Flashback, February 1945: FDR—“Sick Man at Yalta”?

Sixty-five years ago this week, Joseph Stalin, who fiercely distrusted physicians, played host to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt because, he claimed, doctors had warned him that travel outside the U.S.S.R. would endanger his health. To accommodate his partner in the Grand Alliance against Hitler, an ailing FDR further endangered his own health by traveling 14,000 miles for a meeting at an old Russian spa on the Crimean coast.

For nearly half a century, any talk about the Yalta Conference had the potential to devolve into a shouting match between conservatives and liberals. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the corrosion of the Iron Curtain have taken the edge off of such ideologically charged confrontations, but questions still remain about this controversial conference meant to speed the end of World War II and prepare for the postwar world.

Stalin’s gambit in convincing the Americans and British to locate the summit on his home turf is an apt metaphor for two factors that shaped Yalta and the delayed Anglo-American reaction to it: the Soviet dictator’s deceit and the American President’s declining health.

The initial wave of euphoria from the conference—the belief that the “Big Three” would not only see the war against Germany through to its conclusion, but would cooperate in a postwar world of peace, justice and greater freedom for all the people of the world—dissipated as soon as it became apparent that Eastern Europe was falling into the Soviet sphere of influence.

The issue was still fiercely debated when I was in college, when one of my history professors discussed how the Yalta agreements became, to conservatives, a case of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, as one foreign tyranny holding Eastern Europe in its grasp (Hitler’s Germany) was soon superseded by another (Stalin’s Soviet Union). When two members of the American delegation, Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, were accused of espionage for the Soviet Union, Yalta became shorthand for a “betrayal myth” of the right.

(A few years ago, in fact, George W. Bush created a stir when he said Yalta represented agreements that viewed “the freedom of small nations [as] somehow expendable.” By the end of his eight years in office, he might have wished more than once that historical ankle-biters had rendered him the kind of understanding he had summarily rejected for FDR.)

The motive for a sellout at Yalta was given oxygen by Major General Patrick J. Hurley, FDR’s ambassador to China. The diplomat, who learned belatedly from the State Department about secret concessions to the Soviet Union concerning China, told Congress in 1951 that FDR had been a “sick man at Yalta”—a leader with the best intentions, but unable to stand up to Stalin.

The conservative charge of betrayal at Yalta was a myth. The notion that we had “given up” Eastern Europe was mistaken, since the British and Americans did not possess an inch of its territory and were in no position to do so.

In playing out scenarios of alternative histories, a certain amount of “present-ism” sets in, a harsh judgment of actors based on our contemporary notions of morality and/or our knowledge of how events turned out. That is particularly unfair to Roosevelt and Churchill, who did not know how a key technological development--the atomic bomb, as yet untested--would change the endgame of the war.

None of this is to say, however, that the two did not make serious mistakes at Yalta. The only reason why these didn’t cause more harm was that the facts on the ground—the military situation—overwhelmed all other considerations, limiting their choices and culpability alike.

Stalin’s Advantages at Yalta

Stalin had a good hand going into Yalta, but he played his cards so skillfully that the Soviet Union emerged from the conference as the real co-superpower with the U.S., at the expense of Great Britain. Here are the factors why:

* Location of boots on the ground. The mid-December Battle of the Bulge threw off the American timetable for the final push into Germany. By contrast, two days after the conclusion of the conference, Budapest fell to the Soviets. Ten million Soviet soldiers were in Eastern Europe, a number growing daily. For FDR to insist that the Soviet Union leave Eastern Europe, giving up ground it had already gained, would have Americans to take up arms again after Hitler was defeated—a prospect that few were prepared to do.

* Allies out of their comfort zone. Churchill reportedly remarked, “If they had searched for a decent place to meet for ten years or more, they couldn't have found a worse place than Yalta." More pointedly, he referred to the site, containing the former summer mansion of the tsar, as “the Riviera of Hades,” surrounded as it was by wholesale destruction left over by the Nazis.

