Chapter 06: The Lend-Lease Act—The Resurrection of the Soviet Communist Party (Part II)

By the end of World War II, Roosevelt began to realize that allying with Stalin had been a mistake. He stated that the “Crimea Conference” merely “meant unilateral action, exclusive alliances, spheres of influence, balances of power, and expedients. We propose a worldwide organization to replace all such injustices.” In March 1945, Roosevelt sharply accused Stalin of breaking his promises at Yalta regarding Poland, German prisoners of war, and other issues. When Stalin accused the Western Allies of plotting an unrealistic peace that bore the shadow of Hitler’s dictatorship, Roosevelt responded: “I cannot avoid feeling both miserable and indignant at your distortion by such base means.”

At this point, Roosevelt’s anger toward Stalin had reached its peak. He came to recognize that Stalin was not an ally at all, but a potential enemy of the United States. Unfortunately, it was already too late. With American military aid as leverage, Stalin had grown too powerful to restrain. With the outcome of the war settled, Roosevelt, exhausted by years of strain, soon passed away. Though his legacy endures, the grave mistakes he made during his lifetime became irrevocable facts. Under Soviet direction, communist forces waged civil wars, and China was turned red in only four years. The United States was forced to withdraw from China, allowing Soviet-backed communism to expand rapidly across the Eastern Hemisphere and wreak havoc on the postwar world.

Only three years after the war, in 1948, the Soviet Union suddenly blockaded West Berlin in an attempt to strangle the British-, American-, and French-controlled sectors. President Truman immediately countered with the Berlin Airlift. It was then that Stalin’s true face as an enemy of the United States became unmistakably clear. The facts showed that Germany had been a “good enemy,” while Stalin had been a disastrous ally. Roosevelt’s collusion with Stalin during World War II constituted a strategic blunder of the highest order, one that indulged and enabled the rampant expansion of communist evil.

After the war, Germany quickly reformed itself and regained the trust of the world. Stalin’s Soviet Union, by contrast, soon turned against the United States and brought calamity to the Eastern Hemisphere. In 1950, Stalin encouraged North Korea’s Kim Il-sung to launch a war in an attempt to swallow South Korea in one bite. South Korea was an American ally with U.S. troops stationed there; attacking South Korea was effectively an attack on the United States. Stalin’s hostility toward America thus became even more overt.

Postwar history shows that Germany, compared with the Soviet Union, was a far more redeemable “enemy.” Germany was a democratic country, and Hitler had come to power through elections, making change possible. Hitler was relatively benign domestically but aggressive abroad. If one accepts the idea that foreign policy is an extension of domestic politics, then even had Germany conquered Europe, it might not have enslaved Eastern Europe to the same extent as Stalin did. Stalin was more brutal and more dangerous than Hitler. Roosevelt focused solely on defeating Hitler while fattening an even more vicious and dangerous Stalin. In overall strategic terms, this was a mistake whose consequences have yet to be eliminated even today.

Roosevelt’s misunderstanding of communism objectively inflicted incalculable damage on the United States. This was related to his family background and personal experience. Born into privilege, Roosevelt never endured hardship in his youth, let alone the suffering brought by communism.

There have been several presidents in American history who inherited political influence through family lineage, and the Roosevelt family can be counted among them. Among U.S. presidents, Roosevelt was both a “second-generation wealthy” and a “second-generation official.” One of his distant cousins was Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. president during World War I, commonly known as the elder Roosevelt. Theodore lived on Long Island in New York, while Franklin lived in Hyde Park in upstate New York. Though related, they lived far apart. Theodore took a liking to his promising younger cousin and married his niece to him, further strengthening family ties. Through this connection, Franklin Roosevelt’s political network extended into Washington, paving his road to the White House.

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt are regarded as great presidents in American history. Although Theodore Roosevelt is less famous than Franklin, he is considered one of the four most renowned presidents in the first 150 years of the United States. Along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, his likeness is carved into Mount Rushmore—each face about 60 feet (approximately 18 meters) tall—commonly known as “America’s Presidential Mountain.” Franklin Roosevelt, during his presidency, established the social welfare system. His reforms of the American system, known as the New Deal, created a social security framework that continues to underpin American social stability to this day.

In contrast to his predecessor Hoover, whose factories were confiscated by the Soviet Union and who thus had firsthand experience of communism, Roosevelt lacked any direct, visceral understanding of the communist system. His judgments about communism largely remained at the level of book knowledge. In fact, at that time, apart from a few perceptive thinkers such as Bertrand Russell, most British and American intellectuals harbored unrealistic views of communism.

In response to communist ideology, Roosevelt proposed the Four Freedoms as a counterweight. The Four Freedoms originated in his January 6, 1941 address to Congress: fundamental freedoms that people everywhere in the world should enjoy—freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Today, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms have become universal values of the free world. Roosevelt said, “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms,” a world in which free nations cooperate and live together in a friendly and civilized society. The Four Freedoms have become guiding principles of international relations, with freedom from fear of war serving as a key standard of American foreign policy.

Less than a year after Roosevelt proposed the Four Freedoms, Japan launched its attack on Pearl Harbor. The following day, Roosevelt delivered his famous “Day of Infamy” speech: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” The “Day of Infamy” speech is one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century, and “a date which will live in infamy” is among the most significant phrases in American history. History turned a new page. Militarism was reduced to ashes, yet communism rose again from the embers—like a centipede a hundred feet long, dead yet not gone. Today, communism has sounded the call to arms once more, posing a grave threat to humanity’s universal values. America’s future “day of infamy” may not be in Hawaii, but perhaps at Kinmen or Matsu. The threat of communism must never be underestimated.

Zhong Wen concludes: Roosevelt was a rare president in American history. During the Great Depression, he resolved the crisis through the New Deal, and the historical achievements of the New Deal cannot be praised highly enough. Yet during World War II, by transfusing Stalin with American aid, he fattened Stalin and brought decades of disaster to the Eastern Hemisphere, inflicting unprecedented calamity upon the world. China in particular suffered the deaths of eighty million people by unnatural causes. Because of Roosevelt’s mistaken understanding of communism—raising a tiger only to invite future calamity—history must also record this account.