The relationship goes cold
As the war approaches its endgame, Roosevelt takes an increasingly hostile Stalin to task
Both Roosevelt and Churchill were pleased by their second Big Three summit at Yalta in February 1945. But the atmosphere deteriorated sharply in March and April. President joined prime minister in protests over the imposition of a communist-led government on Poland, and the ever-suspicious Stalin sent a bitter denunciation of the Allies for – as he saw it – trying to arrange the surrender of the German armies in Italy behind his back through secret talks in the Swiss capital, Bern. Roosevelt’s denials of this claim were batted back on 3 April with a scarcely veiled insinuation that the president was lying: “You insist that there have been no negotiations yet. It may be assumed that you have not been fully informed.”
The ailing president was now in Warm Springs, Georgia, trying to build up his strength for a major speech in San Francisco later in the month when he was to inaugurate the founding conference of the United Nations. This, he hoped, would cement the Grand Alliance into the postwar era. Most of his messages were now drafted by Admiral William Leahy, the White House chief of staff, but the president checked what was written, and Leahy knew his mind well.
On 4 April – in his angriest message – Roosevelt told Stalin: “I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted
4 APRIL 1945
subordinates.” Stalin backed off, asserting: “I never doubted your honesty and dependability,” and Roosevelt decided to draw a line under the issue – focusing as usual on what he considered the bigger picture of Big Three cooperation. In a message sent on 11 April he wrote: “Thank you for your frank explanation of the Soviet point of view of the Bern incident which now appears to have faded into the past without having accomplished any useful purpose. There must not, in any event, be mutual distrust, and minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future.”
And Roosevelt, in a message he himself drafted, also told Churchill the same day to “minimise the general Soviet problem” because points of friction “seem to arise every day as in the case of the Bern meeting. We must be firm, however, and our course thus far is correct.”
The cable to Stalin was sent via the US embassy in Moscow where Ambassador Averill Harriman – who now favoured a hard line against the Soviets over issues such as Poland – queried whether Bern was indeed a “minor” misunderstanding. Leahy, with FDR’s approval, replied on 12 April that the president did regard it in this way.
By the time the White House had encrypted and sent the message, Roosevelt was dead, following a cerebral haemorrhage. Historians continue to argue about whether his death made any fundamental difference in the transition from World War to Cold War. But one thing’s for sure: in these final messages to his two wartime allies, the president showed again his belief that he alone could “handle” Stalin in war and in peace.