Part 1
Harsh Legacy from Roosevelt – the 1945 World of Bureaucracy
- The world-wide bureaucracy known as the United Nations Organization created by Roosevelt and Stalin was ready to serve its “founding fathers” for the purpose of bureaucratic globalization. And the world was ready for it.
- In America, a powerful bureaucracy created by President Roosevelt during his 12 years (and then some) crushed everything in the country and dictated to Americans how to live their lives.
- In England[1], the socialist government of Attlee came to power and immediately began nationalizing the industry and destroying the market economy of the much-hated British market empire, including:
- Greece, Turkey, and the Eastern Mediterranean, according to the Yalta Conference, moved to the area of influence and control of England. The socialists that came there to power gladly “surrendered” their “fosterlings” to totalitarianism. Stalin made territorial claims to Turkey and demanded to create a Soviet naval base in the Dardanelles, a protectorate over Tripolitania (a part of Libya), and was preparing to build a naval base on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia to ensure control over the entire Mediterranean, as well as lay a hand on the Middle-East crude oil and the Suez Canal.
- The British meanly left India to drift on its own, handed the power to their “relatives” – the essentially socialist and bureaucratic Indian National Congress, and became the reason for endless bloody wars between India and Pakistan and the miserable economic situation in both countries.
- After most of the American troops were pulled out of Europe, USSR became the dominating force there.
- Soviet troops in Iran and Turkey that were supposed to withdraw after the end of the war, didn't want to go away, for some reason.
- In the USSR, the communist party bureaucracy and the KGB were regaining power that somewhat weakened during the war. The GULAG network that got thinned out during the war was now thriving again.
- The occupied Baltic states and the former German city of Konigsberg were now under the Soviet rule. Under protection of the Soviet troops, communists that served the Kremlin now came to power In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Yugoslavia. Finland, while technically remaining a fee country, followed every order from Stalin.
- In the Russian occupation zone that captured 1/4 part of Germany, the socialist administration not only retained Nazi practices, but made them more severe.
- Europe, although not under occupation but still impoverished as a result of the war, was in a hurry to voluntary surrender itself to communists.
- Communist parties in Italy and France were the most numerous, and Stalin-controlled communists entered their governments.
- The communist guerilla movement that was fueled from Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, where communists came to power, began gaining strength in Greece.
- In Scandinavia, most governments were either socialist or socialist-democratic.
- Stalin also “pushed” through the UN the creation of Israel and helped them to win the 1947 war against the Arabs, sending there the best active-duty Jewish officers and a lot of armaments, hoping that Israel would become a communist satellite[2].
- In China, communists of Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek (Kuomintang party) were fighting for power – both parties were leftist, bureaucratic, and extremely corrupted.
- Large parts of Korea and Vietnam given by Roosevelt to Stalin fell under communist rule.
- In South America, the power was in the hands of totalitarian bureaucratic dictatorships of Peron in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil; many other countries were controlled by more or less totalitarian dictators.
The fate of post-war Europe looked very gloomy, as there were two evidently possible alternatives:
- The entire Europe would be captured by the Soviet Union that would establish there a unified governing bureaucracy and some nominal order, followed by the division of the world between Stalin’s socialism and Roosevelt’s socialism.
- The decay of powers, development of chaotic events, total separatism, revolutions, coups, civil wars that would be much worse than the past war, usurpation of power in various countries by gangs of extremists, and gradual formation in Europe of some sort of a feudal system of small and constantly fighting bureaucracies.
In the US, the situation did not look as miserable as in the USSR or in Germany. Roosevelt’s socialism was less totalitarian than Stalin’s or Hitler’s, close to Mussolini’s fascism that was based upon professional corporation, just as Roosevelt was supported by professional unions. But, as always, the corrupted trade-union leaders were not satisfied with all the concessions, so they instigated strikes and conflicts between the personnel and the management, destabilizing entire industry sectors. The country was suffering from acute shortage of housing and commodities, as well as huge inflation. The cost of commodities was rising very fast, while the prices for grain and many other goods were artificially lowered by state control. This led to drastic and unpredictable deficits in literally everything[3]. And yet the question left unanswered – where would the discharged soldiers go, and what about those who lost their jobs after the reduction of military production?What would they do?
