FDR - Jean Edward Smith [310]
Q: Will any priorities on airplanes be assigned to Russia?
FDR: I don’t know.
Q: Does any aid we could give come under Lend-Lease?
FDR: I don’t know.… We will not cross that bridge until we come to it.66
For Roosevelt there was no question that the Soviets should receive what they needed. He was no more fond of communism than Churchill was. But much of his political life was premised on the doctrine that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and he saw no reason not to measure Stalin by that standard. The Soviet Union was scarcely engaged in fomenting world revolution and had not been since the mid-1920s. Even if it were, the universalist appeal of communism was far less reprehensible than the genocidal racism of Nazism. And although Russia had attacked Finland and absorbed the Baltic states, it displayed none of the aggressive imperialism of Germany and Italy.67 But the American administration was divided. Career foreign service officers remained hostile to the Soviet Union; the military advised the White House that the Germans would sweep across Russia in one month, three at the most; and Stimson and Knox worried that supplies sent to the Soviets might fall into Hitler’s hands. Together with Ickes, they urged that the breathing space provided by Hitler’s invasion be utilized to win the war in the Atlantic.
There was also a political minefield to navigate. “The victory of Communism would be far more dangerous to the United States than a victory of Fascism,” said Senator Robert Taft. “It’s a case of dog eat dog,” allowed Missouri’s Bennett Champ Clark. “I don’t think we should help either one.” The isolationist press, led by the Chicago Tribune and the New York Journal-American, was predictably opposed to aid to Russia. More serious was the potential opposition of the Catholic Church. Many Catholics felt bound by the 1937 Encyclical of Pius XI, Divini redemptoris, which stated categorically, “Communism is intrinsically wrong and no one who would save Christian civilization may give it assistance in any undertaking whatsoever.”68*
To short-circuit the hostility of the foreign service, Roosevelt sent Hopkins to meet Stalin and observe the situation firsthand. As in 1933, relations with Russia would be handled in the Oval Office. The diplomats would be relegated to the sidelines as interpreters and note takers. Hopkins was impressed by the Soviet resolve. When he returned to Washington, Roosevelt brushed aside the War Department’s military estimate; rejected the advice of Knox, Stimson, and Ickes to concentrate on the Battle of the Atlantic; and invited the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Constantine Ourmansky, to present a list of items the United States might supply to the Red Army. Within a week the Soviets submitted a detailed request totaling $1.8 billion.
As Russian resistance stiffened, Roosevelt pressed the military to step up deliveries. He fumed at the cabinet for its foot-dragging: “I am sick and tired of hearing [the Russians] are going to get this and they are going to get that.” He wanted a hundred or more fighters delivered to the Soviet Union immediately. “Get the planes right off with a bang,” he told Stimson, even if they had to be taken from the U.S. Army.69 Public opinion rallied to the president’s side. A July Gallup Poll indicated that 72 percent of Americans favored a Russian victory. Only 4 percent were opposed.70 In the fall FDR instructed