America's Retreat from Victory - Joseph McCarthy




The Struggle For Eastern Europe

We now come to what was without question the most significant decision of the war in Europe: the decision by Marshall, which was made against Roosevelt's half-hearted wishes and Churchill's bulldog determination, to concentrate on France and leave the whole of Eastern Europe to the Red armies. This strategical struggle was pursued with great vigor, sometimes bashing very violent on both sides. It only reached its terminal point at Teheran, as we shall see, where the combined weight of Stalin and Marshall defeated Churchill. I cannot dwell too urgently on this great decision. Its military effects were of no very great importance, although the unnecessary invasion of southern France, enjoined by Stalin and Marshall, gave Kesselring a welcome breathing spell in northern Italy and protracted Mark Clark's campaign for the Po with an attendant loss of American lives. It is the political consequences of this controversy which stand forth in all their stark implications for us today. I will attempt to summarize the debate briefly.

The British, from the beginning of the strategical discussions over North Africa, had been intent on carrying the war into the Mediterranean. Their motives were mixed. Foremost perhaps was their desire to relieve their forces in Egypt, which had suffered several crushing blows. Secondarily, they wanted the use of the Mediterranean for very obvious purposes of communication. Thirdly, the British have had for many generations a paramount position in the eastern Mediterranean and had wide interests both in those lands and in the Suez Canal as a gateway to India and their great possessions and dependencies in the Orient and the Southern Seas. There was a further and personal factor, which Marshall frequently characterized as the Prime Minister's preoccupation with eccentric operations, such as the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign in World War I, with which Churchill's name will be forever associated. Overshadowing and of much more importance, of course, as we see it now and as we get glimpses in the writings of the principal actors of those times, was a steady desire on the part of the British to reach Eastern Europe and the Balkans before the Red armies.

I think there can be no question that Hanson Baldwin is correct when he stigmatizes our military planning in this connection as short-sighted. Churchill, with his intimate and profound knowledge of the continuing drama of Europe, knew that a war is only a phase of history. Victory is one thing; where you stand at the end of a war is another. He had the ability to foresee what Europe would look like as a result of certain policies.

Marshall triumphed over Churchill at the First Quebec Conference in August 1943 with reference to this question. That conference marked the end of Churchill's sway over the great decisions of the war. Thereafter the policy of the United States in the European war was wholly and without deviation the policy announced by Joseph Stalin. There was a break in the relations between the two English-speaking powers, which were carrying the brunt of the war, and the United States thereafter was found always on the side of Stalin. To obtain this result, Marshall bore down on British preoccupation with the Mediterranean. I have enumerated some of the basic factors in the British position. Marshall ignored all of these except the one addressed to British self-interest. He minimized and derided the British position, likewise ridiculing the Prime Minister's strategical judgment by frequent references to the Dardanelles.

I believe that the rupture of interest between the United States and Great Britain signified by this decision was one of the most fateful changes in world relationships of our times. It embittered our relationships at the first Quebec meeting, at Cairo, and at Teheran.

At the moment let me generalize that the year 1943 was by all odds the critical year of the war, casting its shadow over the whole postwar period in which we now find ourselves convulsed by anxiety and doubt. It was in February of 1943 that the Russian achieved victory over the Germans at Stalingrad. In fact, it can, I believe, be safely stated that World War III started with the Russian victory at Stalingrad. Thereafter, they opened their diplomatic war against the West when they gave every evidence of turning upon the Polish armies, the Polish people, and the loyal and devoted Polish government in exile in London.

The Kremlin's treatment of the Poles, beginning in the spring of 1943, was the touchstone of this whole period, and it was at the Quebec Conference that the whole dangerous policy of the United States toward the Soviet Union was forecast and prefigured. At Quebec the decision was made to invade Southern France and keep the weakened American Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army indecisively engaged in Italy. It was at Quebec also that the most amazing and indicative document that has so far emerged from the voluminous records of World War II was brought to bear. This document, a memorandum entitled "Russia's position," affords us clear insight into our subsequent surrenders at Teheran and Yalta as well as at Potsdam. The document appears, and only there, in Sherwood's book about Hopkins. It is on page 748. The memorandum is ascribed there to "a very-high-level United States military strategic estimate." Sherwood reports that Hopkins had it with him at Quebec. Can it be doubted that this document emanated from General Marshall, whoever drafted it? The question of its authorship is extremely important and I hope that some day its authorship will be fixed for all to see.

