Dupes Page 18

  “This is not a war to wipe out the evils of Hitlerism and tyranny,” explained the American Peace Mobilization. “It is not a war to defend democracy. It is a war to line the pockets of corporate interests at the expense of the peoples of the World.”23 Pearl Harbor was still seven months away, but the closet comrades said that President Roosevelt was itching to “drag America more deeply into this war … to get us into total war against the will of the people.”

  Scaling the highest limits of hyperbole, the American Peace Mobilization concluded that mere U.S. aid to the barely surviving “British Empire” constituted a form of “total war” by “the American people”; it was Britain that was a “warring empire.” America needed to “get out and stay out of World War II”—Britain's war.

  By this point, Britain had been under siege from the Nazi Blitz for eight long months; it was not conducting total war but suffering under total war. How could American Communists possibly take this position? The answer, again, is because it was Stalin's position.

  More incredible is how anyone on the American Left could have taken the bait. The American Peace Mobilization's resolution was so in defiance of reality that it bore the obvious marks of Communist agitprop. Nonetheless, more than eighty influential Americans lined up to sign their names to the statement.

  The signers included the two vice chairmen of the American Peace Mobilization, both well-known Communist sympathizers: novelist Theodore Dreiser and Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Not surprisingly, the Communists on the list—that is, the formal CPUSA members—were identified on the endorsement sheet by their non-Communist affiliations. The Reds included Fred Field, Abe Flaxer, and Donald Henderson. (Henderson met often with Harold Ware, architect of the Ware cell that had penetrated FDR's AAA.)24 The list also included a host of unsuspecting dupes: union heads, journalists, pastors, professors (Columbia University, Howard University), and representatives of reputable organizations like the YMCA, most unaware of how they were being used by the Communists.25

  The single largest represented group among the signers was Christians from the mainline Protestant denominations, including the overall chairman of the American Peace Mobilization, the Reverend John B. Thompson, and, predictably, Episcopal bishop Walter Mitchell. Eighteen of the eighty signers—nearly 25 percent—carried the titled “Reverend” in front of their name.26

  There was even a rabbi on the list, Rabbi Moses Miller, chairman of the Jewish People's Committee. This is remarkable, especially given that after the Hitler-Stalin Pact the Communists had lost a lot of fellow travelers who were Jewish. Indeed, the Communist Party's Jewish-language newspaper, the Daily Morning Freiheit, whose building stood right aside the Daily Worker’s, lost half its readers after Stalin made his pact with Hitler.27 But its stalwart editor, M. J. Olgin, a Jewish immigrant and Columbia Ph.D., remained unwavering in his fanatical devotion to the Marxist vision.28

  Still, Rabbi Miller was there, plus a litany of liberal Christian friends, urging no “war” assistance against Hitler's bid to turn Europe into (as the führer put it) “a vast botanical garden in which Germans of pure Aryan extraction can breed.” In pursuing his “Final Solution,” Hitler would “liquidate” some six million Jews. For the Communists, however, all of that was secondary to Hitler's alliance with Stalin. It was Stalin first—always Stalin first.

  As for the dupes to the Communists, they desired “peace.” “Let our foreign policy wage peace!” was the battle cry of the group's formal declaration, issued April 5, 1941.

  But the meeting was not all formality. The (closet) party members threw a party in hopes of widening their net to catch more suckers. After Fred Field offered introductory remarks, the brethren joined the musical troupe the Almanacs in belting out a song called “Get Out and Stay Out of War,” which was followed by a keynote speech from the Reverend John B. Thompson. Then, after an intermission, more frivolity followed, before Dr. Max Yergan, the well-known Communist, spoke. After Yergan came more music to lighten the atmosphere, this time from the great African-American musical performer (and Communist) Paul Robeson. Representative Marcantonio finished the day, adding the legitimacy of a congressional endorsement. (See the event program, page 152.)

  The American Peace Mobilization cleverly promoted the musical acts as a way to attract outsiders—non-Communists who could join the cause. The nationally known Robeson was a big draw. So were the Almanacs, a group that featured (at differing times) famous singers/actors like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, and Pete Seeger, some of whom were Communists and others who left the party (or the movement) and became liberals.29 Almost every “folk ballad” by the Almanacs was a swipe at FDR and his “unjust war”—not just “Get Out and Stay Out of War” but also “Franklin, Oh Franklin.”

  In adjoining rooms, various breakout sessions were held, on topics ranging from “The Church and the War” to “Civil Rights in Wartime” to “The Negro People and the War.”

  Marching Orders from Moscow

  Most shocking regarding the April 5–6 rally in New York City, and sobering to observe today, are the related documents in the Comintern archives on CPUSA, which show how the organizers of the rally took marching orders directly from Moscow. At least two documents are worth noting.

  One was the previously mentioned memo by Tim Ryan/Eugene Dennis (April 2, 1941). That memo not only traced the Communist roots of the American Peace Mobilization, as noted, but also excitedly anticipated the coming April 5–6 celebration in New York City. In the final line of the memo, Ryan/Dennis concluded that the international Communist Party “must utilise the rich experiences of the masses in the anti-war movement and the developing economic and political struggles to educate the working class in the spirit of the class struggle, of proletarian internationalism, of socialism.”