To get to this godforsaken place, FDR didn’t have Airforce One, with all the comforts of home, to escort him. Instead, he sailed, taking evasive action at points, in the dead of winter, for several days, to Malta, before being flown to the Crimean town of Saki. The last leg of his trip was a six-hour drive in a chilly car on a bumpy road along the Crimean countryside. Roosevelt’s daughter Anna wrote her husband about the “creepy-crawly creatures” that, despite efforts at delousing, still remained in the rooms of at least some American and British delegates. Stalin took his sweet time getting there, not arriving till 24 hours later, giving his guests enough time to become depressed by their surroundings.

* Round-the-clock intelligence about the American and British delegations. The “creepy-crawly creatures” that grossed out Anna Roosevelt Boettiger were not the only bugs at Yalta—others were of the electronic variety. It wasn’t enough that Alger Hiss (who actually attended the conference as part of the American group formulating the United Nations) and Harry Dexter White—both now widely believed to be spies—were feeding the Soviets a steady diet of human intelligence. No, Stalin was also benefiting from wiretapping throughout the American quarters.

Delegates assumed they were being spied on, but some occasionally forgot. Moreover, the electronic surveillance extended beyond what many delegates regarded as likely. FDR’s aides spoke bluntly to each other out in the open, little knowing that “Stalin’s Himmler,” Lavrenty Beria, had managed to secrete more electronic devices out there, too. Just how good it was can be seen in this astounding fact: by the time Stalin sat down to breakfast each day, the wiretapped sessions had not only been transcribed but translated overnight into Russian for his benefit.

* Divergence in goals between the U.S. and British. FDR was annoyed the prior fall when Churchill spoke privately to Stalin about their respective “spheres of influence” (e.g., 90% Russian influence in Hungary, an equivalent amount for Britain in Greece). At the same time, Churchill was peeved that FDR was treating him more as what, in modern terms, might be called a “wingman” rather than an equal partner with the Americans and Soviets.

FDR’s Rapid Deterioration

The state of FDR’s health can use extended discussion. How bad was he, anyway? Did he end up yielding more than he would have under normal circumstances?

Several years ago, at Hyde Park, I saw a display of the naval cape the President wore on this trip. (You can see it in the photo accompanying this post.) He wore it with a gray flannel dark blue suit underneath, and as many people have noted over the years, he looked dashing. But the main advantage, he knew from his years as assistant secretary of the navy in WWI, was that it kept him warm. He hoped for similar results as he sailed to meet Stalin and Churchill.

But the long, arduous journey to Yalta so tired FDR that he was sick within 48 hours of his arrival. His daughter shared with her husband the fears of the President’s doctors about his “ticker”—which, she explained in alarm, was worse than they had known to date. FDR’s blood pressure had risen so dangerously high that his doctors urged that he not work more than four hours a day. Yalta involved so many matters—and so many different disputes to arbitrate among the Allies—that relaxing was well-nigh impossible.

In the year before, in the midst of his reelection campaign, FDR’s doctors had become increasingly concerned about his health. He had never really bounced back from the attack of influenza he experienced at his earlier summit with Churchill and Stalin at Teheran. A year and a quarter later, matters were far worse.

A month ago, The New York Times science correspondent, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, reviewed a new book on “F.D.R’s Deadly Secret”: a melanoma that spread to the brain, causing the tumor that took Roosevelt's life. Altman implies that some conclusions of the authors, Dr. Steven Lomazow and Eric Fettmann, are so speculative that they don’t survive close scrutiny.

But Altman also mentions another point, important from a historiographical point of view, that has been lost over the years: By the 1970s, FDR’s children, anxious to preserve his reputation, were pressing his cardiologist, Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, to state that the President’s declining health had not affected his mental state at Yalta.

It’s probably impossible at this point to prove definitively whether the President had a melanoma that affected him, because no autopsy or biopsy was performed and most of his medical records disappeared after his death from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md.

Nobody is saying that FDR’s decline rendered him incapable of understanding the issues before him. But, as Michael Beschloss explains in his history of the war’s final days, The Conquerors, the breakdown of FDR’s health affected his managerial style in another important way:

“His approach to leadership was to play Cabinet members off against one another, hold a dozen conflicting ideas in his head at the same time, and to keep the mechanics of control firmly in his grasp. But with his energy and concentration waning, he no longer had the patience and command of detail that had once let him keep important policies from going off the rails and Cabinet members from exceeding the rules he envisaged for them.”

