“I am glad to see you,” the President said. “I have tried for a long time to bring this about.” For half an hour the two men chatted. The President led the conversation, touching on the Soviet battle front (Stalin: the Red Army was barely holding the initiative with the Germans having brought up more divisions); Chiang Kai-shek (Stalin: the Chinese soldiers fought bravely but the leadership was poor); de Gaulle (Stalin: de Gaulle acted like the head of a great state but actually commanded little power); the need to prepare Indochina for independence (Stalin: agreed); the need for reform from the bottom in India, “somewhat on the Soviet line” (Stalin: reform from the bottom would mean revolution).
“…Seems very confident, very sure of himself, moves slowly—altogether quite impressive, I’d say,” Roosevelt remarked to his son Elliott later.
The first plenary session got under way directly. Roosevelt had his full diplomatic and military staff with him, except that Marshall and Arnold had been misinformed about the schedule and were still sight-seeing. Churchill, flanked by Eden, Dill, Brooke, Cunningham, Portal, and Ismay sat to the left of the Americans. Stalin had only Molotov and Marshal Kliment Y. Voroshilov flanking him. The men sat around a ten-foot-wide oaken table specially created for the occasion by local carpenters and made round so that no one would sit at the head of the table. But Roosevelt, on the ground that he was the youngest present (and with the prior agreement of the other two), opened the proceedings by welcoming his elders to a family circle whose only object was to win the war. Churchill remarked that this was the greatest concentration of power the world had ever seen; history lay in their hands. Stalin offered a brief welcome, then said, “Let us get down to business.”
The President began with a general survey of the war, stressing first his nation’s commitment of most of its naval power and of one million men to the Pacific. He sketched out the military plans for China. Then he turned to the cross-channel invasion, which had been delayed, he said, mainly by lack of sea transport. The Channel was such a disagreeable body of water that the attack could not be launched before May 1, 1944.
“We are very glad it was such a disagreeable body of water at one time,” Churchill put in. The question, Roosevelt went on, was whether other operations—in Italy, the Adriatic, the Aegean, from Turkey—could make use of Allied forces in Italy, at the possible expense of one to three months’ delay for OVERLORD. He and Churchill sought the Marshal’s views.
Stalin went straight to the point. The Soviets welcomed American successes in the Pacific. He regretted that the Soviet Union had not been able to help, but its forces were fighting Germany. His strength in the east was enough for defense but would have to be trebled for attack. Once Germany was finally defeated, “we shall be able by our common front to win.” Stalin said this casually, without raising his voice; then he abruptly turned to Europe. There, he said, he had over three hundred divisions and the Axis had 260. The Germans at the moment were trying to recapture Kiev with some thirty motorized and tank divisions. As for Italy, that was no place from which to attack Germany proper, for the Alps were an insuperable barrier, as the famous Russian General Suvorov had discovered a century and a half before. The best way to get to the heart of Germany was through northern and southern France. But he warned that the Germans would fight like devils.
Roosevelt and Stalin had now put Churchill on the defensive, but the old warrior rose to the occasion. There was no question, he said, about the cross-channel operation, which would take place in the late spring or early summer. But that was six months away. What could be done in the meantime, after the capture of Rome—which he hoped would take place in January 1944—that would help relieve the Soviet front and not delay OVERLORD by more than a month or two? Could Turkey be persuaded to enter the war? Could help be given to the Yugoslavs? Churchill himself denied any plan to send a large army to the Balkans; it was Roosevelt who, to the surprise of his aides, raised the possibility of an Allied drive at the head of the Adriatic to join with the Yugoslavs and push northeast in conjunction with the Soviet advance west.