  The other document is even more intimately tied to the rally. It is a one-page, handwritten document in the Comintern archives; specifically, it is the text of a secret radio message that Comintern head Georgi Dimitroff sent to CPUSA general secretary Earl Browder with instructions for the New York conference. Comrades “Marty and Ryan,” meaning Andre Marty and Tim Ryan/Eugene Dennis, who were the American representatives to the Comintern, had written an initial draft of a “directive” to CPUSA on the position the American Peace Mobilization should take at its April 5–6 rally. Dimitroff rewrote that draft.

  On March 29, 1941, Dimitroff gave his final, handwritten directive (see page 154) to the Comintern's radio operator to be sent in secret code to CPUSA.30 At CPUSA headquarters in New York City, party member Rudy Baker received the message, decoded it, and gave it to Earl Browder. Browder, in turn, passed it on to the proper party figures within the American Peace Mobilization.31

  The document began, “Regarding April sixth anti-war conference, we recommend.…” It then listed at least four principles that became part of the formal resolution the conference organizers adopted several days later; one of the principles ultimately adopted was the final point (point “VII”), which called for a “people's peace.” (See page 156.) Interestingly, Dimitroff seemed concerned about offending the Roosevelt administration, and showed greater tact than the bomb- throwing radicals in CPUSA. (Yes, the Soviet Communist was more responsible than American Communists.) In one line calling for a “struggle against the war-policy of administration,” Dimitroff crossed out the word “administration” and replaced it with “government.” It was a minor change, but it softened the tone, not so directly implicating FDR and his administration. The Comintern chief concluded by calling for the “establishment of friendly relations with great Soviet country of socialism.”32

  The White House Picket

  Aside from the April 5–6 rally in New York, many other American Peace Mobilization demonstrations took place in this period. On May 10 some 150 women from the mobilization's “women's division” paraded along the sidewalks near Broadway in New York City.

  The ladies easily suckered the New York Times. These “mothers,” as the Times c
alled them—again not once using the word “Communist” in the article—carried placards with phrases like “Keep our fleet home” and “Rockefeller's war is not our war. Our sons shall not die for Standard oil.”33 (Fifty years later, this statement would be echoed in the “No blood for oil” mantra popularized by the American Left during the first Persian Gulf War.)

  Around the same time the American Peace Mobilization began its “permanent peace vigil” outside the White House. This was a protest against Lend-Lease in particular but, really, the entirety of the Roosevelt defense program. Mobilization organizers Dr. Walter Scott Neff, a Cornell Ph.D. and professor, and Dr. Annette Rubenstein, principal of Robert Louis Stevenson School, had led the expedition from New York City to Washington. Once at the White House, the protesters made quite a scene, especially when a group of Army soldiers and Marines showed up to tear apart their placards and disrupt the line.34

  No matter, the comrades were committed. They continued their vigil nonstop, day after day, week after week. It was resoundingly successful in that it generated a lot of press attention—just what the comrades had wanted. How long would it last? The momentum kept rising. Press attention kept coming. The “peace vigil” was working wonderfully.

  But then something happened.

  The round-the-clock American Peace Mobilization picket of the White House had continued for well over a month, lasting an impressive 1,029 hours. But suddenly the “peace” marchers departed. Just like that, the protest was over. Why? What had happened?

  “The line was disbanded,” reported the New York Times. Endeavoring to explain why, the Gray Lady sought out a reliable source for its faithful readers: Fred Field. The unbreakable picket was suddenly disbanded, explained the Times, because, “according to Frederick Field,” the American Peace Mobilization had “fulfilled” its “overwhelming” mission of bringing a message of “peace” to the president.35 And now it was time to go home.

  Curiously, though, the marchers departed while singing “You Gotta Get Tough, You Gotta Get Tough.”36

  “Gotta Get Tough”? That did not sound like the conventional peace tune. It sounded like a summons to swords rather than ploughshares. What was going on?

  When the American Peace Mobilization suddenly ended its protest outside the White House, it was June 22, 1941, Moscow time.37

  American People's Mobilization

  The venerable New York Times failed to make yet another connection for its readers: the peace contingent finally broke up the moment that news hit of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which occurred in the very early morning hours of June 22, 1941.38

  Thus this “peace movement” took another sharp turn. Suddenly it was no longer in favor of peace. These American doves were instantly transformed into hawks. That was because their true country—Stalin's Russia—was now under siege.

