America---The Modern Romans

 

 

Part I.

 

Introduction

 

The Roman Empire was in the habit of making allies of their enemies toward the end of their Empire, until eventually their “allies” turned on them and conquered them.  During World War II The United States went through a war-time re-armament and re-industrialization process unseen in modern history, and essentially became an empire, reaching superpower status by 1950.  But the United States, starting from the end of World War II and onward throughout the Cold War, emulated the Roman Empire, in turning their two primary enemies during World War II, Japan and Germany, into allies. Also while doing this, United States foolishly turned one of their most significant allies into an enemy, the one military ally they had that was the principle driving force for the defeat of Nazi Germany, and this was the Soviet Union.  Under their new American President, Harry S. Truman, the United States achieved superpower status as a thermo-nuclear military force in the world.  But Harry S. Truman foolishly used this growing nuclear arsenal to belligerently threaten the battered, shattered and just recovering Soviet Union, and thus initiating a 45 year long Cold War and nuclear arms race with the Russians.  The Cold War would flair up into two hot wars, Korea and Vietnam, costing almost 100,000 American lives and millions of Korean and Vietnamese lives.  Also as a nuclear superpower, this modern ‘Roman’ empire of America, through the C.I.A. and covert military operations, supported, fostered and forced Nazi-type right-wing governments on most of the Central and South American countries from the end of World War II onward through the 1990s, and this, just so these poor helpless nations would remain friendly to American big business, using ‘the threat of communism’ as a flimsy excuse for this crime against humanity.  In the late 400s AD Rome’s enemies-turned-allies turned on them and conquered the Roman Empire.  Is the United States traveling down the same road?  Will the enemies we’ve created and even our enemies-turned-allies defeat us in some future economic and military confrontation?  Let’s look at some history and see, history that has been ignored for far, far too long.  “The problem after a war is with the victor, he thinks he has proven that war and violence pay.  Who will now teach him a lesson?” (A.J. Muste, 1941) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

 

“On The Eastern Front”

(or “Our Empire, Built On Whose Shoulders?”)

 

While the United States was ramping up their industrial machine to full-tilt arms-manufacturing at the beginning of World War II, who was taking up the slack in Europe against Hitler’s Nazi Germany?  England had just held out gloriously in the defense of their island homeland during the Battle of Britain, but beyond that, wasn’t doing much initially.  Then right after the Battle of Britain, in June of 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.  So the full brunt of Hitler’s military might came upon the Soviet Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians, 300 crack German divisions stretching out along a 2,000 mile long front blasting their way into the Soviet Union, conquering up to 200 miles a day.  The Soviet Union then, over the next one and a half years, blunted those 300 crack German divisions to a standstill, ultimately turning back the tide of the Nazi invasion at Stalingrad in an incredible 162-day-long battle.  It was the Soviet Union, through the shed blood, sweat and tears of 5 million soldiers and 10 million civilian (partisans) slain in battle, which bought the Western Allies of Britain and America the time they needed to gear up for this war and get on their feet militarily.  Let’s take a hard look at the facts “on the eastern front,” for we’d all be speaking German if it hadn’t been for this immense Soviet-Russian sacrifice.  Essentially “our future American empire” was built on the shoulders of the military sacrifices and success of the Soviet Union, while in all honesty we played a supernumery part, under the foundation of the Red Army’s hard-won successes.  That may be a tough truth-pill for Americans to swallow, but it’s the unvarnished historical truth that serious historians have come to realize.

 