With a legion of advisers accompanying him to Yalta, that old juggler’s ability to keep multiple balls in the air at once—all without telling anyone else—was gone. FDR’s continuing resort to his old habit of secrecy (VP Harry Truman didn’t even know where the President had gone) had significant consequences this time, because after his death the question of what he did or didn’t intend was far murkier. He loved to tell listeners exactly what they wanted to hear, but illness and death deprived him of the power to direct action where he wanted.

One other aspect of this dissipating energy comes into play: When you’re not physically at your best, you’re less inclined to dispute, more inclined to cut disagreeable discussions short. FDR wouldn’t have been human if this didn’t come into play. Combine that with his well-founded belief in his personal charm, and it’s easy to see how his honey words might have been construed by Stalin in a completely different light.

What the West Achieved…And Didn’t

One of FDR’s primary objectives was inducing Stalin to join the Pacific theater of the war against Japan. (Until then, the U.S.S.R. had stayed neutral in that part of the worldwide conflict.)

The Battle of the Bulge, the Allied generals in the West felt, was Hitler’s last gasp, and it was only a matter of time before Germany fell. But they expected the projected invasion of Japan to involve one million casualties.

Stalin agreed to join this front at last, within three months of Germany’s surrender, provided the Soviets were ceded the southern portion of the Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and the rights to Manchurian Ports of Dairen and Port Arthur.. For the Allies, all things considered, the price didn’t seem steep.

But some came to see it as unnecessary by the end of August 1945, by which time Japan had surrendered. The capitulation, following so quickly on the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as Stalin’s declaration of war on the imperial empire, have led historians to argue ever since about which factor forced Japan to ask for peace.

In any case, whatever credit might have accrued to FDR and Churchill because of Soviet participation in the war dissipated.

But it was Stalin’s land-grab in Eastern Europe that rankled the most. The Soviet leader insisted on a friendly government in Poland, claiming that it had become a corridor for German invasions in the last two wars.

Typical of his style, FDR tried to smooth over any differences. He agreed with Stalin that there should not be a government “unfriendly” to the U.S.S.R. in Poland, but at the same time he and Churchill pushed for free elections.

In the end, both sides appeared to have received what they wanted: FDR and Churchill, assurances of free, democratic elections in all territory freed from the Nazis; Stalin, a pledge to include Communists in the future national government of Poland. But it was all a chimera.

The problem was that, in Lublin, Stalin already had a “stooge government” waiting to take over. That group and the Polish government-in-exile, in London, refused to cooperate with each other.

FDR’s hopes for Polish elections within a few months of the agreement, he realized before his death, were doomed. By the time Stalin permitted them to be held, it was two years later, by which time they were hopelessly rigged in favor of the Lublin group.

Churchill was somewhat blunter than FDR about what would happen, even before the summit, telling his personal secretary: “Make no mistake, all the Balkans, except Greece, are going to be Bolshevized, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. There is nothing I can do for poor Poland, either.”

Perhaps because he had placed greater hope in his ability to charm Stalin, FDR felt far more keenly disappointed by this failure. Only a month and a half later, he was telling Anna Rosenberg, a longtime New York politico whom he’d entrusted to study manpower issues among Allied forces the prior year in Europe: “Averell [Harriman] is right. We can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.”

As FDR’s comment indicates, Yalta marked the end of illusions, but it also meant the beginning of myths. One was perpetrated by the left: that it was only when the more hard-line Harry Truman assumed the Presidency in the wake of FDR’s death that the Cold War really began. The other came from the right: that FDR and Churchill gave away the fruits of what the British leader called, on a different occasion, “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

The level of scrutiny accorded Presidential candidates can be ridiculous at times, but it has had one salutary effect: No matter how well or not FDR performed at Yalta, it is unlikely that we’ll ever have another situation in which a dying occupant of the Oval Office engages in such momentous diplomacy with another head of state.