No document of World War II was more controlling on our fate. Here it is in full:

"Russia's postwar position in Europe will be a dominant one. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces. It is true that Great Britain is building up a position in the Mediterranean vis-a-vis Russia that she may find useful in balancing power in Europe. However, even here she may not be able to oppose Russia unless she is otherwise supported.

"The conclusions from the foregoing are obvious. Since Russia is the decisive factor in the war, she must be given every assistance, and every effort must be made to obtain her friendship. Likewise, since without question she will dominate Europe on the defeat of the Axis, it is even more essential to develop and maintain the most friendly relations with Russia.

"Finally, the most important factor the United States has to consider in relation to Russia is the prosecution of the war in the Pacific. With Russia as an ally in the war against Japan, the war can be terminated in less time and at less expense in life and resources than if the reverse were the case. Should the war in the Pacific have to be carried on with an unfriendly or negative attitude on the part of Russia, the difficulties will be immeasurably increased and operations might become abortive."

Sherwood understood the memorandum's significance. He wrote, "This estimate was obviously of great importance as indicating the policy which guided the making of decisions at Teheran and, much later, at Yalta." What this document is, in effect, is a rationalization of the whole policy of submission to Russia during the remainder of World War II and, most notably, in our relationships with China thereafter. What it said was that as a result of the utter destruction of Germany which we had erected into a policy at Casablanca with the phrase "unconditional surrender," Russia would be the unquestioned "top dog" in Europe after the war, and that it behooved the great, enlightened, and truly progressive English-speaking peoples therefore to cater to, to placate, and, in fact, to submit to the will of the Kremlin thereafter. It said unmistakably that the British endeavors in the Mediterranean, which Marshall had succeeded in blocking, were aimed at balancing power in Europe vis-d-vis Russia.

That is bad enough. But the document went further. It insisted that we must carry this attitude of solicitude and deference beyond Europe. We must bow to Russia in the Far East as well. It is here that we find the first explicit delineation of the policy which produced the shameful betrayal of China at Yalta, the blackmail paid by Roosevelt to get Russia into a war which she had already announced her eagerness to wage.

The debate over Mediterranean policy had reached a focus at the White House late in May of 1943 when Churchill again crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of a common objective. He found that Marshall was opposed to any action in the Mediterranean beyond taking Sardinia after the occupation of Sicily, and that then all of our subsequent efforts were to be devoted to what the late Sir John Dill, who was Chief of the British Military Mission in Washington, once referred to in a letter to Churchill as "Marshall's first love"—the transchannel invasion. Roosevelt was pulled and hauled on this issue as much as on any in the war.

His inclinations, based upon his knowledge of geography and his adventurous strategic desires, were toward expanding the war into eastern Europe. Ultimately, however, Roosevelt went along with Marshall.

So determined was Churchill at the White House in May to have his views prevail that he induced Roosevelt to send Marshall with him to North Africa for a further discussion with military leaders in that theater. I gather from The Hinge of Fate that it was at this point that Churchill realized that his great antagonist in the war was Marshall, that he and Marshall were virtually contending for the mastery of their views over the impulsive will of the President. It was in connection with that journey by Churchill and Marshall to North Africa that the Prime Minister wrote in The Hinge of Fate, pages 812 and 813, a tribute to the general as a "statesman with a penetrating and commanding view of the whole scene." It may be noted that Churchill did not ascribe to Marshall a correct and trustworthy view of the whole scene and it may be wondered, in the light of their great conflicts, whether the Prime Minister was not perhaps indulging his rather frequent taste for irony.