America was saved from total “sovietization” by general traditions of freedom, a concise Constitution, the Congress of those days, and the Supreme Court that did not allow the most odious “socialist undertakings” to pass. In the last years of Roosevelt’s life, Republicans and conservative southern Democrats formed a powerful electoral block in the Congress that began restoring the legislative power.
This is what prevented the development of totalitarian dictatorship, even though the nation that formerly took pride in its freedom and democracy was ready to iconize the duce Roosevelt. Perhaps, totalitarianism also didn’t win because, even being a socialist fanatic, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in essence wasn’t a villain like Stalin or Hitler. But unfortunately, “being a good person is not a profession...”
It seemed that from now on and forever, nobody could stop the victorious march of socialism and bureaucracy around the world.
But...
God Out of the Machine[4]
No Great Loss Without Some Small Gain
On April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt suddenly died at the age of just 63 years, at the height of his power and activity, at the very beginning of his fourth term. The official reason for his death was hemorrhagic stroke, but the autopsy was never performed, and his body was not even presented for leave-taking. All kinds of rumors circulated – that he shot himself, that he was shot, that he fell from a cliff, and even that he didn't really die but was placed into a madhouse as a fatal case. Most likely all of this is nonsense, but the rumors themselves are symptomatic. There were plenty of reasonable people who realized in what direction the President was leading America and the world. And fortunately for the country and the whole world, one of such reasonable people was the president’s successor – vice-president Harry Truman[5].
Truman was a realist not brainwashed with ideology and hostile to socialism of any kind, be it the Stalin, Hitler, or Mussolini variety. These are his most famous words pronounced a few days after Germany attacked the USSR, “If we see Russia winning, we should help Germany. If we see Germany winning, we should help Russia. That way we let them kill as many as possible.” This was mean and cruel, but for the United States it would be the right thing.
In 1933, two demagogues, Hitler and Roosevelt, came to power constitutionally as a result of elections. But Hitler almost immediately forced through Reichstag amendments to the law that made him an irremovable Chancellor, and the National-Socialist bureaucracy now owned the country. However, Roosevelt was unable to force his “socialist laws” through Congress and the Supreme Court, so most of his social innovations were enacted using executive orders that did not even have statutory basis. This meant that they could be cancelled by other executive orders. Fortunately for everyone, Roosevelt’s socialism was built on sand.
Truman, upon coming to power, carefully and without any extra noise, began the “dismantling of socialism,” gradually cancelling the most odious Roosevelt’s decrees. And the main role in this process was played by the American Constitution, which the bureaucrats hate so much.
Truman’s “dismantling of socialism” went in several interconnected directions simultaneously:
- Stopping the socialism expansion in the whole world.
- Restoration of market relations in America and in the countries destroyed by the war.
- Clearing the socialist bureaucrats and soviet spies out of the administration.
- Limitation on socialist and bureaucratic propaganda..
Truman as a True Man
By the example of Trump, we saw how incredibly difficult it is to return to the market and terminate the unlimited power of the bureaucracy. Besides, it was much easier for Trump, as the bureaucrats’ puppet Obama was no match for the powerful intellectual Roosevelt, and he stayed in power for a much shorter period of time.
So, how could Truman do it? By what miracle? There is very little real information available about Truman; books contain mostly banalities or even plain nonsense. Did he himself realize that he was smashing the socialist bureaucracy? Did he understand the greatness of his role? How was he able to succeed? Who helped him? There are no answers to most questions... And if there were, they would be thoroughly covered up by the bureaucracy and its servants – the historians.
Roosevelt needed Truman only to get the votes of southern Democrats, and after winning the election, the President simply forgot about his vice-president and didn’t even bother informing him of important decisions; overall, they only talked twice since the inauguration.
Harry Truman happened to be nearly the only leader of a democratic country in the 20th century who did not have a full higher education. This previously unknown politician, upon taking the lead of the most powerful country in the world at a crucial moment in history, had to make a historical choice that would determine the future of mankind for decades to come.
Stop Stalin!
Harry Truman was different from Roosevelt in the sense that he apparently was not power-hungry and never accepted compromises with villains, including Stalin. Perhaps, the most important thing he did is stopped the malignant expansion of Stalin’s aggressive socialism. In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was released. The American President said, “We are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes ... [that], by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.” Using power politics, Truman forced the Soviet Union into the arms race that was unsustainable for the socialist economy and at the same time made USA an indisputable leader of the Western World, which allowed the American people to gain both economically and politically.
