Posted on 05/13/2005 8:13:39 AM PDT by Alex Marko
Thank you, President Bush, for correcting history and making a long overdue apology for one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tragic mistakes. Speaking in Latvia on May 7, Bush repudiated “the agreement at Yalta” by which powerful governments negotiated away the freedom of small nations.
Bush accurately blamed Yalta for “the captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe” and said it “will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.” This admission has been 50 years coming, and Bush’s words assure that “the legacy of Yalta was finally buried, once and for all.”
It was at Yalta, a filthy Russian port on the Black Sea, where our dying President in February 1945 made a secret agreement with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to surrender millions of people to Communist oppression behind what Churchill a year later labeled the Iron Curtain. No treaty was submitted to the U.S. Senate. Indeed, the record of what went on at Yalta was not released until 10 years later.
The Soviets demanded, and Roosevelt acquiesced, that the conference be held on Soviet soil (where they could plant listening devices). Churchill said, “If we had spent 10 years on research we could not have found a worse place in the world than Yalta....It is good for typhus and deadly lice which thrive in those parts.”
Roosevelt came home from Yalta and made a false report to Congress. Calling it “a personal report to you and to the people of the country,” he asserted, “This conference concerned itself only with the European war and with the political problems of Europe, and not with the Pacific war.”
Roosevelt’s Concessions
Here is a list of the European and Asian concessions he made to Stalin, which were confirmed by the Yalta documents released on March 16, 1955:
• Poland was turned over to the Soviet Union. The United States and Britain agreed to recognize Communist stooges as the new Polish government and to withdraw recognition from the legitimate anti-Communist government of Mikolajczyk.
• Germany was to be dismembered, its “national wealth” removed within two years, and several million Germans were to be sent to the Soviet Union to work as slave laborers. The record quotes Roosevelt as saying, “I hope Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German army.”
• All Russian citizens who had fled to Germany from communism were to be forcibly returned to the Soviet Union (i.e., the gulag).
• The Soviet Union was allowed to keep control of Outer Mongolia, which the Soviets had seized from China. The southern part of Sakhalin and all the adjacent islands were given outright to the Soviets.
• The Kurile Islands were given outright to the Soviets, and Port Arthur was given to the Soviets for use as a naval base. The Soviets were given effective control of the commercial port of Dairen, the Chinese-Eastern Railroad and the South-Manchurian Railroad, using the subterfuge of assuring that the Soviet Union’s “preeminent” interests would be “safeguarded.”
• The Soviet Union was given three votes in the United Nations, while all other nations got only one.
Roosevelt’s defenders have tried to claim that his concessions were necessary to bribe Stalin to enter the war against Japan. The Yalta papers prove that was false: Three-and-a-half months before the Yalta meeting, Ambassador Averell Harriman had relayed to Roosevelt a “full agreement from Stalin not only to participate in the Pacific war, but to enter the war with full effort.”
Russia wasn’t needed in the Pacific war, and letting Russia in simply opened the way for a Communist empire in China and North Korea. This set the stage for the Korean War in the 1950s and for the son of the original North Korean Communist dictator to threaten us with nuclear weapons today.
While Republicans and honest writers such as David Lawrence and John T. Flynn denounced the Yalta betrayal, the pro-Roosevelt media praised it. But truth finally overtakes lies and cover-ups. Bush set the record straight when he repudiated Yalta as part of the “unjust tradition” of Munich and the Hitler-Stalin pact that carved up Europe and left millions in oppression.
Gasp! Bush is criticizing Saint FDR, what will the Dems do now? Hate him even more?
FDR loved the commies. I can't decide who was worse, him or Carter.
That is not everything that the great liberal icon FDR sold us out on.
When the Germans surrendered, the Japanese army was virtually untouched, fresh, and formidable. In conventional terms we were looking at a horrendous and maybe even unwinable battle with the Japanese. In that context I think it is understandable that Roosevelt chose not to start a whole new war with the Russians.
That's nuthin!
Morris Sutter appologized yesterday to Nicky DelCorpo for beating the crap out of him when we were in high school.
I must admit I never looked at the Yalta agreement in the way Bush has portrayed it. Of course, I always looked at like ending the great war and bringing our heros home, bringing freedom, etc....but I see now that it really didn't bring freedom to all. We sacrificed some for peace. I don't blame FDR and Churchill, at the time, I am sure they thought it was the best thing to do. 20/20 and all that. Anyway, I am glad Pres. Bush has made me think of it in a new way. That is one of the things I love about Pres. Bush, he makes me think about some things in a different manner.
Thanks for posting the article.
Now how about an apology for all the other horrendous things FDR did?
I think the Russians were vulnerable after the fall of Berlin. We had the bomb. Patton could have pushed them back or even the threat to do so would have succeeded.
We're paying the price for the Yalta sell out and Jimmy Carter's sell out of the Shah.
Thank you....my error.
Have a great day!
LOL...now if only we can get George Lucas to apologize for them damned Ewoks, all will be well.
WOW! I never heard that before. I have only heard good things about FDR. Please know I attended a public school :)...but also, my great-grandparents had only good things to say about him...the last Democrat they voted for. However, I must say that I cannot disagree with you...I just never heard someone come right out and say it! But maybe it is time.... Have a great day and thanks for giving me something to think about!
We had the bomb
FDR. Reagan fixed all of Carters phuckups. We're still to this day trying to fix all of FDR's!
What would have happened if Henry Wallace[lover of Communist Russia] had still been vice-president when FDR died in 1945?
Yet liberal historians continue to defend it. Witness Arthur Schlesigner, Jr. on huffingpost.com
Yalta Delusions
The Yalta conference in February 1945 produced, according to President Bush, "one of the greatest wrongs of history." The Yalta agreements "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.…Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable."
The American president is under the delusion that tougher diplomacy might have preserved the freedom of small East European nations. He forgets the presence of the Red Army. No conceivable diplomacy could have saved Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation. And military action against the Soviet Union was inconceivable so long as the Pacific War was still going on. Our military planners, in order to reduce American casualties, counted on the Red Army to enter the war against Japan . At Yalta Stalin promised a firm date in August. And in February the atom bomb seemed a fantasy dreamed up by nuclear physicists.
As for Eastern Europe, Stalin "held all the cards" in the words of Charles E. Bohlen, the Russian expert. But FDR managed to extract an astonishing document – the Declaration on Liberated Europe, an eloquent affirmation of "the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live." Molotov warned Stalin against signing it, but he signed it anyway. It was a grave diplomatic blunder. In order to consolidate Soviet control, Stalin had to break the Yalta agreements – which therefore could not have been in his favor.
The Declaration stands as the refutation of the myth, given new currency by the president of the United States , that Yalta caused or ratified the division of Europe . It was the deployment of armies, not negotiating concessions, that caused the division of Europe.
Posted at 10:55 AM | permalink
Very, very good question...gives me even more to ponder. I guess I would hate to imagine what would have happened. The world would probably look alot different today.
20/20 agreed. Bush is right, Stalin got away with murder, but in 1945 the Russians had **five hundred divisions** and a head of steam. Even with atomic weapons it wouldn't have looked easy.
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