INTERNATIONAL: Stalin and His Allies

Political tumult broke out last week with the loud echoing of Joseph Stalin’s words of the week before. “… Only one thing is required: that the Allies fulfill their obligations fully and on time.” The Allied peoples still did not know whether Joseph Stalin had been promised a second front, or whether he thought so. Dopesters worked up many interpretations of Stalin’s remarks. But the greatest revelations of the week were a few cold facts:

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Admiral William H. Standley took off from Moscow on a trip to Washington. The Admiral was in a mood of desperation. Before he left he made the astounding admission that he did not know what commitments the U.S. had made to Russia, or to what degree they had been met. He said he believed that Brigadier General Philip R. Faymonville, head of the U.S. Supply Mission in Moscow, had such information. The Admiral added: “There seem to be obstacles to the flow of American munitions to this country. Someone may have dropped a monkey wrench into the machinery. I tell you frankly I do not know just what the picture is.” In other words, the U.S. Government had not given its Ambassador to Russia the facts about aid-to-Russia.

One Thirty-Eighth. To most observers this seemed, simply, a hell of a way to run a war. There were many signs that Ambassador Standley was correct in worrying about what he did not know, that U.S. aid-to-Russia had been wretchedly managed. Soviet officials in London admitted that Britain had met her pledges during the nine months ending last June, but said that the U.S. had delivered only 75%—and that this figure, far from meaning cargoes reaching Russia, included deliveries accepted by Soviet agents in U.S. ports.

U.S. officials in Washington confessed that the U.S. performance had been poor. In recent months, with Stalingrad in the balance, shipments had been less than they were last spring. Russia’s rubber supply was critically low and promised U.S. action was long overdue. Russia had cried for locomotives. She got only part of the number she asked for, and those were not the kind she wanted.

All this had to do only with promised U.S. aid. It had nothing to do with the amount of aid Russia might possibly deserve. The U.S. was sending Russia only about one thirty-eighth of the total U.S. war production by value (35% of Lend-Lease exports).

The Nazis’ Bucharest radio was loudly urging the Russians to make a separate peace. Said the broadcaster in Russian: “Stalin is trying to prolong the war by promising his people help from the Allies. But the Russians have now seen that the Allies do not intend to give serious aid. The Anglo-American press openly repudiates all promises of further assistance; consequently the Russian people have grown angry, feeling they have been duped. Further extension of the war is nothing less than suicide for Russia.”

Stalin’s Problem. The record made it seem somewhat unnecessary to put elaborate constructions on Joseph Stalin’s remarks. Yet he had undoubtedly made them for more than one reason. Doubtless he counted on their effect among his own people. Last November he had told the Russians: “Another few months, another half year, one year maybe, and Hitlerite Germany must burst under the weight of her own crimes. . . . Nor can there be any doubt that the appearance of a second front on the continent of Europe—and undoubtedly this will appear in the near future—will essentially relieve the position of our armies.” Joseph Stalin, like other world leaders, sometimes needed to alibi his failures as a prophet.

Naturally, Joseph Stalin wanted all possible Allied help for Russian reasons as well as for United Nations reasons. He would certainly want to win before he was exhausted, so that he could be strong at the peace table. He would certainly not want to wear himself out against Germany while Britain and the U.S. took it easy and grew strong. Yet it must have occurred to him that many Britons and Americans might like to see him do just that.

Only Britain and the U.S. could disabuse him of such thoughts—by fighting the Nazis as hard as he was fighting them.