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'He's very honest but he's also smart as hell' - playing royal flush with Stalin


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AdamKadmonThreads: 38
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Edited by: AdamKadmon  Feb 21, 11, 12:42    #1
An interview with Walter LaFeber on Truman's Soviet Policy:

11 days after Truman became President, the Russian foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, on his way to San Francisco and the United Nations conference, stopped in Washington to talk with Truman about what was the key issue. And that was, how the Russians were dealing with Poland. They were imposing a communist government on Poland and Truman thought this was not the way that Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed to deal with Poland at Yalta four months before.

Before Truman meets with Molotov in the White House, he calls a meeting of his top advisors and those advisors split. Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, tells Truman that he must be very, very careful in dealing with Molotov on the Polish issue because Poland is the key issue of Russian security; it's been Poland through which the Germans have attacked Russia twice in 30 years and so he warns Truman that this is an extremely sensitive issue. But there are other advisors at the table. Averill Harriman, who's just returned as US Ambassador to Moscow, tells Truman that the Soviets have not been upholding the agreements that they had made with Roosevelt and that this is the time to draw the line.

.... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/filmmore/it_1.html

Mr GrunwaldThreads: 34
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 Feb 22, 11, 02:48    #2
Interessting, so if Roosevelt wasn't clear enough on the Poland issue and if he was just a bit more sick so he wouldn't be able to meet stalin and sign any papers yet... Truman could had pushed more about Poland! Hmmm interessting
isthatu2Threads: 13
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 Feb 22, 11, 02:59    #3
I dont think anyone can really shift any "blame" onto truman . I always feel a bit sorry for this guy, comes from almost literally no where and is suddenly in the shoes of a popular dead president and stuck leading the "Arsenal of the free world" in a two fron war.....By his time in Power what had happened in Poland was pretty much a fait acompli,any pointless vetoing or failing to recognise governments would have,at best had no effect,at worst just rubbed up the soviets even more.
AdamKadmonThreads: 38
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Apr 23, 10
Edited by: AdamKadmon  Feb 22, 11, 08:50    #4
Mr Grunwald:
Truman could had pushed more about Poland!


If you were to read every word of this interview you would have found the answer. I think that the key issue here is the atomic bomb that changed completely the situation and rules of game politicians played. What particularly strikes me, as a complete amateur looking for some moral considerations in politics, is that they simply did not allow any sentiments to interfere with their job, so, for example, Truman was calling Stalin 'very honest man'. I do not think that having so many advisors he did not know how brutal the guy was.

The other thing is morality of war. The opinion about usefulness of the atomic bomb: "If this thing works like we think it will, we'll certainly have the hammer on those boys." - Truman's words. Or the following exchange of words between Stimson and Truman after bombing raids on Japanese cities, in one of them died 80,000 men: "I'm not sure if we can find a city that's still standing enough to show just exactly what the bomb can do." And Truman, according to Stimson's diary, laughed and said, yes, he understood. There wasn't a whole lot left standing in Japan by May and June of 1945.

In the interview you can find some interesting information about "royal straight flush", as Stimson called the game with Stalin: the last minute decision not to make the atomic bomb operational, that is putting it into the hands of general MacArthur, more than ready to use it.

Those are just only glimpses into the ways the politics seems to work. No sentiments as it seems, no naivety, just cool, dispassionate estimation of potential gains and losses according to the rules of the game is played.

I just read the book Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization by Thomas David Schoonover and Walter LaFeber. For me more than pessimistic look at politics, but it may be sobering for those who watch news every day waiting for some kind of salvation.
isthatu2Threads: 13
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Joined: Apr 3, 08
 Feb 22, 11, 13:46    #5
AdamKadmon:
the last minute decision not to make the atomic bomb operational, that is putting it into the hands of general MacArthur, more than ready to use it.

But surely this is in regards to Macs' wanting to nuke China during the early stages of the Korean policing action......that being the early 50s Stalin already had (or was darn close to having) his own atomic weapons?



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