First let’s look at a misconception we’ve been fed in anti-Soviet propagandized history books.  We’ve been taught that Stalin and thus the Soviet Union was initially friendly to Hitler and Nazi Germany.  For one, Stalin had contributed troops and arms to Spain to fight against the fascist Franco regime during the 1930s.  Stalin was no fool, he knew what was coming.  He had already run the proposal by England and France to form a military alliance, but they had both refused him.  So, to protect the Soviet Union (which had a history of being attacked by Germany, going back to the Teutonic Knights (see Alexander Nevsky), he was forced to “make a non-aggression pact with the Devil.”  This was the infamous Rapolo Treaty signed with von Ribbentrop.  We get this from Nikita Sergeyvich Khrushchev’s memoirs “KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS”, p. 128, par. 2-3, p. 129, par. 2-3, p. 130, par. 1, “The English and French representatives who came to Moscow to talk with Voroshilov [about forming a military alliance] didn’t really want to join forces with us against Germany at all.  Our discussions with them were fruitless.  We knew that they weren’t serious about an alliance with us and that their real goal was to incite Hitler against us.  We were just as glad to see them leave.  That’s how the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, as it was called in the West, came into being.  We knew perfectly well that Hitler was trying to trick us with the treaty.  I heard with my own ears how Stalin said “Of course it’s all a game to see who can fool whom.  I know what Hitler’s up to.  He thinks he’s outsmarted me, but actually it’s I who have tricked him!  Stalin told Voroshilov, Beria, myself, and some other members of the Politburo that because of this treaty the war would pass us by for a while longer.  We would be able to stay neutral and save our strength…I believe that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 was historically inevitable, given the circumstances of the time, and that in the final analysis it was profitable for the Soviet Union.  It was like a gambit in chess:  if we hadn’t made that move, the war should have started earlier, much to our disadvantage.  As it was, we were given a respite.  I think the vast majority of the Party considered the signing of the treaty tactically wise on our part, even though nobody could say so publicly…It was very hard for us---as Communists, as antifascists, as people unalterably opposed to the philosophical and political position of the fascists---to accept the idea of joining forces with Germany.  It was difficult enough for us to accept this paradox ourselves…For their part, the Germans too were trying as a maneuver to win time.  Their idea was to divide and conquer the nations which had united against Germany in World War I and which might unite against Germany again. Hitler wanted to deal with his adversaries one at a time.  He was convinced that Germany had been defeated in World War I because she had tried to fight on two fronts at once.  The treaty he signed with us was his way of trying to limit the coming war to one front.  All the while the English and French and the whole bourgeois press were trying to sic Hitler on the Soviet Union, trumpeting “Russia is nothing but a colossus with feet of clay!”  England and France would have loved to have stood by and watched Germany and the Soviet Union go at each other and finish each other off.  The English and French rubbed their hands in delight at the idea of lying low while Hitler’s rampage took its toll on our blood, our territory, and our wealth.” [emphasis mine]  We’ll see this exact same attitude being trumpeted in a speech by Senator Harry S. Truman on the U.S. Senate floor in 1941.  The time Stalin bought the Soviet Union was from August 1939 to June 21^st, 1941, almost two years to prepare for the Nazi-German onslaught.  Two weeks later Hitler initiated World War II by invading Poland, taking half of Poland, leaving the other half to the Russians.  This was September of 1939.  Early in the Spring of 1940 Hitler initiated the Battle of Britain, attempting to gain air superiority over English soil, preparatory to an invasion of England.  The British R.A.F. held their own in a stunning and heroic air battle, successfully fighting off the Luftwaffe and driving them out of British air space.  From that spring, summer and fall of 1940 the German Luftwaffe was never able to gain mastery over English soil and air space.  Nine months later, in June of 1941, 300 crack German divisions (3 million soldiers), stretching out along a 2,000 mile front from the Arctic to the Black Sea, were conquering up to 200 miles a day across Soviet-Russian soil.  The Germans burned and razed to the ground approximately 200 cities and 9,000 villages, with their ‘Death-squads’ following behind the regular German Waffen SS army, killing men, women and children as they went.  Against all odds, and with initially very little help coming from their new allies (who had finally decided to make an alliance with Stalin and the Soviet Union), the Soviet Red Army prevailed.  Falling back repeatedly, until the German army approached Moscow, Stalin learned from a very heroic Soviet spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, that Japan was going to conquer southeast into the oil rich Dutch East Indies instead of conquering up past Manchuria into Siberia.  Stalin could now free up General Georgi Zhukov’s 40 Siberian Divisions to come rescue Moscow.  Zhukov, coming on with a vengeance, turned the tide of battle.  German losses that winter of 1941 alone amounted to about 400,000.  According to war reporter Leland Stowe in his book “They Shall Not Sleep” (published 1944) ‘In the first two years of war against the Germans 5 million Soviet soldiers and 10 million Russian civilians would die, stopping 200 crack German divisions cold in their tracks, culminating in the heroic Battle of Stalingrad, and then would start to push the Germans back toward Germany.’  [read “They Shall Not Sleep” by Leland Stowe, 1944, available as a used book at amazon.com.  Watch also “Enemy At The Gates” about Vasily Zeitzev and Tonya Ternova, two crack Russian snipers in the midst of the Battle of Stalingrad, gives you a good audio-visual of the action.] 