  A telling testimony came from Henry Winston of the Young Communist League. “When the news of the attack came over the air,” said a breathless Winston in a July 1941 report to the league, “many of our young comrades were coming home tired and ready for a good sleep. Yet, these comrades … sat up all night eagerly waiting until the headquarters would be open, ready for activity in the fight to crush Hitlerism.”39

  Now that “Hitler's barbaric hordes attacked the land of socialism” (in Winston's words), the peace-professing comrades were eager “to help win the people in support of the Soviet Union and Britain in the fight to smash and wipe Hitlerism from the face of the earth.” After loudly denouncing American “war hysteria” and condemning Britain as a “warring empire,” the American Communist movement quite abruptly started calling for immediate American entrance into a war against Nazi Germany and full-blown American aid to the Brits.

  Groups like the Young Communist League pledged to work day and night “to win the mass of youth to a broad front against Hitler.” Comrade Winston addressed an emergency two-day “enlarged meeting” of the National Committee of the Young Communist League, USA. He and his friends outlined an all-out drive to organize a broad coalition “among the masses”—nationally, “state and city-wide,” inside buildings, “open-air,” wherever necessary to defend the Soviet Motherland. “The new situation,” explained Winston, “tremendously increases our responsibility and calls for the greatest amount of heroism and courage on the part of each and every one of our members. It calls for a readiness to sacrifice even to the point of death.”40

  The young American comrades pledged their lives and sacred honor to their country—that is, to the USSR.

  The American Peace Mobilization faced one problem: making this 180-degree turn overnight would be so blatant that even the most gullible of its dupes might notice that the organization was nothing more than a Stalinist front. The Communists surely figured that no one, not even the normally reliable Religious Left, would fail to connect these giant red dots.

  Nonetheless, they gave it a shot.

  The group changed its name to the American People's Mobilization, adopted a pro-war policy, and called for complete U.S. assistance not only to Britain but even to Chiang Kai-shek's China—and of course to the USSR. In short, the new “APM” reversed all of its former positions the moment that Hitler betrayed Stalin.

  Mercifully, some of the more battle-hardened liberals—that is, chastened observers of Communist schemes who had been suckered before—were not falling for this one.

  Civil-rights leaders like NAACP acting secretary Roy Wilkins, who was still seething over how the Communists had hijacked the Scottsboro case, lambasted them for this flip-flop. Most appalling to Wilkins was the fact that in dropping their antiwar pose, the Communists had abandoned their pursuit of civil rights for blacks, too. “They abandoned the fight for Negro rights on the ground that such a campaign would ‘interfere with the war effort,’” Wilkins later wrote. “As soon as Russia was attacked by Germany they dropped the Negro question and concentrated all effort in support of the war in order to help the Soviet Union. During the war years the disciples of the extreme Left [Communists] sounded very much like the worst of the Negro-hating southerners.”41

  The Communists’ earlier support for civil rights was exposed as a gambit simply to bring in new recruits and advance the larger cause. That cause—the Soviet Motherland—was always the first priority. Now civil rights was no longer as useful to them; the war effort would be a much better cause for recruitment and advancement of their global purposes.

  About-Face

  Roy Wilkins was exactly right. Few about-faces were so revealing and so despicable. Of course, it has largely been forgotten. For the American Left, it was not the acronym “APM” that would acquire infamy, but “HUAC”—its favored label for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The reprobates were not the pro-Communists but the anti-Communists, even as the latter exposed the former.

  Even at the time, the American People's Mobilization did not suffer as might be expected from such a transparent flip-flop. The Communist manipulators would find a whole new round of dupes.

  They would have to wait a bit, however. The problem in the summer of 1941 was that many regular Americans were not ready for war, since their country—the United States—had not been attacked. For American Communists, however, their country—the USSR—had been attacked. They were gung ho.

  The Communists would gain traction in their new pro-war campaign six months later—after December 7, 1941.

  DUPING FDR:

  “UNCLE JOE” AND “BUDDIES”

  Fate's day of infamy arrived December 7, 1941. Once Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, who, along with the Nazis, were part of a real fascist-imperialist Axis—not the Rooseveltian concoction stirred up by American Communists—Uncle Sam was instantly thrust into the war. This meant that America found itself formally, albeit uncomfortably, on the same side as the totalitarian USSR.

  CPUSA was thrilled. It was free to be pro-American. It could be pro-FDR. This was a political liberation in many ways. Perhaps most importantl
y, any Soviet sympathizers, or even Soviet spies, working for the Roosevelt administration could openly endorse a pro-Moscow line from within their department or agency, or within the White House. That may have been the case for Harry Hopkins.

  The “Buddies”

  Well before Pearl Harbor, Harry Hopkins was singing the praises of Joseph Stalin and the need for an alliance and even friendship with the dictator. Not long after the June 22, 1941, Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, done in violent defiance of the Hitler-Stalin Pact that had launched the dual German-Soviet invasion of Poland and started World War II, Hopkins eagerly headed to Moscow. Unlike Senator Harry Truman, who responded to the Nazi assault on Russia by stating, “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,”1 Hopkins had no trouble picking sides.

  On July 31, 1941, Hopkins met with General Secretary Stalin. He was quite taken by the dictator. Conversing with the tyrant was like “talking to a perfectly coordinated machine,” he said.2 He immediately cabled FDR with his impression of the “intelligent” Stalin.3