In February 1946, George Kennan, the advisor at the US Embassy in Moscow, answering the request from Washington, “Why is Stalin refusing cooperation with Western allies?”, replied with the famous “long telegram” (8000 words) where he described the communist power as an aggressive regime, with which any conciliation attempts would be useless, and the only possible policy should be forced containment. Kennan claimed that the Kremlin rulers needed an image of an enemy in order to govern their country. If their expansion attempts were stopped, the Soviet regime would encounter serious internal difficulties and with time would fall victim of internal contradictions and self-decay. USSR cannot exist without the imperial expansion. The “normalization” of the Soviet Union would mean its inevitable end, more specifically, the end of its governing communist bureaucracy.”[6] This “long telegram” became the determining factor for Truman’s approach to the relationship with the Soviet Union and laid foundation for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, etc.
During the entire war, Roosevelt kept “nurturing” Stalin and consenting to him, while Stalin (just as any regular gangster) kept getting pretty brazen from these concessions, demanding more and more. Truman could not undo what Roosevelt had already done, he could not return what his predecessor squandered – Eastern Europe that was sacrificed to Stalin and huge areas of Asia, the goods passed according to the lend-lease agreement, nuclear and other important secrets and technologies. But he was able to stop the betrayal of American interests and save whatever Roosevelt didn’t have a chance to hand over to Stalin.
The first shock for the soviet emperor was the atomic bomb – he immediately realized that starting a war with America would make him one of the bomb’s first victims[7]. The next step was a harsh and totally undiplomatic refusal by Truman to satisfy Stalin’s demand to grant USSR a Japanese occupation zone – a half of the second largest island of Hokkaido. Stalin simply wanted to create a Japanese Democratic Republic, just as he created the German Democratic Republic.
But Stalin never gave up; he was sure he could win without a war. The communist influence kept expanding in the countries of Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Asia, as well as in Western Europe. In Greece, communist guerillas came close to winning. USSR raised territorial claims to Turkey and delayed the withdrawal of troops from Iran. The crisis went so far that president Truman even threatened to use the nuclear weapons. A nuclear attack plan called “Totality” was prepared, but somehow it was not classified well enough, so Stalin almost instantly knew about it[8], which caused him to back off.
It was very symbolic that the most valuable ally and adviser for Truman was Winston Churchill who had tremendous experience in combatting any forms of socialism and who many years fiercely fought with the Roosevelt policy of the type “Let’s go, Joe.”[9] On March 5,1946, in Fulton, the home town of Truman, in President’s presence, Churchill held his famous speech “Sinews of Peace.” This speech became the predecessor of the Cold War – peaceful political and economic resistance to the aggression of the USSR communist bureaucracy. Churchill spoke about the “iron curtain” that divided Europe, about the entire world being infested with communist “fifth columns[10]” that obediently followed all orders from Stalin’s bureaucrats.
His words have become prophetic, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” nd then, “From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason, the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound.[11]». It’s as if he saw exactly the development of international relations as a whole, and Soviet-American relations in particular, for the next 40 years, until the start of Perestroika in the USSR.
On March 12, 1947, the President presented to the Congress the new foreign policy called “The Truman Doctrine” – the plan to weaken the communist expansion and to provide economic, political, financial, and military aid to countries threatened by the USSR. Financial aid was allocated for Greece, allowing the country to stop the penetration of communist guerillas, and for Turkey, which helped to restore the Turkish army and thus destroy Stalin’s plan to capture the straits that control the passage into the Black Sea. USA disallowed the transfer of Tripolitania under Soviet control and sponsored the discord between the Yugoslavian leader Marshall Tito[12] and Stalin, thus preventing the creation of the Soviet “Mediterranean Fleet.” America also drew Israel over to its side, the country that Stalin considered his own outpost in the Middle East.
In Germany, Stalin tried to get Western Berlin under his control by cutting off its supply from the west. But Truman, contrary to the point-blank opinion form the Pentagon and the State Department, with the help of American military transport aviation, created an unprecedented “air bridge” that, during the 14-month blockade, made 277,800 flights and sent to Berlin 2.3 million tons of freight, from heating coal to Christmas presents for Berlin children. This was one of Truman’s biggest foreign policy successes that helped him to win the 1948 election.