 

In September of 1941 Stalin had pleaded in vain with the British to send 25 to 30 divisions to the Motherland.  He also once again pressed Roosevelt to open up a 2^nd Front against the Nazi forces in Western Europe.  (I dare say, he had better luck with Roosevelt than Churchill.)  Roosevelt announced publicly in May of 1942 that he would open up this 2^nd Front, and told General Marshal to order General Eisenhower to draw up plans for the invasion of Europe, to be implemented no later than the spring of 1943.  Stalin, understandably, was elated, but Winston Churchill balked at such an invasion, supposedly fearing a bloodbath.  Churchill somehow talked Roosevelt into having Eisenhower and Patton invade North Africa (both Generals Marshal and Eisenhower thought this was a waste of time), instead of going for the German jugular.  Churchill, an “empire man,” was more concerned with keeping British sea-lanes open to their eastern and far eastern empire than relieving Soviet suffering and bringing a speedier end to Nazi Germany.  The Italian Campaign up through Italy was a slow, costly and bloody series of battles against well-entrenched German forces.  Marshall and Eisenhower both thought it was a waste of time and lives.  So the 2^nd Front against French shores was ultimately delayed by one and a half years.  Leland Stowe, a U.S. war reporter assigned to the Eastern Front on the Russian side of the lines, was constantly being asked by the desperate Russians, from peasant-partisan men and women, young children to old women, and by generals alike “When will the United States start a 2^nd Front in France against Germany?”  This was not just a plea coming from Stalin, but from the entire Soviet Russian populace as well, as attested to by Leland Stowe in his book.  He didn’t know how to answer them, and it made him feel real uneasy, as he could see and witness daily their single-handed struggle and slow but steady victory over the Nazi war machine, accomplished with almost no Allied assistance except a trickle of planes, jeeps, trucks and some canned food.  His constant implication throughout his account of the Russian Front was that had it not been for this heroic sacrifice on the part of the Soviet Russians, we in the United States would be speaking German.  In Leningrad the Russians lost 1 million citizen-soldiers during the siege, and Leningrad was never taken. 

 

But Stalin was not waiting around for or relying on Allied promises, and proceeded to move the entire Soviet war industry---all of it---across the Urals, creating over 2,000 new factories, where an entire workforce made up mostly of women and children worked 12 to 18 hour days.  Within two years, by 1943, the Soviet Union was out-producing all other nations on the European side of the Atlantic, including Germany.  Leland Stowe said within the first one and a half years of war, from June 1941 to the beginning of 1943, 10 million Russian civilians, partisans included, and 5 million regular soldiers had died fighting the Germans to a standstill.  Other estimates after the war were 4 to 8 million Ukrainian Soviets, 2 to 2.5 Belorussian Soviets, with 200 cities and 9,000 villages burned to the ground, not to mention the Soviet Russian losses, the final tally for the war coming to 27 million dead for the whole Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany. 

 

“Stalingrad”

 

In spite of huge losses, the Red Army and Soviet civilian partisans could not be defeated.  One option lay open to the German army, to capture the Soviet oil fields at Baku, southeast of Stalingrad.  Stalingrad lay right smack in the way.  Get the oil fields at Baku and Stalin’s Red Army would grind to a halt without the needed gasoline, diesel fuel, oil, and bunker fuel an army, air force and navy run on.  So the German 6th Army under General Friedrich von Paulus drove south toward the oil rich area of Baku.  The Red Army under Marshal Zhukov had to stop the Germans at all costs.  The loss of Baku would force the Soviet surrender.  Stalingrad was the one city which geographically stood right in the way of Baku.  In the winter of 1942, as the United States was in the beginning stages of ramping up war-production, the German army met its match.  In what could be the single greatest battle in World War II, the Soviets lost more men (and women) than the British or Americans did during the entire war, losing an estimated 500,000 (half million) killed.  Considering General Paulus’ reinforced 6^th Army came at Stalingrad with 30 divisions (300,000 men), the Luftwaffe and thousands of tanks, the 6^th German Army lost 200,000 of their best troops.  At the time of General Paulus’ surrender in January 1943, only 91,000 were left alive to surrender, of whom only 9,000 returned to Germany ten years after the end of the war.  In the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history, the Germans lost 70,000 dead, the Red Army twice that much.  Now the Germans were in the midst of a full-scale retreat. 

