[Verginius Rufus]

There are some indications that in the interval between Yalta and his death, FDR was becoming upset with Stalin over his violation of his promises...but whether he would have taken the course Truman took is debatable. In the early years of the Cold War there was a school of thought that it was all Truman's fault, that if FDR had lived our relationship with Stalin would have been fine. That element supported Henry Wallace in 1948.

That's the measure of the difference between the Democratic Party of the late 1940s and the Democrats of today--in 1948 Wallace got 1 million votes to Truman's 24 million, but the Wallaceites are the overwhelming majority of today's Democrats. Joe Lieberman is a relic of the old Truman type...and he was defeated in his party's primary in 2006.

[MplsSteve]

Over the years, I’ve read a lot about Henry A Wallace.

Though I do not like his politics, I found him to be an extremely deep and intellectual person. In short, I find him fascinating.

But like many intellectuals of his type, he displayed an incredibly naivete not only towards the Soviets but also to Democrat politics. His inability to win the 1944 nomination for VP was in part due to his lack of political skills.

Getting back to the Soviets, he was in many ways an apologist for them. His 1948 campaign (for President) reflected that.

In 1950, he broke with the Progressive Party over his support for US intervention in Korea. In 1952, he wrote an article for Look magazine called “Where I Was Wrong”. He admitted that he was duped and uninformed about Stalin’s excesses. He later considered himself to be an anti-Communist.