My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin by Susan Butler , Franklin D. Roosevelt , Joseph V. Stalin (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 177 Buder, Susan (ed.).My Dear Mr. Stalin: The CompleteCorrespondence ofFranklin D. Roosevelt andJoseph V. Stalin. Foreword by Arthur Shlesinger, Jr. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2005. xix + 361 pp. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Document source notes. Index. ?i7-50. The purpose of this book is to provide a complete and accurate record of the correspondence, otherwise not readily accessible, between Roosevelt and Stalin. It begins with Roosevelt's first offer of assistance just over a month after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Stalin's erstwhile ally, Hider, and ends with Roosevelt's last cable to Stalin, sent just over two hours before his death on 12April 1945, a little less than a month before the capitulation of Germany to theAllies. For making this important source material so readily available Susan Butler deserves her colleagues' thanks. Roosevelt's response to the German invasion of theUSSR in 1941was unwaveringly straightforward.He saw that the global prioritywas the defeat of Germany. He saw inRussian resistance the only hope of preventing the whole of Western Europe frombeing irrevocably subjected toNazi rule.Once committed he did not pause to reckon the odds. Roosevelt supported Stalin unconditionally. The fact that he also believed, at least for a time, that he could convert Stalin into a benign force forpeace in a post-war world needs no defence. In a fight to the death you think the best and overlook the faults ofwhomsoever isprepared to stand and fight beside you ? it is not a time for nice calculation. Arthur Schlesinger suggests (p. xi) that Roosevelt did not really believe thathe could charm Stalin. He quotes Walter Lippmann in support of the idea thatRoosevelt could outwit Stalin. Roosevelt does not need thiskind of defence. He may have underestimated Stalin but there isno evidence that he was deceived by him. This correspondence reminds us again of just how much theUnited States contributed to the Soviet war effort. It included, for example, over 90 per cent of the Soviet Union's railroad equipment, 25 per cent of her military aircraft, enough machine tools to provide, among other things, 25 per cent of Soviet military aircraft production, a third of military aircraft fuel, nearly one third of all motor vehicles, over half of her ammunition and explosives, 80 per cent of the aluminium used in the T-34 tank and enough food to feed a 12,000,000-army half a pound of food per day for the duration of thewar (see B. V. Sokolov, Pravda 0 VelikoiOtechestevennoi Voine,St Petersburg, 1998, quoted inAlbert L. Weeks, Russia's Life-Saver:Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II, Oxford, 2004, pp. 8-9 and 122). Without US aid the Soviet Union would have been defeated. Stalin knew this and Soviet newspapers carrying the news ofRoosevelt's death were published with black borders. There isno evidence that Roosevelt's attempts to build a friendship with Stalin had any other material effecton Soviet policy. At the same time these exchanges show just how hard Roosevelt courted Stalin and just how ineffectual his advances were. Stalin treats the extra ordinarily generous offers of United States help with no more than formal gratitude. He soundly berates Churchill and Roosevelt for their two-year deferment of their enthusiastic promise of a second front, cold-bloodedly i78 SEER, 86, I, 2008 denies responsibility for theKatyn massacre, more or less directly questions Roosevelt's good faith over Himmler's attempts to arrange a surrender and settlesmatters in Eastern Europe without regard for eitherRoosevelt or Churchill. Butler, in her otherwise helpful commentary, sometimes betrays a hagio graphical desire to impute toRoosevelt an influence he did not have, as when she speculates that Stalin's re-opening of Orthodox churches in 1943 was prompted by Roosevelt (p. 159). Elsewhere, Butler's grasp ofmilitary events seems less than absolutely certain as, for example, when she appears to believe that the final offensive inTunisia was thework ofMontgomery's 8th Army assisted by Patton (p. 117). But these are trivial points. In one important respect, however, she might have usefully extended the scope of the background information she supplies. US-Soviet relations in this period...