Anti-communist USA during WW2

[BigBlueBox]

So, if the United States had a rabidly anti-communist AND anti-fascist president instead of FDR, and this president wanted the Germans and Soviets bleed each other dry while finishing off the surviving country, what kind of decisions would the USA make, and would the other Allied countries go along with it? Also, are there any plausible Presidential candidates who would take this stance? Assume America joins WW2 due to Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour just like OTL.

 

[Anaxagoras]

So, if the United States had a rabidly anti-communist AND anti-fascist president instead of FDR, and this president wanted the Germans and Soviets bleed each other dry while finishing off the surviving country, what kind of decisions would the USA make, and would the other Allied countries go along with it? Also, are there any plausible Presidential candidates who would take this stance? Assume America joins WW2 due to Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour just like OTL.

Harry Truman actually suggested helping the Soviets when the Germans were winning and helping the Germans when the Soviets were winning, thereby bleeding both sides white. Most likely he was being facetious.

 

[David T]

Harry Truman famously commented a couple of days after the start of Barbarossa that "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstance..." https://books.google.com/books?id=TwXTCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA492

But note those often-neglected final words I have emphasized! With Hitler seeming terrifyingly close to victory in the East, there is no way any president genuinely determined to prevent a Nazi victory could *not* have favored helping Stalin in 1941. (And US policymakers continued to fear a Nazi victory in the East--or at the very least a Nazi-Soviet compromise peace there--long after it seems in retrospect implausible.)

 

[thorr97]

As usual, it depends on your POD.

FDR was very pro-Soviet and his administration was filled with other pro-Soviet individuals - no few of which were in the service of or were being used by the Soviet Union itself.

For any such anti-Communist and anti-Fascist stance to be practicable, it'd have to either not be FDR at all or to have a significantly changed FDR to start with. That, in turn, would've meant for some vast policy differences at the Federal level during the 30s. So, this ATL would be - out of necessity - much more broadly different than just having an anti-Communist FDR being the only thing different.

Perhaps still have the same FDR winning in '32 and starting off as in OTL. But then he fully learns of the Holodomor and then learns of the Soviet's "Gulag" death camps. This causes him to profoundly reshape his view of the Soviet Union and of Communism in general. Couple this with Hoover's - as in J. Edgar - informing FDR of the massive Soviet penetration of his administration and of the Federal government in general, and this leads to some substantial changes. Changes which soon take on a life of their own as each individual anti-Communist action and policy incites further anti-Communist actions and policies.

Thus the Dies Committee gets formed - but then Dies gets revealed as having those Soviet connections and is forced to resign. His replacement is thus compelled to be zealous in his uncovering any "Reds in the Fed" so as not to suffer the same fate. That, in turn, escalates along those lines. The "Red Scare" arrives early as the Soviet's "Terror" becomes more widely known and accepted as factual in the West. This, due to the media's coverage being less forgiving due to the overall political climate having changed.

Thus, when the "Non-Aggression Pact" is revealed, the revulsion against the Soviets is pretty much universal. The Winter War against Finland cements this.

And when Barbarossa kicks off the Soviet efforts at depicting themselves as the victim are met with contempt by the West in general and especially so by the FDR administration.

Hoover, as in Herbert, was very public about how the US should just let the Nazis and the Soviets "bleed themselves white - they deserve each other!" in OTL.

In this ATL, I could see the US happily selling the Soviets all that they could pay for - in gold. No Lend-Lease though. And certainly no US military assistance.

A debatable point would be how much - and how effective - American pressure on the UK to isolate the USSR would be.

 

[thezerech]

Perhaps the Wallies declare war on the Soviet Union when they invade Poland? Then after Pearl the U.S joins allies and declares war against the Soviet Union.

 

[Uruk]

Would there even be a Barbarossa if the Wallies declare war on the Soviets in 39?

 

[David T]

FDR was very pro-Soviet.

Not in 1940, he wasn't. Addressing (and getting booed by) the American Youth Congress: " The Soviet Union, as everybody who has the courage to face the fact knows, is run by a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world. It has allied itself with another dictatorship, and it has invaded a neighbor so infinitesimally small that it could do no conceivable possible harm to the Soviet Union, a neighbor which seeks only to live at peace as a democracy, and a liberal, forward-looking democracy at that." http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15918 For what Communists thought of FDR during this period, consult the Almanac Singers' "Songs for John Doe," especially this one:

Of course things changed after June 22, 1941, but even then, as Robert Dallek notes, while trying to maintain good relations with the USSR was one side of FDR's Soviet policy, there was another side:

"At the same time, however, he acted to limit the expansion of Russian power in 1945 by refusing to share the secret of the atomic bomb, agreeing to station American troops in southern Germany, endorsing Churchill's arrangements for the Balkans, working for the acquisition of American air and naval bases in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and encouraging the illusion of China as a Great Power with an eye to using her as a political counterweight to the USSR. Mindful that any emphasis on this kind of *Realpolitik* might weaken American public resolve to play an enduring role in world affairs, Roosevelt made these actions the hidden side of his diplomacy. Hence, in the closing days of his life, when he spoke of becoming ''tougher' [with Russia] than has heretofore appeared advantageous to the war effort,' he was not suddenly departing from his conciliatory policy but rather giving emphasis to what had been there all along. Moreover, had he lived, Roosevelt would probably have moved more quickly than Truman to confront the Russians. His greater prestige and reputation as an advocate of Soviet-American friendship would have made it easier for him than for Truman to muster public support for a hard line."
https://books.google.com/books?id=xTKvo-cXv3EC&pg=PA534

See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/FM8LwD_ixaw/io_L64p1TY8J

 

[thorr97]

David,

There's his public pronouncements and then there's his actions, there's the people he staffed his administration with, and there's how he "handled" Stalin. Churchill, for one, was rather horrified at how eager FDR was to accommodate "Uncle Joe" in all things.

In any event, turning FDR into so vehemently anti-Soviet a president such that he'd refuse the USSR Lend-Lease and simply let the Nazis and the Communists kill each other off would be a pretty significant change from TTL's FDR.

 

[David T]

In any event, turning FDR into so vehemently anti-Soviet a president such that he'd refuse the USSR Lend-Lease and simply let the Nazis and the Communists kill each other off would be a pretty significant change from TTL's FDR.

I agree but my point is that in 1941, any seriously anti-Nazi president, regardless of his views on Communism, would have to consider Hitler (who after all controlled all of Europe from the Atlantic almost to the gates of Moscow) a much greater menace than Stalin. As I noted, even Truman's much-quoted statement contained the significant words (not always mentioned when this quote from Truman is used) "although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstance..."

 

[wtw]

I think we could see the war turn bad especially as the allies land in Normandy Hitler agreeing to terms with Stalin and both sides fighting the Western Allies before trying to finish each other off. It would make the Second World war longer and bloodier and pretty much gaurentee the US nukes Berlin and Moscow in addition to Japan.

 

[thorr97]

David,

So, it'd be a balancing act of doing just enough to keep the Soviet's in the war so long as they were killing as many Nazis as they could - but no more than that.

Thus it'd strictly be a matter of selling the Soviets whatever they could afford - in hard currency - that did not interfere with the US and Allied war effort otherwise.

War material would be plentiful until Pearl. After that it'd be America's needs first followed by the UK's and then the Soviet needs.