In Asia, all attempts by the communist governments of North Korea and North Vietnam to subdue both countries in their entirety, were temporarily stopped. Unfortunately, the communist runaway of China could not be prevented.
Stop the Traitors!
Another strike on the USSR, perhaps not as notable but very sensible, was clearing Soviet spies and “agents of influence” out of the American bureaucracy. In 1946, Truman granted the permanent status to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in 1947 he instituted the loyalty check for all American state officials.
Harry Hopkins, the closest aid of Roosevelt, who was supposed to give the secrets of the atomic bomb production to Great Britain, but also passed them to Russia (most likely with approval from Roosevelt whom he worshipped), left the service. In the famous letter to Stalin’s closest associate A. Mikoyan, he wrote: “It was damn hard to get all this from Groves[13].”
Truman also got rid of Henry Wallace, a convinced Stalinist, who was vice-president in 1940-1944, later minister of trade, and caused public hatred with his “frantic socialistic” position, much too left even for Roosevelt. During the war, Wallace visited the GULAG center in Magadan, the Kolyma Region, and then stated that there is no involuntary labor in the USSR.
Evidently, in addition to these iconic figures, Truman cleared out many other “useful idiots,” as Stalin called them. Within a few months, the following personnel left or were fired: State Secretary E. Stettinius, Secretary of the Interior H. Ickes, Secretary of Agriculture C. Anderson, Secretary of the Treasury H. Morgenthau. It’s extremely important that the cleaning process “removed from the board” one of Stalin’s trump cards – the ability to steal technical and financial information and affect America from the inside, destroying it... A lot of help to Truman in the cleaning process was provided by former president Hoover and the then future president, a young congressman Richard Nixon. The bureaucracy never forgave him that and eventually retaliated with the fabricated Watergate scandal.
But the process was not limited to bureaucrats. Even today, the leftist press is still slandering senator Joseph McCarthy. Officially Truman did not support him, but McCarthy wonderfully complemented Truman’s efforts by helping to spud out the communistic weeds primarily in the areas where the presidential power could not reach – in the “free press.” In summer 1950, the weekly publication “Counterattack” published a presentation called “Red Channels” about the communist penetration into radio and television and showed convincing proof on 151 public figures from the media and Hollywood. On September 23, 1950, the US Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act. The act declared the creation of the Subversive Activities Control Board that was supposed to investigate and uncover communist organizations and persons that contribute to establishing a fascist or communist “totalitarian dictatorship.”
Unfortunately, McCarthy turned out to be a weak person, unable to cope with the dirtiest slandering by the media, became an alcoholic, and died at the age of just 48.
Testing the Weapons
Stalin certainly could not accept the crash of his imperial ambitions. He badly needed the atomic bomb and the means of its delivery, in order to be protected by the threat of a counter nuclear attack. Soviet spies, with Roosevelt’s consent or simply due to unprofessional work by the FBI that instead of catching spies prosecuted Roosevelt’s opponents, obtained all the required information. But they also needed planes capable of carrying the bomb to America, just as B-29 carried one to Japan.
USSR did not have such a plane, and there were no chances of building one. After raids in Japan and forced landing on the Soviet territory, three Boeing B-29 Superfortress planes were stolen and simply cloned, resulting in 1000 degraded copies named Tupolev-4 (Tu-4). Aviation divisions of Tu-4 for performing nuclear strikes against America were deployed along the Kamchatka coast, just opposite to Alaska.
In historians’ opinion, Stalin had four goals in mind when plotting the Korean war:
- Attempting to control the UN voting.
- Threatening America to force them to abandon the Truman Doctrine.
- Checking the preparedness of America and its satellites to engage in local bloody wars. Stalin was hoping that the people of democratic countries with market economy would try to avoid casualties.
- Checking the possibility of the Soviet planes to overcome the American air defense. This was probably the most important reason for the war in Korea.
None of these goals were destined to get implemented. It was impossible to frighten Harry Truman, commander of the artillery squadron in the First World War. He accepted the challenge, and the war in Korea delivered a smashing blow to Stalin:
- America was able to take the lead in the UN; on June 25, 1950, the UN Security Council condemned the North Korean aggression and sanctioned the military involvement of the UN troops that were presented by the US army.