 

Through the years of 1944 to 1945 the Red Army continued to advance through Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, loosing another 1 million soldiers in the process.  As the Red Army was now fighting its way toward Berlin through these German-occupied eastern European countries, the Allies finally opened up their long-delayed 2^nd Front on Normandy’s beaches, with just twelve months remaining in the war.  The Soviet Red Army had done the lion’s share of the fighting and absorbed the lion’s share of death and destruction in beating back the Germans, first to a standstill, and then into full retreat, all while the Allies essentially fought on the sidelines in North Africa and up through Italy.  But it must be remembered that the United States was truly fighting a two-front war, one against Nazi Germany in the west, and the Empire of Japan in the east.  Within the first two years of the United States being in the war, while the Soviet Union was ‘buying the U.S. some precious time’ by taking on the majority of the German war machine, the U.S. was able to build itself into a top-of-the-line, first-rate naval and military power.  From 1943 onward we were producing 100,000 military aircraft a year (as compared to Japan’s total of 70,000 aircraft produced for the whole war), and by 1944 the U.S. had 100 Essex class heavy aircraft carriers, to the mere 25 Japan produced during the whole war.  Our 352 Fleet Submarines sank about two-thirds of Japan’s merchant ships and over 20 percent of Japan’s warships, Japan was being strangled. 

 

An Interesting Statistic

 

Here’s an interesting statistic, the Red Army at any one time was fighting more than 200 German divisions.  In sharp contrast to that, the Americans and British fighting in the Mediterranean never faced more than 10 German divisions at any time.  As Oliver Stone said in his history series, “Though the myth lives on that the United States won World War II, serious historians agree it was the Soviet Union and its entire society, including its brutal dictator Josef Stalin, through shear desperation and inordinately stoic heroism, forged the narrative of World War II, the defeat of the monster German war machine.”  [“Oliver Stone’s: THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES”]  As the end of 1942 approached, the United States was ramping up their war production, as the industrial might of the United States came on line.  About two million tons of supplies finally started flowing through to the Soviets from lend-lease, including 400,000 trucks, 52,000 jeeps, 7,000 tanks, 15,000 aircraft (our Aircobras, which we felt were underpowered, so we gave them to the Russians), guns, and 8,000 railway cars.  According to Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs KHRUYSHCHEV REMEMBERS, where he honestly gives credit where credit is due, “Unfortunately, our [the Soviet Union’s] historical works about World War II have perpetrated an illusion.  They have been written out of a false sense of pride and our of a fear to tell the truth about out Allies’ contribution---all because of Stalin himself held an incorrect, unrealistic position.  He knew the truth, but he admitted it only to himself in the toilet. He considered it too shameful and humiliating for our country to admit publicly.  But telling the truth needn’t have been a humiliation.  Recognizing the merits of our partners in the war need not have diminished our own merits…But I think we should have openly admitted what happened and not tried to cover up.  We would have been helping our country and our cause by not trying to hide our mistakes, by revealing them for the people to see, no matter how painful it might have been…We shouldn’t boast that we vanquished the Germans all by ourselves and that the Allies moved in only for the kill.  That’s why I give my own view of the Allies’ contribution, and I hope that my view will be confirmed by the research of historians who investigate objectively the circumstances which developed between 1941 and 1945.  The English helped up tenaciously and at great peril to themselves.  They shipped cargo to Murmansk and suffered huge losses.  German submarines lurked all along the way.  Germany had invaded Norway and moved right next door to Murmansk.

