Well, the thing was Russia had made a tremendous effort to get the
Western democracies . . . they had done that in the Spanish War, you
see, to get the democracies to fight Mussolini and Hitler in Spain. And
of course I was telling you yesterday about the Spanish War. There are
so many books written on the Spanish War. But the one by Ambassador
Claude Bowers. Claude Bowers put him down; he wrote the best book from
the American point of view. And he was the Ambassador to Spain and he
wrote a book on Spain. Nobody seems
Page 125 to have
heard of it ever but me, but it's a marvelous book. But he failed, you
see, they refused to unite. In other words, the Poles wouldn't make a
compact to let the Russians come through Poland to fight Germany if they
had a compact. And then the Western democracies you know were scared to
death of the Russians. They wouldn't join with them in Spain. And Hitler
and Mussolini sent in hundreds and thousands of men and planes and
defeated Spain. You've read all that in Hemingway even. Hemingway's book
gives you a pretty good picture of that. That was the beginning, you
see, of the war was in Spain where the Russians were fighting with the
Spaniards, loyalist Spaniards, you see, of the Republic of Spain against
Hitler and Mussolini. And of course the Spanish Officer Corps. But
really they could have beaten them, if it hadn't been for all the planes
and men that Hitler and Mussolini sent in. Well this was the beginning
of Fascism you see, the Fascist regime. Well anyway, after Litvinov was
defeated, I mean he never got the . . . You see the Russian line
changed. The Russians you know are not very gentle about shifting gears.
They threw out Litvinov and they put in Molotov. This was just before
the war. The European War broke out in 1939, didn't it? Well it was just
before the European War broke out, before they marched into Poland. I
think that was '39. I believe it was. In any case, the war did break
out. But before the war broke out the thing that split up things so was
this pact between Russia and Germany, which we went into yesterday. The
Soviet-Nazi pact, you see. Well this came as a great surprise, as you
can imagine, because the whole burden of Hitler's wild rampant, raving
speeches had been the menace of the Slavs, the Soviets and Communism.
You see here was the Jewish, Communist conspiracy magnified to 10,000
degrees. So when he and the Russians signed this pact, it was the
greatest shock. Like a bolt of lightning, a bolt out of the blue. Well,
I not being any foreign policy expert, I thought from the very beginning
the Russians were just buying some time. And I knew that . . . I thought
they were just buying some time to get the country defended better.
Page 126 And hoping that Germany would turn on France and
England. Well of course France and England were hoping Germany would
turn on Russia. You see when the Soviet-Nazi pact was signed, they'd
been having the united front—this was Litvinov's idea: it was for the
democracies and Russia and the socialist countries or Communist
countries to get together against Hitler. And you know it was the great
period of the united front of everybody tryng to live together. Well, we
keep going back to Litvinov's failure on the united front against
Hitler. And one of the reasons that that failed—which I hate to say—one
of the main reasons, which I hate to say was on account of the Catholic
Church and Jim Farley and Cardinal Spellman. They were just fanatically
opposed to Russia. And they didn't want to give any help to the Spanish
Republic at all. You know, they were very powerful and they rallied all
the Catholics. Then Jim Farley you know was still chairman of the party,
the Democratic Party. Now I hate to sound anti-Catholic because I think
the Catholic Church has moved forward a great deal, and it sounds like
some of my Presbyterian Scotch blood, as they say. But really the
Catholic Church did have a very powerful effect on the fact that we did
not help the Spanish Republic. You see all those young men went over and
were killed, like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Some of them are still
around—
[unclear] , he writes books. But
you see Decca's husband Esmond had been in the British Brigade that had
fought in Spain, so I was very involved in the Spanish War through the
young Romoley's. I had been sympathetic, but when they came to live with
us—she did and Esmond was there so much—I began to think of the Spanish
War as the great lost opportunity, which in a way it was, to defeat
fascism. Back at the White House. It broke up all the organizations, if
you know what I mean, the Hitler-Stalin pact. It broke up all kind of
organizations and people got had and wouldn't speak to each other and
refused to sit in the same room and so and so. You know in the poll tax
committee I would have to say now look we came here to see about getting
rid of the poll tax and if you're going to fight about the Stalin pact,
you're going to have to do it outside. Everywhere you sent it was dust
one big row, you know. Well, now I was on the side—I wasn't on any
actual side because I thought from the Russian standpoint, it was O.K.
for them to do it. My God,
Page 127 Hitler'd been saying
for twelve years he was going to come in there and smash them flat and
make them Slav slaves and serfs of the Germans, who were the superior
race. So from the Russian standpoint I thought it was fine. But from the
American standpoint for the American radicals and Communists and
liberals to all get worked up and say that America was an imperialist
country and you know you could make peace with Hitler. I thought they'd
all gone nuts. You know we used to have frightful fights too, even
people I was very devoted to and fond of, like Joe Gelders. I'd go into
froth or frenzy almost because to my mind it was just so crazy. You know
here Hitler was looming up there . . . And a lot of these people were
Jews. And for them to say that the Hitler-Stalin pact was a protection
against the imperialist West, and so on. Well, I was in thorough
disagreement with them in any case. And then of course Decca was living
there, too, and she thought they were all crazy. And she would froth at
the mouth and insult them in every way possible. Well I didn't do that,
so much. Because some of them I was very fond of.