So within an hour the positions had been taken: Stalin for an advance into the German heartland, Churchill for wider Mediterranean operations, and Roosevelt—as Churchill later complained—drifting to and fro. The Marshal bluntly opposed Churchill’s strategy as undue dispersion and his specific proposals as undesirable. He doubted that Turkey would enter the war except by the scruff of the neck. When Churchill kept arguing for making use of Mediterranean troops after the capture of Rome, Stalin coolly proposed again that the Anglo-Americans invade southern France in advance of OVERLORD. France, he said, was the weakest of all German-occupied areas. The meeting broke up inconclusively.
That evening Roosevelt had Stalin and Churchill and their top aides to dinner at his headquarters. The White House messmen, having moved into a strange kitchen only a few hours before, somehow came up with a dinner for eleven. Postwar Europe was the focus of talk. Stalin coldly wrote off Russia’s old enemies. The French ruling class was rotten to the core. Roosevelt said he agreed in part; it would be well to eliminate in any future government of France anyone over forty. Stalin said the Reich must be dismembered and rendered impotent ever again to plunge the world into war. Roosevelt proposed an international trusteeship over the approaches to the Baltic; Stalin misunderstood at first, thought Roosevelt was proposing a trusteeship for the Baltic nations, and absolutely ruled this out.
The President felt ill after dinner and retired early. The atmosphere there became even cooler after he left. Stalin was obviously dissatisfied with Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s proposals for Germany. He had no faith in the notion of reforming the German people. He did not share the President’s view, he told Churchill, that the Führer was mentally unbalanced. He was an able man but not basically intelligent, lacking in culture and with a primitive approach to politics. And the Marshal questioned the unconditional-surrender doctrine, which served merely to unite the German people. Much better to draw up harsh terms and simply tell the Germans to accept them. That would hasten the day of German surrender.
Afterward, back at the British Legation, Churchill was in a black depression. “Stupendous issues are unfolding before our eyes, and we are only specks of dust that have settled in the night on the map of the world.” The President had remarked to him, he went on, “You may go at the election, but I shan’t.” Had the President said much in the conference? someone asked. Churchill hesitated. “Harry Hopkins said that the President was inept. He was asked a lot of questions and gave the wrong answers.”
Next day Roosevelt seemed fully recovered. Churchill sent word proposing that they lunch together; to Churchill’s dismay Roosevelt declined because he feared Stalin would suspect they were hatching some scheme if they met privately. But after lunch he met privately with Stalin and Molotov. The President wanted to sound out the Russians on postwar organization. He proposed his plan for the Four Policemen with power to deal quickly with threats to peace; a ten-nation executive committee to consider nonmilitary questions; an assembly representing all the United Nations. Stalin doubted that the small nations of Europe would like an organization of the Four Policemen. He doubted that China would be very powerful at the end of the war. He doubted that the United States Congress would agree to American participation in an exclusively European committee which might be able to force the dispatch of American troops to Europe. On the last point Roosevelt agreed; it would take a terrible crisis, he said, for Congress to agree to that. He had envisaged sending only American planes and ships to Europe; Britain and Russia would handle the land armies against a threat to peace. On China, Roosevelt disagreed with the Russian. “After all,” he said, “China is a nation of 400 million people, and it is better to have them as friends than as a potential source of trouble.”
A brilliant ceremony now intervened. Between rows of towering British and Soviet soldiers in the big conference room Churchill presented Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad, forged by English craf
tsmen and given by King George to the “steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad.” His eyes glistening, Stalin raised the sparkling blade to his lips and kissed it, then walked over and showed the weapon to the President, who drew the long blade from the scabbard and held it aloft. His big hands barely covered the hilt. Then he returned the sword to the scabbard with a clang, and it was carried off by an escort.
But no sword of honor could cut through the knotted differences among the three leaders. At the second plenary session, after a report from the CCS reflecting little progress at its morning session, Stalin opened the discussion with an abrupt question:
“Who will command Overlord?”
“It has not been decided,” Roosevelt said.
