AS LEAHY SAW IT
Neumann, William L.
As Leahy Saw It I WAS THERE, by William D. Leahy. Whittlesey House. 527 pp. $5. Reviewed by William L. Neumann ADMIRAL Leahy, Annapolis Class of '97, is an old-fashioned military man with...
...Truman's advisers convinced him that Molotov's visit should be the occasion for the beginning of a tougher attitude in dealing with the Russians, since European victory was practically assured...
...On the controversial questions involved in the Yalta agreements, Leahy gives a less detailed account than Stettinius...
...But Leahy thought it possible and apparently worth the risk to push the Russians to the point of giving the new Polish Government "an external appearance" of independence...
...power in postwar Europe and opposed any intervention in European affairs...
...The first sharp exchanges between Moscow and Washington took place in March 1945 as a result of Stalin's conviction that Britain and the United States were making secret arrangements for a separate peace with Germany...
...Unlike some of the other memoirs, I Was There gives no evidence of the heavy hand of a ghost writer and speaks with frankness in expressing the author's views...
...Stalin told Roosevelt that he only wanted the return of what Japan had taken from Russia...
...American violation of that promise would—as Leahy saw it in 1944—bring the United States into a third world war...
...Roosevelt was not immediately successful in dispelling Stalin's suspicions, but his final cable on this issue, and his last message to Moscow before his death, "tamed Stalin," according to Leahy...
...He joins the latter in blaming the Army for advising the President to make concessions in the Far East in order to win Soviet support in the war against Japan...
...This threat, made in April 1945, had Leahy's support but on highly questionable grounds...
...As President Roosevelt's Chief of Staff, Leahy attended all major conferences except that of Casablanca, but he has been for the most part scooped by other Roosevelt aides...
...Roosevelt was, he says, "the same kind of Christian that I tried to be...
...For the most part, Leahy accepted the limitations of U.S...
...Even after the announcement of the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, he remained skeptical of the killing power of this new weapon...
...Reviewed by William L. Neumann ADMIRAL Leahy, Annapolis Class of '97, is an old-fashioned military man with old-fashioned ideas about how wars should be fought...
...Coming after many other memoirs, Leahy's I Was There does not add a significant amount of new material for the period it covers, 1941-1945...
...Leahy personally did not believe that any Polish government could be kept free of Soviet domination, postwar Russian power being what it was...
...The conflict was reopened, however, when Molotov arrived in Washington 10 days after the President's death...
...According to I Was There...
...Roosevelt told Leahy that he thought that this was "a very reasonable suggestion...
...The United States, he said, should adhere to the promise of the Atlantic Charter "to respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live...
...When the facts of the devastation were undeniable, he decided that his country had adopted "an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages...
...Leahy argues that he had not been taught to make war in this fashion, and he doubts whether wars can be won by destroying women and children...
...Leahy's account of the beginning of the post-Yalta friction with Moscow carries some details which are not offered by other memoirs...
...This adjective suggests that the President had only a sketchy knowledge of the background of the Russian claims in the Far East as well as a very casual attitude toward the more direct interests of China...
...Harry Byrd, Leahy is unsparing in his praise of his wartime chief...
...Although he was a conservative in politics and a close friend of Sen...
...Truman made it clear to Molotov that he was ready to hold the San Francisco Conference and to form the United Nations without the Soviet Union if the Polish Government was not broadened to include substantial representation for non-Communist Poles...
...In the present situation, lacking effective international control, he believes that the United States must have "more and better atom bombs than any potential enemy...
...But his moral concern does not weaken his allegiance to traditional concepts of national security...
...The major question discussed by Truman and Molotov was the reorganization of the Communist-sponsored Polish Government which had been agreed upon at Yalta...
Vol. 14 • June 1950 • No. 6
