning the president of the Soviets' ongoing intervention in America's domestic affairs. In a memo to the president, the secretary warned that the Communists were "eager to obtain two things from the government of the United States: namely, credits or loans and recognition."

Hull believed that if the Soviets would not resolve the problems existing between America and the USSR before diplomatic recognition was extended, that it was not likely the Communists would choose to cease their activities after recognition.

The Japanese minister for foreign affairs, among other anti-Soviet foreign spokesmen, also expressed concern. He warned Roosevelt that recognition of the Soviets would damage worldwide resistance to Communism and create what he believed would be considered "a great question mark in the history of humanity. "

But Roosevelt went ahead with his plans, much to the delight of the Soviets and their international stooges, and against the counsel of some of FDR's more statesmanlike colleagues.

Roosevelt's methods in conducting his diplomatic overtures to the Soviets certainly left much to be desired. In order to negotiate possible recognition the president met in highly secretive conferences at the White House with the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs (and later ambassador to America), Maxim "Litvinov." Litvinov, born on the Polish borderlands as either Meyer Finkelstein or Meyer Wallach (scholarly sources are not certain which is his true name), was one of the early Bolshevik leaders and a key figure in the Soviet bureaucracy, fully capable of playing hardball politics with a pliable President Roosevelt.

The meetings between the left-wing American leader and the Soviet Communist were so secret that, as was revealed at the time by Roosevelt's own assistant secretary of state, Robert W. Moore: "There were no stenographers present and no reports made, and thus, so far as the conferences are concerned, there will be a bare outline and not a full picture exposed to the future historian."

In any case, Litvinov was successful in persuading Roosevelt to extend to the Communist empire diplomatic recognition, despite the fact that no legal documents relating to conditions of recognition were ever signed.

There's nothing wrong with Communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have are Communists. I do not regard the Communists as any present or future threat to our country. In fact, I look upon Russia as our strongest ally in the years to come. —FDR TO REP. MARTIN DIES

The president and his Soviet confidant promptly exchanged public greetings and issued a joint statement on November 16, 1933, expressing hope for "speedy and satisfactory" settlement of the many outstanding questions facing the relationship between the two world powers.

This cordial declaration was immediately followed, on November 17, by the announcement that America had officially recognized the dictatorship and had opened up diplomatic relations with the Soviets.

The Soviets press gloated at the news. In an editorial in Izvestia, the house organ of the Central Committee of the Soviet Politburo, the Red government announced gleefully that America, "the greatest capitalist power in the world, has at last been compelled to establish normal diplomatic relations" with the USSR.

"Compelled," it said — not "persuaded," not "convinced," but "compelled."

The Soviets had ostensibly agreed, beforehand, to "cease" interference in U.S. domestic affairs. But on other matters, the conflicts remained.

The two powers proceeded to exchange diplomatic representatives, with America dispatching William Bullitt as his first ambassador to the USSR.

Photograph of FDR and William Bullitt seated in a car Caption: "FDR and William Christian Bullitt, a man, as Dean Acheson once remarked, with a `singularly ironic middle name.' Dr. Henry Beston, one of the most learned and cultivated scholars, literary critics and publicists of this century, said about FDR: "Roosevelt was probably the most destructive man who ever lived. He left the civilized West in ruins, the entire East in a chaos of bullets and murder — and our own nation facing, for the first time, an enemy whose attack may be mortal. And to crown the summit of such fatal inquity, he left us a world that can no longer be put together in terms of any moral principle." This, above all else, many consider FDR's legacy to the Western world."

However, Bullitt soon began to recognize that the Soviets were not about to live up to the preliminary promises they had made. The Soviets had not attempted to settle the debt question, nor had they curbed their subversive activities worldwide. And soviet brutality against the captive nations within the empire was unabated.

The American ambassador continually protested against the Soviet attitude, to no avail. In fact, on November 9, 1935, Bullitt informed Hull that Litvinov denied ever having agreed, on behalf of his government, that the Soviets would take responsibility for the anti-American activities of the Communist Internationale — the political arm of the Communist movement outside the USSR.

Roosevelt's friendly overtures to the Soviets, which led to his alliance with Stalin during World War II, resulted in the enslavement of millions of Eastern Europeans, who were dragged behind the Iron Curtain in post-war years. And during the war, FDR chose to prolong the agony of that violent period in order to bring the Soviets in as fellow victors in the war against Germany and Japan — despite the documented fact that leading German military figures had sought Roosevelt's assistance in an effort to drive the Communists back into the Soviet Union in return for surrendering.

"I think the Russians are perfectly friendly. They aren't trying to gobble up the rest of Europe. They haven't got any idea of conquest. These fears that have been expressed by a lot of people here that the Russians are going to try to dominate Europe — I personally don't think there's anything in it." — Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 8, 1944

Within the Kremlin, FDR was viewed as a "Soviet saint," according to John F. Burns of The New York Times, an Establishment house organ long known for its pro-Roosevelt, pro-Soviet apologetics. The Soviet press praised FDR as a "profound realist." Anti-Communist presidents were called "hypocrites." For his actions in dealing with the Bolsheviks, FDR was praised by the Communist Party newspaper Pravda ("Truth") as being one who "displayed considerable political courage and the ability to overcome the fierce opposition of the enemies of the Soviet Union."

Roosevelt, Pravda said, "took a farsighted and realistic approach to the development of relations between the USSR and the United States of America."

Most Americans would not agree with this assessment.

Michael Collins Piper is a frequent contributor to THE BARNES REVIEW and the author of Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy ($25), called the definitive work on the JFK execution. He is also the author of The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America ($19.95) and The High Priests of War ($19.95). Order any of these books from TBR BOOK CLUB by calling 1-877-773-9077 toll free and charging to Visa or MasterCard. TBR subscribers take 10% off book prices. Add $3 per book S&H.

 

Photograph of a Lili St. Cyr sitting next to Eleanor Roosevelt Caption: "High Class Pals? Famed burlesque queen, Lili St. Cyr, a popular stripper of her day (left), is shown with Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Critics of FDR and his family — there were many — would contend the stripper was of a better class than many of the Communists and Soviet spies and a wide variety of crooked cronies who were among the Roosevelt inner circle. FDR's critics dared to point out that the president's sons were enmeshed in get-rich-quick schemes, utilizing their White House connection to rake in big bucks — a point that did not go unnoticed by Adolf Hitler, who mentioned Roosevelt's corruption when he asked the German Reichstag to declare war on the United States in 1941."