- In tough battles, American troops inflicted a heavy defeat upon the North Korean and Chinese armies and the Russian Air Force that supported them.
- The war experience demonstrated that the obsolete B-29 airplanes, which were out of production in the US since 1946 and further degraded during copying, did not stand a chance against the air defense forces that protected America. At the same time, the new American bombers B-36 and B-50 were capable of easily delivering a nuclear strike anywhere in the European part of the USSR, even directly to the Leader’s residence. Next “in line” was the powerful B-52, an ingenious machine that is used in the US armed forces up to this day.
There is a version that Stalin’s death is related to the terrible disappointment from the results of the war in Korea... This is most likely untrue, but it’s nice to know that before his death he saw the crash of his illusions[14]!
[1] Great Britain was a member of the winning coalition, but ended up among losers in the war, just because socialism defeated reason once again. Unwise voters took away the powers from Churchill and handed them over to socialists, leading to the destruction of the British Empire; a devastating blow was delivered to India and to the economy of a small “English island.” It’s difficult to talk about history using conjunctives, but there should be no doubt that if Churchill stayed in power, then, in alliance with Truman, they could create a real “new market world” where Great Britain would play a very important role, instead of scrambling from under the control of the EU bureaucracy (essentially Germany). And India would be a part of the British commonwealth, a dominion developed at the level of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
[2] And how Stalin later hated Israel that deceived his expectations! Your authors were kids back then, but they remember very well the wave of antisemitism that swept even across kindergartens!
[3] This is very familiar to those who remember the USSR of the 70’s and 80’s!
[4] «Deus ex machina» – literally “God out of the machine,” a Latin proverb meaning a surprising outcome of a certain (usually dramatic) situation involving a new unexpected and previously inactive factor.
[5] Since childhood I remembered the headlines in the children’s newspaper “Lenin’s Sparks”: “Despicable villains and imperialists: a zinger in short pants – Truman and a fat old man with a huge cigar – Churchill.”
[6] Apparently, America’s active aggression under the Nobel Peace Prize laurate Obama had the same basis – the necessity to reinforce the power of bureaucrats-democrats.
[7] On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and on August 15 the radio broadcasted the capitulation rescript from emperor Hirohito. But why was the emperor (to be exact, the General Staff, as the emperor did not have any influence in the country) all of a sudden in such a hurry? Maybe due to a large number of casualties? But back in March, the Japanese capital Tokyo, after the raid by 325 American bombers, was burned to the ground, with even more people killed than in Hiroshima. Carpet bombing destroyed 66 Japanese cities, but the General Staff didn’t even think about stopping the war – a million lives is no big deal in an overpopulated country; actually, it’s good that there is no longer any need to feed the elderly, children and women... But immediately after the Hiroshima strike, they asked for peace. Why? Because mass bombings affected the population, while the emperor, the government, and the General Staff could hide in comfortable and secure bomb shelters. But there is no escape for high-ranking bureaucrats from the atomic bomb that is being delivered by one single plane flying at the altitude unreachable for fighter aircrafts and anti-aircraft guns. The samurais wimped out! And Stalin wimped out like the veriest coward! This is the essence of the dark secret of the constant “fight of all honest people against the nuclear weapons” organized by the KGB.
Truman - God Bless America - Part 2
[8] Soviet spies were useful at times!
[9] A typical way of London prostitutes addressing their clients.
[10] “Fifth column” – the name of General Franko’s network of agents that acted in the Spanish Republic during the Spanish civil war in 1936-1939. Politicians and journalists often refer this way to those organizations that act inside the country in the interest of its clear enemies.
[11] This is something that the multiple victims of leftist liberalism never could and today still cannot grasp. President Kennedy paid dearly for this with the Vietnam war victims and apparently with his own life.
[12] They simply bribed the corrupt communist.
[13] Leslie Richard Groves was lieutenant general of the US Army, head of the Manhattan Project that was dedicated to building nuclear weapons.
[14] There are also other versions, for example, that he was poisoned by his compatriots (most likely), or the Jews who tried to avoid the planned mass pogroms and exile of all the Jews to Siberia; that he died from unskilled medical treatment after all of his personal doctors were arrested, etc.