          “As Mikoyan confirmed after this trip to America, we received military equipment, ships, and many supplies from the Americans, all of which greatly aided us in waging the war.  After Stalin’s death, it seemed that all our artillery was mounted on American equipment…By this I wanted to only stress how many of our cars and trucks we had received from the Americans.  Just imagine how we would have advanced from Stalingrad to Berlin without them!  Our losses would have been colossal because we would have had no maneuverability…We also received food products in great quantities.  I can’t give you the figures because they’ve never been published.  They’re all locked away in Mikoyan’s memory.  There were many jokes going around in the army, some of them off-colored, about American Spam; it tasted good nonetheless.  Without Spam we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.  We had lost our most fertile lands---the Ukraine and the northern Caucasus.”  [KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS, pp.224-226, selected parts]  The United States was getting on its feet industrially and rapidly ramping up the size and training of its military.  But the question still begs to be asked, on whose shoulders was our re-armament and re-militarization made possible?  All our successes, it can be fairly stated, were accomplished on the shoulders of the Red Army and Soviet citizens, men, women and children, 27 million of whom ultimately died to enable our victory on the Western Front. 

 

Who Was Henry Wallace?

 

Henry A. Wallace, during the first two terms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, during the Great Depression, was Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture.  Along with Roosevelt, he had shown the financially destitute working and middle class citizens, as well as all those who had fallen on hard times during the Depression the kinder side of government.  Theirs was a government not just of the people, but for the people.  As Secretary of Agriculture Wallace had first introduced Food Stamps for all those in need, and free school lunches for all school children in public schools, both programs of which continue to this day.  Henry Wallace was selected to be Roosevelt’s Vice President and became so when Roosevelt was re-elected for his 3^rd term.  In May of 1942 Wallace gave his famous “Common Man” speech, where he said, “Some have spoken of the American Century.  I say the century on which we are entering which will come out of this war, can be and must be the Century of the Common Man.  There must be neither military nor economic imperialism.  The march of freedom of the past 150 years has been a great revolution, there were the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Latin American revolutions, the Russian Revolution; each spoke for the common man.  Some went to excess, but people groped their way to the light.”  Wallace detested the British Empire, for what Leland Stowe as a war reporter had observed, the poverty-stricken conditions which he had witnessed which British colonialism had fostered in almost all the British colonial nations he had traveled through, particularly Burma, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  Roosevelt had observed the same things in the British colony of Gambia in western Africa, and was disgusted by what he saw.  Leland Stowe observed in his book that “The colonial nations of the British Empire were like rotten fruit, ready to fall off the vine.”  Wallace said in another speech, “The future must bring equal wages for equal work, regardless of sex or race.”  In early 1943 President Roosevelt sent his Vice President, Henry Wallace, known for his love for the common man and anti-colonial attitudes, to the Latin American nations on a ‘Good Will Tour.’  Their love for him was overwhelming, and in the process he was able to recruit twelve nations to declare war on Germany.  This would give the United States a valuable number of air-bases and radio-intercept towers which enabled the successful defeat of Germany’s U-boat forces (radio-triangulation towers and submarine patrol aircraft).  And all this because of who Henry Wallace was, and what he represented to the ordinary citizens of those nations.  Henry Wallace was one of the few, along with Roosevelt, but he spoke out more publicly on it, who said that the two government-economic systems, that of democratic capitalism and socialist communism, ought to be allowed co-exist and function side-by-side, in friendly competition, each learning from the other and helping each other.  They both felt, given enough time, coupled to this friendly co-existence, Soviet-communism would moderate out and democratize, taking on and working into its system elements of capitalism.  They were so right, and visionary in this belief.  Nikita Khrushchev and John Fitzgerald Kennedy also felt this way.  But Roosevelt wouldn’t live to bring his visions to the world, and Wallace wouldn’t be allowed to.  We’ll get to John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev a little bit later. 