In Tunis, Churchill brought to bear upon Marshall and Eisenhower, who invariably sided with Marshall, the whole battery of persuasion of himself and his military subordinates. The views of the British were made more persuasive by the fact that they had carried the major burden of the war in North Africa, Marshall resisted, remaining, as Churchill comments, "up until almost the last minute, silent or cryptic." The upshot was that Marshall insisted upon deferring the decision until Sicily had been made secure and "the situation in Russia known." The quotation is from Churchill's report of the conference.

We recur to the Quebec Conference of August 14, as Admiral Leahy reports it on page 175 of his book:

"General Marshall was very positive in his attitude against a Mediterranean commitment."

Churchill did, however, temporarily prevail, and we invaded Italy; but Marshall and Stalin won out in the end when Roosevelt sided with them at Teheran, where there was thrown away the advantage of the Italian campaign. We are indebted to Mr. Sherwood for the fullest account of the Stalin position at Teheran. This account was obtained, of course, from Hopkin's oral and written recollections. At one point, quoted on page 780 of Sherwood's book, Stalin urged that:

"The entry of Turkey into the war—a development to which Churchill was passionately committed, and which the Russians had been previously urging—might be helpful in opening the way to the Balkans, but the Balkans were far from the heart of Germany, and the only direct way of striking at that heart was through France."

Here Roosevelt suggested that it might be useful if the Americans and British marched east in conjunction with Tito's Partisans into Rumania and joined with the Reds at Odessa. Stalin inquired if that would affect the thirty-five divisions earmarked for the transchannel invasion of France. Churchill replied that it would not. Sherwood comments, however, that "nothing could be further from the plans of the United States Chief of Staff." It was then that Stalin brought his powerful guns to bear to conclude the controversy, I am quoting from Sherwood—and he wrote:

"Stalin then expressed the opinion that it would be unwise to scatter forces in various operations through the eastern Mediterranean. He said he thought Overlord (the name given to the crosschannel invasion) should be considered the basis of all operations in 1944 and that after the capture of Rome, the forces used there should be sent into southern France to provide a diversionary operation in support of Overlord. He even felt that it might be better to abandon the capture of Rome altogether, leaving 10 divisions to hold the present line in Italy and using the rest of the Allied forces for the invasion of southern France. He said it had been the experience of the Red army that it was best to launch an offensive from two converging directions, forcing the enemy to move his reserves from one front to the other. Therefore, he favored simultaneous operations in northern and southern France, rather than the scattering of forces in the eastern Mediterranean."

We may be sure that Stalin's didactic observations fell upon Marshall's ears with the authority of revelation. It was made abundantly evident at Teheran that Marshall had earned the warm approval of Stalin. On page 783 of the Sherwood record, the author notes that both Stalin and Voroshilov obviously recognized Marshall as the supreme advocate of Overlord and therefore their friend.

Sherwood notes that after Marshall had discussed the difficulties of Overlord, Voroshilov turned to him and said admiringly, "If you think about it, you will do it."

On page 791, in discussing the moot question at that time of who was to command Overlord, Sherwood repeats a report that Stalin, in discussions with Roosevelt, made evident his conviction that "no wiser or more reassuring choice" than Marshall could be made.

It is noteworthy that the brusque, cynical Stalin exhibited fondness for no other American at Teheran with the single exception of Hopkins, with whom he had a personal acquaintance dating from Hopkins's visit to Moscow in August of 1941 upon an errand which must have gratified the tyrant's heart. It was then that Hopkins offered the bountiful support of the United Stares to the Kremlin's resistance of the Nazi invaders without stint, quid pro quo, or any reservations whatsoever.

General "Hap" Arnold, who was not present at Teheran because of illness, himself commented on the reports as he received them. His comments will be found on page 465 of Global Mission. Said Arnold:

"Apparently Uncle Joe had talked straight from the shoulder about how to carry on the war against Germany, and his ideas, it seems, were much more in accord with the American ideas than with those of the British."

Admiral Leahy, who was there, adds his comment after giving his own version of the Stalin speech I have quoted from Sherwood. He wrote, and this is on page 204 of his book:

"The Sovicts and Americans seemed to be nearly in agreement as to the fundamental strategic principles that should be followed."

