Chapter 18
A Great Tragedy Since World War II

The entire victory of World War II was “a great tragedy”! As Hoover’s classic quote said: “Alliance with Stalin is Bed Fellow (Going to bed with adultery).” The victory achieved in this way is a “tragedy”, and the entire victory of World War II is “a great tragedy” because it is Stalin’s great victory. Roosevelt helped Stalin everywhere, and was a living treasure that came to the door and was much sought after.

Not only was the victory of World War II “a great tragedy”, but it was an even greater tragedy since the victory of World War II – hundreds of millions of Chinese people died and withered because of it! The American people also suffered from it, and will continue to suffer from it – this point has not been recognized by Americans, and most Chinese do not know it either.

I. Roosevelt was the leader of the pro-Soviet faction

The lessons of history are worth noting.

In February 1945, in the late stage of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill gathered in Yalta, a Russian resort city in Crimea, to think about the trend of the war and the peace that would follow. They agreed that the postwar order would be managed by what Roosevelt called the “Four Policemen”: the United States, Britain, Russia, and China.

At Yalta, Stalin promised collective security and an integrated Europe, and Roosevelt was confident he could cajole Stalin to that promise. Stalin had a very different vision: a world divided into spheres of influence, in which the will of the strongest prevailed. Eastern Europe, which fell into the Soviet sphere, was shrouded in darkness for 45 years.

The burden of curbing Soviet expansionism fell to President Harry Truman. He established America’s first peacetime alliances, first in Western Europe and later in Asia. The United States took the lead in shaping the norms, rules, and institutions that would become the liberal international order, including the United Nations, the international financial institutions, and the Marshall Plan.

The liberal order led by the United States supported an open world connected by the free flow of people, goods, ideas, and capital, and based on the principles of self-determination, the sovereignty of nations, and the fundamental rights of citizens. Although this order has not lived up to its ideal (especially in Latin America and Southeast Asia), it has nevertheless created decades of peace and shared prosperity among the great powers, despite volatile Cold War tensions.

The postwar order built by the United States is facing severe challenges, including from former rivals. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin is not Stalin and Russia is not the Soviet Union, Putin does seek to rebuild Russia’s sphere of influence while trying to dismantle the liberal international order that dominated the Cold War. Although Communist China still focuses on domestic stability, the “new model of great power relations” it proposes to the United States will cause the United States to retreat and allow Communist China to dominate.

Based on declassified World War II materials, Japanese historians point out that the reason why Japan failed to recover the “Northern Territories” (called the Southern Kuril Islands in Russia) after the war was that there was a heavyweight “Soviet spy” around then-U.S. President Roosevelt, who did not read important reference documents from the State Department, and the “Northern Territories originally belonging to Japan” were handed over to the Soviet Union. This “heavyweight spy” was Alger Hiss, who was then an adviser to President Roosevelt and whose perjury case shocked the United States in the late 1940s.

According to the research of Tetsuo Arima, a professor at Waseda University, Alger Hiss, an official of the US State Department, played an important role in the process of the Soviet Union occupying the four northern islands. “He deceived President Roosevelt and transferred Japanese territory to the Soviet Union.” According to Arima’s research, Hiss had frequent contacts with the Soviet government in the 1930s, “acting as a spy in the name of a US government official.”

Alger Hiss entered the US State Department in 1936 and became the director of the State Department’s Special Issues Political Bureau in 1944. In February 1945, he accompanied President Roosevelt as an advisor to attend the Yalta Conference, a summit meeting of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union held in the Soviet Union.

At the Yalta Conference, US President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Stalin formulated a new world order after World War II and a policy for the distribution of interests among the great powers, forming the “Yalta System”, which had a profound impact on the world situation after World War II.

Many people criticized the Yalta Conference, which enabled the Soviet Union and the Communist Parties of various countries to control many countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. Roosevelt was seriously ill and mistakenly believed that Japan was still strong, so he tried to persuade the Soviet Red Army to declare war on Japan. As a result, he compromised with Stalin and did not respect the wishes of the Republic of China. The content of the meeting violated and damaged the rights and interests of the Republic of China.

Although it is impossible to determine how much first-hand intelligence Alger Hiss gave Stalin before and during the Yalta Conference. But it is certain that the Soviet Union got the upper hand everywhere at the Yalta Conference and was very clear about the bottom card of the United States. The Yalta Conference was an advantage for the Soviet Union. At the Yalta Conference, the United States and the Soviet Union confirmed through a secret agreement that the Soviet Union would obtain the Japanese Kuril Islands after the war, and let Stalin send troops to Northeast China and occupy the right to divide China. This directly and seriously damaged the rights of the Republic of China and laid the root cause of the Korean War and the Vietnam War-ultimately, the United States paid a heavy price!

As for the four northern islands, they are just a piece of cake in comparison. The US State Department believes that the Southern Kuril Islands should not be included in the scope of territory transferred to the Soviet Union due to its historical relationship with the indigenous ethnic groups. And submitted a proposal to the president accordingly. According to subsequent investigations, Roosevelt did not read the proposal, but adopted Hiss’s suggestion to “transfer the Southern Kuril Islands as a whole to the Soviet Union” as part of Southern Sakhalin. This also became the root cause of the territorial dispute between Japan and the Soviet Union.

Hiss’s espionage activities had not been noticed by the United States until he was accused of being a communist and a Soviet spy during the “McCarthy Movemen”. In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers, editor of Time magazine and a former American Communist Party member, reported Alger Hiss to the US government, saying that Hiss attempted to place communists and their sympathizers in government agencies and provide State Department secrets to the Soviet Union.

At that time, Time magazine published this century news, and because it involved core figures, the whole United States was boiling for a while. Public opinion was divided into two camps. One camp believed that Alger Hiss was a spy of the Soviet Communist Party and demanded severe punishment; the other camp claimed that he was innocent and was framed by Republican politicians and Soviet agents.

The US court was helpless with Alger Hiss because the accusatory materials (documents, microfilms, typewriters) submitted by the Republicans were before 1938, and the US law stipulates that the statute of limitations for espionage is only 10 years. In other words, these evidences cannot convict him.

The US government was not reconciled and sentenced Hiss to 5 years in prison for perjury. Hiss served only 4 years and 8 months in prison and was released early.

The Alger Hiss spy case highlights the infiltration and sabotage of the Communist Party to the US government before and after World War II.

However, it can be considered that the above-mentioned Japanese historians, based on the declassified World War II materials, accused the then US President Roosevelt of having a heavyweight “Soviet spy” around him, which was evasive and “an old lady eating persimmons, picking the soft ones” – because Roosevelt himself was the leader of the pro-Soviet faction! And it created a bad example of “alliance with Russia and tolerance of the Communist Party” in the American political arena.