“Then nothing will come out of these operations,” Stalin said. Somebody had to be in charge. Once again Churchill launched into a long defense of Mediterranean possibilities; once again the Marshal insisted that they were only diversionary; once again the President referred favorably to Mediterranean alternatives but worried that they might delay OVERLORD unduly—here again was the old suction pump that Marshall had long feared. The President proposed that OVERLORD take place not later than mid-May; Churchill said he could not agree. Roosevelt proposed an ad-hoc committee to consider the matter. Stalin balked. What could a committee do that they could not?
“Do the British really believe in Overlord,” he asked, “or are they only saying so to reassure the Soviet Union?”
The meeting broke up in disagreement. That evening Stalin was host at a small dinner. He taunted and twitted Churchill, while the President looked on. The Prime Minister, he said, had a secret affection for Germany. He wanted a soft peace. He thought that just because the Russians were a simple people they were also blind. Later in the evening, after innumerable toasts, Stalin returned to his theme. Fifty thousand Germans had to be rounded up and liquidated after the war. Churchill retorted that he and his country would not stand for such butchery. Stalin repeated: “Fifty thousand must be liquidated.”
Here the President spoke up. He had a compromise: only 49,000 should be shot. Elliott Roosevelt protested that all this was academic; the soldiers on the field would take care of more than 50,000. At this Churchill rose from the table and stalked out of the room, only to be followed by a grinning Stalin, who clapped his hand on Churchill’s shoulder and persuaded him to return.
The conferences went on the next day, Stalin doodling, smoking, scratching words on square-crossed pieces of paper, speaking quietly, arguing bluntly; Churchill glowering behind his glasses, gesticulating with his cigar, lofting into flights of oratory; Roosevelt listening, measuring, interposing, placating. The discussions flowed on, but at some point on November 30, the third day of discussions, the balance swung slowly but inexorably against Churchill and peripheralism. It was partly because the CCS had met in the morning and hammered out a recommendation for OVERLORD, combined with a landing in southern France; partly because Stalin, in a tête-à-tête, had warned Churchill sharply that an Allied failure to invade in May would cause a bad reaction and “feeling of isolation” in the Red Army; partly because Churchill was increasingly hopeful that if the Mediterranean effort had to be subordinated to OVERLORD, Bay of Bengal plans could be subordinated to the Mediterranean, “OVERLORD in May” was confirmed at a “Three Only” (plus interpreters) luncheon shortly thereafter, and at the third plenary session in the afternoon. Stalin promised to launch a major attack from the east at the same time.
That evening Churchill celebrated his sixty-ninth birthday at a dinner for thirty-three at his legation. Roosevelt sat directly on his right, Stalin on his left. Spirits ran high. Roosevelt had learned how to make a small glass last for a dozen toasts. He saluted George VI; Churchill toasted Roosevelt as defender of democracy and Stalin as Stalin the Great; the Marshal saluted the Russian people and American production—especially of 10,000 planes a month. “Without these planes from America the war would have been lost.” He ended with a toast to the President. At two in the morning Roosevelt asked for the privilege of the last word.
“There has been discussion here tonight,” he said, “of our varying colors of political complexion. I like to think of this in terms of the rainbow. In our country the rainbow is a symbol of good fortune and of hope. It has many varying colors, each individualistic, but blending into one glorious whole.
“Thus with our nations. We have differing customs and philosophies and ways of life. Each of us works out our scheme of things according to the desires and ideas of our own peoples.
“But we have proved here at Teheran that the varying ideals of our nations can come together in a harmonious whole, moving unitedly for the common good of ourselves and of the world….”
The conference might well have ended on this note of harmony, but political questions lay always in the background. At a series of meetings the next day Stalin agreed to help persuade the Turks to enter the war, though he still doubted that they would. He argued for the dismemberment and crushing of Germany. He would demand heavy reparations from Finland and the restoration of the treaty of 1940, with the possible exchange of Petsamo for Hangö. Roosevelt and Churchill jousted with him innocuously on these questions. But Poland, as always, was the pinch, and Roosevelt knew that he would have to come back to it.