Teheran took place in November and December of 1943. The projected invasion of southern France was given the name Anvil. Although Churchill and his advisers continued to fight for the eastern operation, it was manifestly a losing struggle. Churchill himself employed his stormy eloquence on Mark Clark, as that great American general was fighting his way up the Italian peninsula, assuring Clark that, given his way, the Western Powers could "slit this soft under-belly of the Axis." The Prime Minister was pursuing a lost cause. After the capture of Rome, the Fifth Army which had become, as Clark proudly asserts, "a tremendous fighting machine" with "horizons unlimited," was disrupted. Over Clark's strong protests, he lost the Sixth Corps and seven crack French divisions, all withdrawn for Anvil. Clark was compelled to abandon his drive to the Po, giving Kesselring respite, a decision that puzzled the German high command, as we were to discover after their surrender. Writes Clark on page 371 of Calculated Risk: "It was a decision that was likely to puzzle historians for a much longer time." In considering his impression of that period when he sat down to write his memoirs after the war, Clark says, on page 368:

"Stalin, it was evident throughout the Big Three meeting and negotiations at Teheran, was one of the strongest boosters of the invasion of southern France. He knew exactly what he wanted in a political as well as a military way; and the thing he wanted most was to keep us out of the Balkans, which he had staked out for the Red Army. If we switched our strength from Italy to France, it was obvious to Stalin . . . that we would turn away from central Europe. Anvil led into a dead-end street. It was easy to see why Stalin favored Anvil at Teheran and why he kept right on pushing far it."

I come to a most significant passage which deals specifically with what lay before Clark and was denied him by Marshall in collaboration with Stalin, Says Clark:

"After the fall of Rome, Kesselring's army could have been destroyed if we had been able to shoot the works in a final offensive. Across the Adriatic was Yugoslavia . . . and beyond Yugoslavia were Vienna, Budapest, and Prague."

At this point may I remind you that wherever the Russian armies came to rest, there they stayed and there they remain to this day. The Red armies have not relinquished one inch of the soil upon which they stood at the defeat of Germany. General Clark continues:

"There was no question that the Balkans were strongly in the British mind, but so far as I ever found out, American top-level planners were not interested. It was generally understood that President Roosevelt toyed with the idea for a while but was not encouraged by Harry Hopkins. After the fall of Rome, we "ran for the wrong goal," both from a political and strategical standpoint."

Clark has, moreover, a superior vantage point from which to judge the consequences because he served with the utmost distinction as the American military governor of Vienna after the war. It was there that he felt the iron determination of Soviet imperialism to prevail over eastern Europe. It was there that he had ample opportunity to consider how differently things might have been had we proceeded east from the valley of the Po instead of turning our forces into the trivial and wholly unnecessary operations in southern France. General Clark concludes on page 3 of his book, and I here summon him as the most highly qualified witness in this matter:

"Yet, I believe our mission was fulfilled and, save for a high-level blunder that turned us away from the Balkan states and permitted them to fall under Red Army control, the Mediterranean campaign might have been the most decisive of all in postwar history."

At another place, expressing his frustration over the enfeeblement of his campaign in Italy—and this is on page 368—Clark writes:

"A campaign that might have changed the whole history of the relationships between the Western World and Soviet Russia was permitted to fade away. . . . The weakening of the campaign in Italy . . . was one of the outstanding political mistakes of the war."

Where, until President Truman's appointment of this great General to the nonmilitary post of Ambassador to the Vatican, at this writing not yet confirmed, was Mark Clark, a man pronouncedly in his military prime, a man of great achievement in Italy and of outstanding political and diplomatic accomplishment in Austria? After his return home from Vienna, General Clark was consistently relegated to secondary commands.

So also is this true of General Wedemeyer, likewise in his prime, likewise a soldier of great brilliance and great devotion to his country. Both Wedemeyer and Clark dared to oppose the judgment of General Marshall in his history-making decisions, Clark in Europe, Wedemeyer in Asia.

Where is Lucius Clay? Like MacArthur and Clark, a great proconsul; young as generals go, brilliant and steadfast in devotion not to party but to country. Clay insisted on resisting the Russians at Berlin.

