The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  Churchill and Roosevelt aboard the Prince of Wales during the Atlantic Charter conference in August 1941. The charter renounced a number of imperialist practices and proclaimed such themes as self-government and disarmament. But, afraid that Roosevelt’s wording could eliminate Great Britain’s colonial sphere, Churchill added the condition that equal access to international wealth would be guaranteed only “with due respect for . . . existing obligations.”

  The next day, Great Britain and the United States declared war on Japan. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The bloodletting and chaos would soon engulf the globe.

  The United States had stood in the way of Japan’s plans for conquest. Japanese leaders had been eyeing the rich French and Dutch colonies that the German subjugation of continental Europe had made ripe for the plucking. Though some army officers argued that Japan should join Germany and first knock out its old Russian antagonist to the north, other strategists prevailed. As a result, Japan invaded French Indochina to the south in July 1941, seeking the resources and bases needed to fortify its position in the region. The United States responded by completely embargoing petroleum exports to Japan. Its supplies dwindling, Japan’s leaders decided to secure oil from the Dutch East Indies, but they feared that the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor could interfere with their efforts.

  The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese bombardment on December 7, 1941.

  With the United States and its allies focused on the European theater, the Japanese conquest proceeded largely unimpeded: Thailand, Malaya, Java, Borneo, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Burma, Singapore. Citizens of those countries often greeted the Japanese as liberators from European colonial oppressors. President Roosevelt said privately, “Don’t think for a minute that Americans would be dying in the Pacific . . . if it hadn’t been for the short-sighted greed of the French and the British and the Dutch.”32 Subjugated peoples’ embrace of the Japanese “liberators” would prove short-lived.

  Japan failed to deliver the knockout blow at Pearl Harbor that it desperately sought. The Allies began a counteroffensive led by General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. In June 1942, U.S. forces defeated the Japanese navy at Midway and initiated their island-hopping strategy.

  In some ways, this war would change the world even more dramatically than the First World War. Anticipating the creation of a new world order, influential Americans began offering their visions of what might emerge and the role the United States could play to make that happen. One of the most compelling visions was outlined in early 1941 by publishing magnate Henry Luce in an editorial in Life magazine. Luce, who also published Time and Fortune, had apparently recovered from his earlier infatuation with Mussolini and now anointed the twentieth century the “American Century.” He wrote, “We must accept whole-heartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.”33

  Some applauded this statement as an affirmation of democratic values within an evolving international capitalist market. Former New Deal administrator Raymond Moley knew better and urged Americans to disavow this “temptation to drift into empire.”34

  Vice President Henry Wallace deplored all empires—whether British, French, German, or American. In May 1942, Wallace repudiated Luce’s nationalistic and, arguably, imperial vision and proposed a progressive, internationalist alternative:

  Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say . . . the century . . . which will come of this war—can and must be the century of the common man. . . . No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations . . . there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. . . . International cartels that serve American greed and the German will to power must go. . . . The march of freedom of the past 150 years has been a . . . great revolution of the people, there were the American Revolution of 1775, the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin American revolutions of the Bolivian era, the German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Each spoke for the common man. . . . Some went to excess. But . . . people groped their way to the light. . . . Modern science, which is a by-product and an essential part of the people’s revolution, has made it . . . possible to see that all of the people of the world get enough to eat. . . . We shall not rest until all the victims under the Nazi yoke are freed. . . . The people’s revolution is on the march.35

  When the bloodiest war in human history finally drew to a close three years later, Americans would choose between these diametrically opposed visions: Luce’s American Century versus Wallace’s Century of the Common Man.

  The United States’ entry into the war following the attack at Pearl Harbor only complicated the fight over scarce resources. Meeting the United States’ own defense requirements made it that much more difficult for it to fulfill its commitments to the Soviet Union. In late December, Averill Harriman estimated that the United States had shipped only a quarter of the tonnage of supplies promised and much of what had been sent was defective. In late February, Lend-Lease Administrator Edward Stettinius wrote to Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, “As you are aware, the relations between this Government and the Soviet Government have been constantly disturbed by the failure of this Government to meet its commitments.” Roosevelt understood the terrible position the U.S. failure to deliver was putting the Soviet Union in and what it might mean for future relations. In March, he admitted his apprehensions about a “Russian collapse” because of U.S. negligence: “I do not want to be in the same position as the English[, who] promised the Russians two divisions. They failed. They promised them help in the Caucasus. They failed. Every promise the English have made to the Russians, they have fallen down on.”36

  In May 1942, Roosevelt told General MacArthur, “I find it difficult . . . to get away from the simple fact that the Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and destroying more Axis materiel than all the other twenty-five United Nations put together. Therefore, it has seemed wholly logical to support the great Russian effort in 1942 by seeking to get all munitions to them that we possibly can.”37 Roosevelt knew that delays in delivering the promised military equipment had cost him an opportunity to win Stalin’s trust. But other opportunities would present themselves. Stalin made two additional requests of his allies. Perhaps delivering on these would allow the United States to regain the initiative.