With the second front settled, the President decided on a personal plea to Stalin about Poland, but despite his efforts to keep some distance from Churchill, he felt that he had not established personal rapport with Stalin. The Marshal still seemed stiff and unsmiling; there seemed nothing human to get hold of. Roosevelt told Frances Perkins later, doubtless with some embellishment, that he decided to do something desperate.
“On my way to the conference room that morning we caught up with Winston and I just had a moment to say to him, ‘Winston, I hope you won’t be sore at me for what I am going to do.’
“Winston just shifted his cigar and grunted. I must say he behaved very decently afterward.
“I began almost as soon as we got into the conference room. I talked privately with Stalin. I didn’t say anything that I hadn’t said before, but it appeared quite chummy and confidential, enough so that the other Russians joined us to listen. Still no smile.
“Then I said, lifting my hand to cover a whisper (which of course had to be interpreted), ‘Winston is cranky this morning, he got up on the wrong side of the bed.’
“A vague smile passed over Stalin’s eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. As soon as I sat down at the conference table, I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits. It began to register with Stalin. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally Stalin broke out into a deep, heavy guffaw, and for the first time in three days I saw light. I kept it up until Stalin was laughing with me, and it was then that I called him ‘Uncle Joe.’ He would have thought me fresh the day before, but that day he laughed and came over and shook my hand.
“From that time on our relations were personal, and Stalin himself indulged in an occasional witticism. The ice was broken and we talked like men and brothers.”
Less than three hours later Stalin visited the President privately. He had asked the Marshal to come, Roosevelt said, because he wanted to discuss a matter briefly and frankly. It referred to internal American politics. While personally he did not wish to run again in 1944, if the war was still in progress he might have to.
There were in the United States from six to seven million Americans of Polish extraction, he went on, and as a practical man he did not wish to lose their votes. He personally agreed with the Marshal about the need to restore the Polish state, but he would like to see the eastern border moved farther to the west and the western border moved even to the Oder. He hoped, however, that the Marshal would understand that for election reasons he could not participate in any decision at Teheran or even next winter on the subject and he could not publicly take part in any such arrange
ment at the present time.
Stalin answered that now that the President had explained, he understood.
Roosevelt pushed his luck a bit further. There were many Americans of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian origin, too, he said. Not that the United States would go to war over the question when the Russians reoccupied the three Baltic Republics! But to Americans the big issue would be the right of self-determination. He was personally confident that the people would vote to join the Soviet Union.
Stalin: The three Baltic republics had no autonomy under the last czar, who had been an ally of Britain and the United States, and no one had raised the question of public opinion then and he did not see why it was being raised now.
Roosevelt: The truth of the matter is that the public neither knows nor understands.
Stalin: They should be informed and some propaganda work should be done.
Stalin’s “understanding” about Poland seemed to have evaporated by evening. When the President expressed hope that Moscow would proceed to re-establish relations with the Polish government-in-exile, Stalin retorted that the London group was working with the Germans and killing partisans. Of course he wanted friendly relations with Poland—Soviet security was involved—but this was possible only with an anti-Nazi government. Poland could be expanded only at the expense of Germany. The agreement of 1939 had returned Ukrainian soil to the Ukraine and White Russian soil to White Russia.
“The Ribbentrop-Molotov line,” Eden put in.
“Call it what you will,” Stalin replied, “we still consider it just and right.” The three men huddled around State Department maps of central Europe. Of one ethnographic map Stalin remarked contemptuously that Polish statistics must have been used. Discussion went on; Stalin would not budge. By the end of the day—which was the end of the conference—there was no agreement, but there was implicit acceptance of Stalin’s demands on borders.
“We came here with hope and determination,” the joint Teheran communiqué proclaimed. “We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose.” The next morning, December 3, the President flew back to Cairo to meet with Churchill and the Combined Chiefs for the final decisions on grand strategy for 1944.
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