The lessons must be plain as a pikestaff to the military leaders of our establishment. A prudent officer, looking forward to his continued career and his pension, certainly has to think twice before he expresses an objective and disinterested opinion of strategy or of the conduct of our military operations.

General MacArthur is not the only monument to the determination of Marshall to rule our politico-military policies now as he ruled our policies in World War IL.

The evidence is overwhelming that at Teheran we had no political policy. It so appears in the recollections of Major-General John R. Deane. After observing, on page 43 of his book The Strange Alliance, that "Stalin advocated the American point of view in our differences with Britain" and again that "Stalin's 'position' coincided with that of the American Chief of Staff and every word he said strengthened the support they might expect from President Roosevelt in the ultimate decision," Deane continues:

"Stalin appeared to know exactly what he wanted at the conference. This was also true of Churchill, but not so of Roosevelt. This is not said as a reflection on our President but his apparent indecision was probably a direct result of our obscure foreign policy. President Roosevelt was thinking of winning the war; the others were thinking of their relative positions when the war was won. Stalin wanted the Anglo-American forces in Western and southern Europe; Churchill thought our postwar position would be improved and British interests best served if the Anglo-Americans, as well as the Russians, participated in the occupation of the Balkans. From the political point of view, hindsight on our part points to foresight on Churchill's part."

The political immaturity of our generals, mentioned by Hanson Baldwin, was never so glaringly manifested as at Teheran—if, indeed, it was political immaturity and nor the consequences of some hidden, and so far undisclosed, influence binding us to Stalin's world policy.

Could it be that, like children, our military advisers at Teheran dwelt only on the pleasures and tasks of the day with no thought for the morrow? Could they not envisage what was so clear to many other minds, that after the conclusion of hostilities the Soviet Union, conscious of its vast and violent world mission, might be ranged against us in every quarter of the globe? Or did Marshall and his supernumeraries on the Joint Chiefs at Teheran think of England instead of Russia as the future enemy?

Before quitting this question of the Marshall—Churchill conflict over the most important phases of the recent war, I shall cite another example of the ruthlessness with which Marshall prosecuted the rift. It should be noted that Churchill, who is an indomitable adversary in the House of Commons and elsewhere, fought on against Anvil long after his was a lost cause.

At Malta, where the Yalta conferees on the Anglo-American side met before proceeding to that Black Sea conference, the British chiefs still persisted in the hope of accomplishing some Mediterranean operations while preparing for the attack across the Channel. In Sherwood's book, page 848, is a revealing passage concerning those discussions of the combined chiefs:

"The arguments reached such a point that Marshall, ordinarily one of the most restrained and soft-spoken of men, announced that if the British plan were approved by the Prime Minister and the President, he would recommend to Eisenhower that he had no choice but to be relieved of his command."

Again, as in the case of the ultimatum over the "second front now," Marshall was threatening summary action unless his will prevailed. Why was it so important to Marshall that the British, as a full partner in the Anglo-American war effort, should be prevented from creating that balance of military power in the Mediterranean spoken of in the memorandum circulated by Hopkins at the first Quebec conference?

Before we proceed to other matters of political strategy, let us consider instances in the management of American military affairs in World War II, where Marshall's actions operated directly against the interests of the United States.

General Deane is an uncommonly friendly witness for George Marshall. He was Marshall's protégé, having served as secretary of the combined chiefs in Washington until Marshall sent him in the fall of 1943 to Moscow as chief of our military mission in Russia. It should be noted that we had withdrawn our military and naval attachés from Moscow because, in fulfilling the time-honored and expected duties of military attachés, they had aroused the resentment of the Kremlin. Those duties include discovering and reporting to the home government all information that can be obtained legitimately regarding the armed forces of the country to which the attachés are accredited. The information thus sought has to do with weapons, tactical programs, and methods, and the size, training, and disposition of that country's military forces.