  Stalin sought territorial concessions. He wanted to retain the gains the Red Army had seized after his 1939 pact with Hitler: the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, eastern Poland, and parts of Romania and Finland. The British were inclined to go along but felt caught in a difficult bind, pulled between U.S. and Soviet interests, needing Soviet help to survive the war and U.S. assistance to preserve their empire after the war. Churchill pressed Roosevelt to allow him to offer Stalin the territorial concessions he desired. He warned Roosevelt that a break with the Soviets would bring down his government, which would be replaced by a “Communist, pro-Moscow” government. The Americans refused to budge and instructed British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to make no postwar commitments during his trip to Moscow in late December 1941. Stalin responded angrily to Eden’s rebuff of his demands, leading Churchill to appeal to Roosevelt again. “The Atlantic Charter,” he insisted, “ought not to be construed so as to deny to Russia the frontiers which she occupied when Germany attacked.”38

  Having failed to receive either the promised aid or territorial gains, Stalin pressed even harder for his third and most significant demand: rapid establishment of a second front in Europe to alleviate pressure on his beleaguered military. He urged the British to invade northern France. In September 1941, he pressed them to send twenty-five or thirty divisions to the Soviet Union. Questioning the sincerity of Great Britain’s commitment, he said, “By her passive attitude Britain is helping the Nazis. Do the B
ritish understand this? I think they do. What is it then they want? It seems they want us to be weakened.”39

  The lack of outside support may have left the Soviets weak, but they refused to collapse. Despite suffering catastrophic losses in the early months of the war, the Red Army defeated Germany in the Battle of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941–1942. For the first time, the mighty German war machine had been stopped.

  To Roosevelt, territorial concessions smacked of the secret treaties that had tied Wilson’s hands during the First World War. They contradicted the spirit of the Atlantic Charter. He preferred to launch an invasion of Western Europe at the earliest possible date. In early 1942, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, working for Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, drew up plans for an invasion of Europe by spring 1943 at the latest and by September 1942 if necessary to stave off Soviet defeat, which was still a possibility. As Eisenhower stated emphatically in July 1942, “We should not forget that the prize we seek is to keep 8,000,000 Russians in the war.”40 Eisenhower, Marshall, and Stimson all saw this as the only way to defeat Germany. Roosevelt agreed. He sent Harry Hopkins and General Marshall to convince Churchill to go along. He wrote to Churchill, “Your people and mine demand the establishment of a front to draw off pressure on the Russians, and those peoples are wise enough to see that the Russians are killing more Germans and destroying more equipment than you and I put together.”41 Churchill understood how important this plan was to Roosevelt and his advisors. He cabled the president, “I am in entire agreement in principle with all you propose, as so are the Chiefs of Staff.”42

  Convinced that he had British support, Roosevelt asked Stalin to send Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov and a trusted general to Washington to discuss a proposal that would ease the pressure on the western front. On the way, Molotov stopped in London, where Churchill was anything but reassuring about the second front. Molotov arrived in the U.S. capital in late May 1942. He asked Roosevelt bluntly if the United States indeed planned to open up another front that coming summer. Roosevelt turned to Marshall, who assured him that the United States was prepared to do so. The two sides issued a joint public communiqué stating that “in the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.”43 Roosevelt also laid out a breathtaking vision for postwar collaboration. The victors, he explained, would “keep their armaments” and form “an international police force.”44 The “four policemen”—the United States, United Kingdom, USSR, and China—would disarm the Germans and their allies and “preserve peace by force.” Stalin was delighted by the plans but far less pleased by Roosevelt’s insistence that preparing the second front would necessitate cutting aid to the Soviet Union to 60 percent of what he had originally promised. Still, the second front was the Soviet Union’s main priority, and Roosevelt planned to deliver. He notified Churchill, “I have a very strong feeling that the Russian position is precarious and may grow steadily worse during the coming weeks. Therefore, I am more than ever anxious that BOLERO [the first phase of the operation] proceed to definite action beginning in 1942.”45

  The Soviet people were elated by the news. The New York Herald Tribune reported that they had been gathering around their radios every morning hoping for news that the invasion had begun, only to have their hearts sink when they discovered it hadn’t.46 Pulitzer Prize–winning Moscow correspondent Leland Stowe reported that if the front were postponed, the “disillusionment of the great mass of Russian people would be almost immeasurable. The present steadily mounting and invaluable cooperation between the Soviet, British and American governments and leaders would suffer such a setback as to constitute, diplomatically, materially and psychologically, a major disaster for the Allied cause.”47 The U.S. ambassador in Moscow similarly warned that postponement would make the Russian people doubt U.S. sincerity and do “inestimable harm.”48

