Conflict without compromise: US military and diplomatic personnel in Russia, 1941–43

Abstract

US personnel in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943 engaged in a dispute about what form the United States’ policy toward the Soviet Union should take. Those assigned to the Lend‐Lease office in Moscow, particularly Col. Philip R. Faymonville, supported and implemented President Franklin Roosevelt's policy of providing Soviet officials with everything they requested, without expecting anything in return. By contrast, personnel assigned to the embassy, primarily Ambassador William Standley and the military and naval attachés, resented both the activities of the Lend‐Lease office and Roosevelt's foreign policy. This increasingly public dispute contributed to heightened tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. An examination of the origins and development of this conflict as well as the steps taken to resolve it, reveals important insights into the nature of foreign policy making and implementation. In addition, it raises questions about the development of wartime and postwar US‐Soviet relations and their decline into eventual Cold War hostility.