Before General Deane departed for his mission in Moscow, he had a long interview with General Marshall in which the Chief of Staff cautioned Deane to seek no information about these matters for fear that he might "irritate" the Russians. We were then devoting a substantial part of our military production to Russia's war effort, and doing so in entirely good faith. It was not long after General Deane reached Moscow that he began to be impressed with the extraordinary contrast between the Russian attitude and our own. This he describes on page 49 of his book:

"We had thousands of Soviet representatives in the United States who were allowed to visit our manufacturing plants, attend our schools, and witness tests of aircraft and other equipment. In Italy, and later in France and Germany, Russian representatives were welcome at our field headquarters and allowed to see anything they desired of our military operations. Our policy was to make any of our new inventions in electronics and other fields available to Russia . . . Each month I would receive a revised list of secret American equipment about which Russia could be informed in the hope that if it could be made available, it might be used on the Russian front. We never lost an opportunity to give the Russians equipment, weapons, or information which we thought might help our combined war effort."

The head of the American military mission in Moscow encountered the Iron Curtain long before Churchill coined the phrase. Toward the end of the war, when our always excessive solicitude seemed to him no longer warranted, he advised a more resolute attitude toward the Russians. Each time he suggested that we demand a fulfillment of an agreement—and they broke virtually every agreement we made with them—he was called off in Washington. By whom? Deane's reports went directly to General Marshall.

Why have we not had, and do not have at this moment, an American, or at least an allied, corridor to Berlin? Why are we at the mercy of the Russians in our access to the joint capital of the occupying powers? Why was it possible for the Russians to produce the blockade of Berlin with a simple set of instructions with which General Clay found it impossible, as a man of honor and a great American soldier, to comply?

It has been the fashion to place the blame for this lack of foresight upon the late John G. Winant. As our Ambassador to London he sat on the European Advisory Commission, which worked out under the direction of the respective governments the zoning of Germany for occupation purposes. Winant cannot answer our questions now. General Clay, in his report on his great career as the American governor in Germany, Decision in Germany, accepts the version that shoulders the blame onto Winant. Subsequently, on page 26, he himself takes the final blame. He was in Berlin in late June of 1945 arranging with Marshall Zhukov for the entry of American forces into their occupation position in Berlin,

The Russians were, as usual, hard to deal with. Clay was eager to get his occupation going and to have American forces on guard in Berlin. Instead of pressing the matter of a corridor under American rule, guarded by American troops, with supply and communication beyond the reach of Russian interference, he accepted an oral understanding with Zhukov that nothing would ever occur to impede American access to Berlin. Our zonal border, it will be recalled, had been set at a distance of 100 miles from Berlin.

The legend which saddled the late Winant with the responsibility for this tragic blunder in postwar arrangements has been vigorously challenged by Hanson Baldwin, who fixes the responsibility not on Winant but squarely on the War Department. "War Department" at that time meant George Catlett Marshall. From the fall of 1939 until the fall of 1946, Marshall was, in effect, the War Department. I cannot find in Mr. Stimson's memoirs any occasion on which he opposed the will of General Marshall.

On page 47 of Baldwin's book, he expresses his conviction that "the blame for Berlin cannot be laid—exclusively, or even to a major degree—upon the shoulders of Winant." Two pages later, in reviewing the background of this deplorable situation, Baldwin notes that the State Department at the end of 1943 proposed that the zones of post War occupation "be so drawn as to bring each into contact with Berlin." I hasten to add that Cordell Hull—not Marshall or Dean Acheson—was then the Secretary of State. I go on with Baldwin:

"For some reason that defies logical understanding now, the War Department rejected this suggestion, which would have solved nearly all our postwar Berlin difficulties, so that it was never even broached in the EAC.

"In February 1944, the British informally suggested that a corridor to Berlin be established and defined, but the War Department again objected, stating that this was not a subject for the EAC, but that the entire question of access to Berlin was a military matter which should be settled at the proper time by military representatives.

"And this eventually was the solution, but the military representatives made a botch of it. In May 1945 our allies stood deep on German soil. The zonal occupation agreements for Germany . . . placed Berlin in the Russian zone . . . In May 1945 ECA's work was done and SCAEF was briefed as to its accomplishments."

The military were told the history of the problem. They were told that the War Department had blocked any consideration of it by EAC and were advised that the EAC staff believed we should have an indisputably American corridor under our own military supervision and guard. As we have seen, neither Marshall nor Eisenhower made provision for a corridor; General Clay concluded his improvised agreement a Zhukov, and the fat was in the fire.

