I
hope you have sent Ron Radosh and Conrad Black letters of appreciation for
their critiques of you book. They could not have done more to discredit
your opponents if they had intentionally set out to make them look foolish. A
total cynic would suspect that you paid them. Rather than dealing with
detailed criticism of your work they relied on vitriol. Black calls your
book a "farrago of lies." He calls you and your supporters,
"idiots: pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots," who suffer from
"myth-making and jejune dementedness." I disagree with Black.
If I call him the "afterbirth of a flatulent pig," would this make my
arguments more convincing?
Both
Ronald Radosh and Conrad Black refer to you as a "right-wing loopy."
Radosh condemns your, "yellow journalism conspiracy theories," your
"truculent recklessness that gives anti-communism a bad name" and your
"unhinged theories." Your judgment is "bizarre on its
face, but also unwarranted by the evidence." Your’s is a, "shallow
and erroneous interpretation." He claims your, "counterfactual
speculations are not regarded as realistic possibilities by any reputable
historian of the era," and your "book perpetuates the dangerous one
dimensional thinking of the Wisconsin Senator." You are
"McCarthy on steroids." This is all very convincing.
Radosh neglected to make the most devastating charge: "West is a poopoo
head." Pardon the sarcasm, but Radosh's accusations are not worthy
of an intelligent discussion of complex issues.
This criticism of you sounds eerily familiar. Similar things were said of
Senator McCarthy, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. You are
condemned for believing in conspiracy theories. What was the Communist
infiltration of the U.S. government if not a conspiracy? Radosh admits
that he has no disagreement with you over whether the Roosevelt administration
was infiltrated or whether Soviet dupes were influential in affecting
administration policy. The disagreement lies in your opinion of the
extent of this influence. Your critics claim that you exaggerate the
extent of Communist influence on U.S. policy. However, your critics
attempt to minimize this influence.
Progressives have come to the defense of the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Harry
Dexter White and numerous others. Radosh claims your allegation that,
"Hopkins was an actual Soviet agent . . . is, in fact, not true."
Black called this an "unfounded new flourish." How do they know
this? Loopy right-wingers have accused many administration officials of
being Communists. Many "experts" disagreed and questioned the
sanity of such claims. When the evidence becomes overwhelming progressives
quietly let the matter drop and go to the defense of the next
"progressive." Leftists are experts at deception. Even
obvious Soviet atrocities like the Ukrainian famine and the Katyn Massacre were
denied for years by "progressives." Someone approaching this
subject without bias must conclude that the "loopy right-wingers"
have more credibility than the "experts."
I
have read extensively on the subjects dealt with in your book, yet several
items you deal with were entirely new to me. I had previously accepted the
progressive myth that the policy of "unconditional surrender" had
spontaneously popped out of FDR's head during the Casablanca Conference. As you
point out this policy was the product of a committee which included several
influential Soviet agents. One might be tempted to ask, "What
difference at this point does it make?" Well, although most Communists
were removed from government in the early 50's their progressive comrades
remained. Their offspring have captured the commanding heights of our society.
They have almost total control of the media, academia and the government
bureaucracy. From these commanding heights they are transforming our society.
In order to do this they must conceal the part played by progressives in the
massive crimes they were a party to.
People
come to the subject of Communist infiltration of the Roosevelt administration
with a bias. I come to the subject with an inclination to be suspicious
of the Roosevelt administration. After reading your book I realized that
I had not been suspicious enough. I knew American Communists had a
decisive influence on American policy from the research I had done on my own
book, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.
I have not examined Lend-Lease and the second front issues to any great extent,
but I am thoroughly familiar with the policy devised for postwar Europe.
Here there is little doubt the Joseph Stalin was the "puppetmaster of
American war policy." Your claim that, “World War II could have been
ended years earlier had Communists working for Moscow not dominated
Washington," is certainly plausible. This would not have required an
entente with Hitler’s army against Stalin, only a sincere message that the U.S.
government did not intend to turn Germany into a potato patch.
Radosh cites S. M.
Plokhy to show that the Soviets treated American POWs fairly well. How
familiar is Radosh with this subject? One of the first acts of the Red
Army upon entering Germany was to butcher 50 French and Belgian POWs at
Nemmersdorf. The Soviets believed that all POWs were traitors.
Stalin's own son, a prisoner of the Germans, may have committed suicide as a
result of this Soviet policy. Soviet treatment of U.S, POWs is more
complex than can be dismissed with the statement, "the Soviets treated
American POWs fairly well." I suggest he read Nigel Cawthorne's
Iron Cage.
One
subject you did not cover was the progressives involvement in the modern
slave trade. Perhaps you avoided this subject because it is obviously an absurd
accusation that would have only increased the intensity of the progressive
attack on your work. Absurd or not, according to Secretary of State, James
Byrnes in his inappropriately entitled Frankly Speaking, "Forced
labor camps are a symbol of Hitler's regime that we should eliminate as rapidly
as possible." This would be fertile ground for an aspiring historian
wanting to make a name for himself by exposing how evil "we"
were.
I
have only one criticism of your book, one that I believe you would totally
agree with: your use of the word "we." The
current genre of historiography places a good deal of emphasis on
"our" crimes. Amerika is responsible for all kinds of crimes,
real and imagined. You say that "we" were accomplices in Soviet
crimes. When discussing U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union during the
Ukrainian famine you claim "we" became "a passive accomplice to
Stalin in the Ukraine." When discussing the forced repatriation of
Soviet citizens towards the end of the war, you state, "We became
accessories to a Soviet atrocity." You claim that in our dealings
with the Soviets, "We had things to hide, too." Well "we"
had and have nothing to hide. Once this is made clear the conundrum is solved.
You point out that, "officialdom was enraged not by the danger posed by
Hiss, but by Chambers for testifying to the danger." Progressives are more
outraged by Joseph McCarthy than by Joseph Stalin. You quote Vladimir Bukovsky
who explains "we now understand why the West was so against putting the
communist system on trial. There was ideological collaboration between
left-wing parties in the West and Soviet Union." As you have written,
"The forces of concealment, East and West, had a common enemy in the
forces of exposure, East and West." You are a member of the "forces
of exposure" and as such not a "we."
My
book could be considered an anti-American book because of its criticism of
American policy. It is not. The crimes detailed in the book are not
America's crimes. They are the crimes of a group of
"progressives" who did not have America's interests at heart.
Finally, I would like to thank you for referencing my book and describing it as
"devastating." I will send you a copy of the second edition
when it appears in the fall.
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