  Despite reaching a similar agreement with Molotov regarding the second front, the British had no intention of going along with the plans. Arguing that they lacked sufficient troops due to the crisis in the Middle East—33,000 British troops had just humiliatingly surrendered to an enemy force half that size at Tobruk in Libya—and that they could not muster enough ships to transport invading forces across the English Channel, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to postpone the promised invasion and instead mount an invasion of Vichy-occupied North Africa, which was the key to the oil-rich Middle East, where the British had important colonial interests that were being threatened by Hitler’s forces. The Soviet leaders were furious about this reversal, which many considered part of a conscious strategy of allowing the Soviet Union to be bled dry fighting the Nazis while its capitalist allies secured their global interests and then marched in to set the peace terms at the end of the war. To make matters worse from the Soviet standpoint, during his stop in London, Molotov, in gratitude for the pledged second front, had not pressed his territorial demands. The Soviets now felt as if all three of their major demands had been denied. Relations among the Soviets, Americans, and British hit rock bottom in the fall of 1942 with the Nazi onslaught against Stalingrad. Symptomatic of the Soviets’ acute mistrust of their Western allies was the fact that Molotov, when traveling in the West, always slept with a gun under his pillow.49

  Furious with this British-imposed change of plans, Marshall lobbied unsuccessfully against the invasion of North Africa, which he dismissed as “periphery pecking.” The United States had delayed major operations in the Pacific in order to expedite victory in Europe. Now those plans had been abandoned in an apparent attempt to secure British “imperial” interests in the Middle East, South Asia, and southern Europe. Marshall was so angry that he proposed reversing course and taking on the Japanese before confronting the Germans. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King enthusiastically agreed. The British would never invade Europe, he sneered, “except behind a Scotch bagpipe band.” Marshall’s disgust reverberated down the ranks. General Albert Wedemeyer told Marshall that the British war plans had “been designed to maintain the integrity of the British Empire.” General Henry “Hap” Arnold, chief commander of the Army Air Forces, suggested to Marshall that perhaps the Americans should start dealing with the British the same way that the Germans treated the Italians. U.S. military leaders believed that the British, unlike the Soviets, were afraid to take on the Germans. As Secretary of War Stimson mused the next year, “The shadows of Passchendale [sic] and Dunkerque still hang too heavily over the imagination of [Churchill’s] government.”50

  Eisenhower, Stimson, Hopkins, and the military chiefs continued to push forcefully for a second front, but to no avail. In June 1942, the U.S. chiefs of staff reluctantly agreed to the TORCH campaign in North Africa under Eisenhower’s command. Although a case could indeed have been made that the Allies lacked the landing craft, air cover, and sufficient number of troops to pull off a second front in late 1942 or early 1943, such arguments were not convincing to the Soviets or, at the time, to U.S. military leaders. Eisenhower predicted that the day they decided to proceed with TORCH would go down as the “blackest day in history.”51

  But whether deterred by fear or not, the British never had any intention of directly engaging the powerful Wehrmacht and had instead designed a strategy based on sea power and attacking Hitler’s vulnerable southern flank, which was protected by weaker Italian forces. Great Britain decided to secure North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, in order to hold on to Persian and Iraqi oil reserves and maintain its access to India and the rest of the empire through the Suez Canal and Gibraltar. The discovery of enormous oil reserves shortly before the war in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar further drove home the importance of this region, where much of the early fighting between British, German, and Italian forces had occurred. Great Britain was so intent upon keeping the Axis powers out of the Middle East that it diverted troops and tanks there even though they were desperately needed to defend th
e homeland against an imminent German attack.

  During these months, the American people’s attitude toward the Soviet Union was undergoing a profound shift. For many Americans, the Nazi-Soviet Pact had confirmed their worst suspicions about Soviet communism, causing an outpouring of anti-Soviet feeling between 1939 and 1941. But much of that disappeared as the Soviets’ courageous resistance against the Nazis captured Americans’ imagination and sympathy. The resulting outpouring of goodwill toward the Soviet Union would lay the basis, many hoped, for friendship and collaboration in the war’s aftermath as well.

  Within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov visited the State Department. Secretary of State Cordell Hull used the occasion to applaud the Soviet Union’s “heroic struggle” against the Nazis.52 Before long, the notion of Soviet “heroism” was ubiquitous. In April 1942, New York Times correspondent Ralph Parker commended “how rapidly and how completely the Russian people” had “adapted themselves to war conditions.” He applauded their willingness to sacrifice and their extraordinary work ethic. “The whole people are caught up with an enthusiastic passion to be doing something constructive for the common task.” He proclaimed, “It would need a Tolstoy to describe the heroic endurance of the men and women who have made these things possible.”53 In June 1942, the month marking the first anniversary of Soviet resistance to the German invaders, Orville Prescott, the New York Times’ principal daily book reviewer, was already crediting the Red Army with winning the war and saving humanity. “The vast armaments, the fighting skill and magnificent courage of the Red Army may prove to have been the decisive factors in the salvation of the human race from Nazi slavery,” Prescott gushed. “Our debt of gratitude to the millions of Russian soldiers who have fought and died in this war and who will continue to do so is beyond estimation or expression.”54 General MacArthur credited the Red Army with “one of the greatest military feats in history.”55