Why did the War Department, meaning Marshall, leave us at the mercy of the Russians in Berlin? Why did not our forces march first into Berlin? Why was General Patton not allowed to take Prague? We have only glimpses of the inner reality behind these questions.

We gather from General Bradley's memoirs that Eisenhower's decision not to reach Berlin first was conditioned to some extent by the flagrant quarrel that had arisen between Bradley and General Montgomery. In his version of the matter, appearing on page 69 of Life magazine for April 30, 1951, Bradley relates a discussion with Eisenhower wherein it was decided not to allow Montgomery the forces with which to push on to Berlin. Eisenhower was principally concerned at the moment lest the armies of Russia and the English-speaking powers should meet in a head-on collision somewhere in Germany. I quote Bradley on how Eisenhower solved the problem:

"Five days before Hodges and Simpson closed their trap around the Ruhr, Eisenhower radioed Stalin through the United States Military Mission in Moscow of his plan to push east with a powerful force in the center to the line of the Elbe."

The Elbe line was where Eisenhower proposed to Stalin that he would bring the American armies to rest. Eisenhower fixed this highly important point, be it noted, with Stalin. It is clear from Bradley's recollections that Eisenhower acted on this highly political question without consulting with Churchill. Whether he consulted Roosevelt and Marshall is not mentioned by Bradley. Certainly he must have consulted Marshall. I continue to quote Bradley:

"Although Churchill protested Eisenhower's radio to Moscow as an unwarranted intrusion by the military into a political problem, he reserved his angriest vituperation for the plan Eisenhower proposed. The Prime Minister, according to Risenhower, was greatly disappointed and disturbed that SCAEF had nor reinforced Montgomery with American troops and pointed him toward Berlin in a desperate [sic] effort to capture that city before the Russians took it."

We gain another bit of insight into this situation—which provides a somewhat more startling example of command discretion than any displayed by MacArthur in Japan—from Edward Ansel Mowrer in his book The Nightmare of American Foreign Policy, in which he relates having been personally told by the White House that "the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Truman to let the Russians take Berlin." The Joint Chiefs of Staff, of course, meant Marshall.

We have been reviewing General Marshall's record as it applies to the war in Europe with an eye to his competence and the extent to which he backed up Stalin in political decisions. The Democrats in Denver proclaimed him "a master of global strategy." The term, of course, implies much more than purely military planning. As we have seen, when you reach the upper levels of command inhabited during the recent war by Marshall, Churchill, and Roosevelt, the military decisions blend everywhere with the political. They cannot be dissociated.

A war is not conducted merely as a means of killing the enemy, although during the late war Mr. Roosevelt expressed so much joy over Russia's accomplishments in that line that it might be questioned if he always understood the nature of war. We have seen recently in Korea where, beggared of any respectable and intelligent war purpose, our forces were led to believe from Marshall's testimony that the only objective of that war was to kill the enemy. I put aside the ethical considerations raised by such an attitude and point out that the enemy's extermination is not enough. Of course, it is necessary to have the enemy's submission. But, also, great powers must have some understanding of what that submission portends and what they intend to do with the world over which they will exercise sway once the enemy is defeated.

We have observed what calamities might have befallen the allied cause had Roosevelt accepted Marshall's persistent demand for a "second front now." We have seen the equivocal and dangerous nature of his counsel with reference to the North African invasion. We have observed how closely he fitted his views into those of Stalin over every major issue of the war. We have seen further how, in his instructions to General Deane, his refusal to exercise foresight over the corridor to Berlin, and his wish that the Russians might first enter that great and shattered city, General Marshall's decisions paralleled the interests of the Kremlin.

The Democrats at Denver may have been correct in their appraisal of General Marshall's attainments as a strategist. The question that arises, after examining the facts we have enumerated and those we shall enumerate, is, in whose interest did he exercise his genius? If he was wholeheartedly serving the cause of the United States, these decisions were great blunders. If they followed a secret pattern to which we do not as yet have the key, they may very well have been successful in the highest degree.