The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Soviet Spies Involved in the War
Watanabe
As I wrote in detail in my book The Second World War: America’s Defeat, published by Bungeishunju Shinsho in June of this year, Roosevelt and Churchill portrayed wartime Japan and Germany as totalitarian and militaristic “devil nations,” while presenting the communist Soviet Union to their citizens as a democratic country.
But what happened after the Allies defeated the “two devils”—Japan and Germany?
Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had a single clear plan.
Churchill had only one ambition in the Second World War: to preserve the glory of the British Empire.
Roosevelt, meanwhile, had nothing more than a fanciful delusion that the “Four Policemen”—the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union—would rebuild the world order.
He dreamed that, once a new collective security organization based on those Four Policemen—the United Nations—had been established, he himself would become its leader.
By the time of the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt’s health had already deteriorated to the point that he was close to death. Stalin calculated that Roosevelt, at the final stage of his life, would make any compromise necessary to establish the United Nations.
The basis for this calculation was that two Soviet spies, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss, had penetrated the heart of the administration and had gained an almost exact understanding of Roosevelt’s thinking.
Of the two, White is also known as the man who drafted the original version of the “Hull Note,” which was effectively an ultimatum to Japan.
Even now, however, his influence is still underestimated in some respects.
White was the right-hand man of Morgenthau, who served as Secretary of the Treasury for eleven years under the Roosevelt administration.
Morgenthau’s rise began with the fact that his home was near Roosevelt’s.
The reason he was valued as effectively the number two figure in the Roosevelt administration was, ultimately, that he was the president’s “favorite.”
Morgenthau’s specialty, however, was agriculture, and he was unfamiliar with economics in general, so he often relied on White.
Thus, the views of White, who was an exceptionally capable economist, were conveyed to the Roosevelt administration through Morgenthau and came to be reflected in its policies.
White, who was merely a Treasury official, exerted influence even in foreign affairs, a field outside his jurisdiction, and came to draft the original version of the Hull Note.
In other words, White, a Soviet spy, was able to act as the effective number three figure at many stages of the Roosevelt administration’s policymaking process.
I was once astonished to read an account arguing that because White belonged to the Treasury, he could not possibly have had a say in foreign affairs, which were a State Department matter—and therefore could not have been an important figure.
Unless one understands the informal personal relationships within the White House at the time, including people’s likes and dislikes, there is a danger of misreading the causes of historical events.
Nakanishi
We must not apply the conventions of Japan’s Kasumigaseki bureaucracy, where divisions between ministries are strictly maintained, to the way Anglo-Saxon governments operate—especially the American government during the war.
This is one of the serious mistakes that Japanese historians of the Shōwa era constantly fall into, yet there is still no sign that they intend to correct it. (Wry laugh.)
To make a generous concession and explain it in terms they can understand, we must not forget that the series of economic sanctions against Japan, beginning with the notification in July 1939 that the Japan–U.S. Treaty of Commerce and Navigation would be terminated, was led by the U.S. Treasury Department.
The subsequent embargo on scrap metal, the freezing of Japanese assets in the United States, the complete oil embargo, and other measures were also implemented one after another on the Treasury’s initiative.
All of these were carried out under the direction of Morgenthau, who placed great reliance on White as a close adviser.
The notification in the summer of 1939 terminating the Japan–U.S. Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, which marked the starting point of the sanctions against Japan, drove Japan toward the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940.
The subsequent, gradual tightening of sanctions against Japan then drove the country toward war with the United States.
This was exactly what Roosevelt wanted, and White, who wielded power as Morgenthau’s trusted aide, played an extremely important role in it.
Watanabe
Moreover, it was actually White who formulated the Morgenthau Plan, which called for Germany, the Soviet Union’s enemy, to be turned into an agricultural country.
During President Truman’s administration, he came under suspicion of being a Soviet spy and was questioned in a closed session by HUAC—the House Un-American Activities Committee—on August 14, 1948.
Two days later, White died under mysterious circumstances.
It appears that he took his own life in despair at the prospect of being prosecuted for treason, but this has not been established conclusively.
Nakanishi
White drafted the original version of the Hull Note, which drove Japan into war with the United States—the attack on Pearl Harbor.
And if another major spy, Alger Hiss, was deeply involved in the secret Yalta agreement that encouraged the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan, then we must say that the presence of these two Soviet spies had decisive significance in the history of the Second World War.
I believe that Shōwa-era historians who deliberately dismiss this as a “conspiracy view of history” are simply trying to defend their own established theories.
For that reason as well, I hope that many Japanese people will read Professor Watanabe’s The Second World War: America’s Defeat, which examines the activities of Hiss, White, and the many other Soviet spies within the Roosevelt administration.
To be continued.