 

Future Roosevelt-Wallace Foreign Policy That Would Never Be

 

Roosevelt, just like Henry Wallace, hated the colonial system which the British and French had imposed on the poorer nations of the world (which we would later emulate through C.I.A. controlled “client states” in the Latin American nations and elsewhere).  Roosevelt spoke about setting up a post-war trusteeship system which would help prepare these colonies for independence.  Roosevelt even told Cordell Hull, his Secretary of State in 1944 that “France has had the country [of Vietnam], 30 million inhabitants, for nearly 100 years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.”  So remember, this is one of two key, critical elements of the Roosevelt/Wallace Presidential foreign policy which Roosevelt wanted to establish for the post-war United States and in the world, an end to colonialism.  Another foreign policy direction the Roosevelt/Wallace Presidency desired to establish in the post-war world was the peaceful coexistence of the United States with the Soviet Union.  A critical part of this included the post-war economic assistance---which Roosevelt promised---to help the Soviets rebuild their shattered nation.  A reparations commission was set up based on an estimated 20 billion dollars, with half going to the Soviet Union.  Serious students of Soviet history know that Josef Stalin was not interested in pursuing or promoting International Communism (as Leon Trotsky was).  He was very interested, instead, in guaranteeing the Soviet Union had secure borders, which included making sure nations on their borders had governments friendly with the Soviet Union (they didn’t have to be communist).  Considering what the Soviet Union had just endured from Nazi Germany, Poland alone, at first, then many of the other eastern European nations, needed to have their governments friendly to the Soviet Union.  Germany had invaded Russia twice in the 20^th century across the flat plains of Poland, like an arrow headed straight for Moscow, and Napoleon had done the same in the early 1800s, not to mention what the Teutonic Knights had done earlier.  Stalin had even remarked, amazingly, “that Communism fit Poland like a saddle fit a cow.”  Thus, these concerns and promises were made at the Yalta Conference, between Roosevelt and Stalin.  Roosevelt had also made it clear that he intended to give the Soviet Union (based upon their security concerns) “considerable latitude in the shaping of the future of eastern Europe and the Baltic states,” his only request being, “that Stalin only implement changes judiciously and not offend world opinion.”  About Yalta Roosevelt wrote, “We made great progress…I may say that I got along fine with Marshal Stalin, and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people, very well indeed.”  Roosevelt also got Stalin to commit to have the Soviet Union with its huge Red Army invade Japan three months after the close of the European war, in return “for territorial and economic inducements.”  Thus, these concerns and promises were made at the Yalta Conference, between Roosevelt and Stalin.  Roosevelt had said to Churchill in his last cable to him, “I would minimize the Soviet problem as much as possible, because these problems in one form or another seems to arise every day, and most of them straighten out.”  Two months later, after 12 years in office, this great man died of a massive stroke.  Why would Henry Wallace not be able to follow through with the visions of the Roosevelt/Wallace Presidency? 

 

 

 

 

Who Was Harry Truman?

 

Missouri Senator Harry Truman declared on the floor of the Senate in 1941, “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.”  That just gives us a foretaste of who Harry Truman was, a hint as to how totally different in outlook and his humanity or lack thereof, he was from Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace. 

 

The 1944 Democratic National Convention

 

In 1944 Franklin Roosevelt was up for re-election for his unprecedented 4^th term in office as President.  He was chosen for the Democratic Ticket hands down.  He was in San Francisco, and not at the convention.  He asked people to vote for Wallace as his running mate, but maybe due to his failing health, he failed to press home his support for Wallace.  A Gallup Pole on opening day showed Wallace for Vice President with 65 percent of the vote.  Jimmy Byrnes had 3 percent of the vote, and Truman had come in 8^th with 2 percent.  Yet within another day, led by the corrupt Party bosses (Edwin Pauley, Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Robert Hannegan, Ed Flynn, Bronx party boss, Ed Kelly, mayor of Chicago, and the list goes on), they not only choose Truman, a political light-weight with no real experience, but then through some of the most underhanded, smoky backroom political wheeling and dealing, defeated Wallace, and successfully put Senator Harry Truman on the Democratic Ticket as Roosevelt’s running mate for his 4^th term election.  On the second day of balloting the final tally was:  Truman 1031 votes; Wallace 105 votes.  This totally overlooked footnote in history for the average history student, the Democratic National Convention of 1944, would be the hinge upon which the future history of the world would turn on, what I term as “a hinge of history.”  In early spring of 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and on the 15^th of April 1945 Henry Wallace and Harry Truman, the new President of the United States met at Union Station in Washington D.C. to meet Roosevelt’s funeral train.  The direction history was going in was about to change radically, as was the foreign policy of the United States of America.

 

Continue to Chapter 2