Published on July 18, 2019.
Based on Watanabe Sōki’s book America’s Defeat in World War II, this article discusses the roles of Soviet spies Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss, who deeply penetrated the Roosevelt administration.
Through the Hull Note, economic sanctions against Japan, the Yalta secret agreement, and the Morgenthau Plan, it points out the decisive importance of Soviet operations in the history of World War II.

July 18, 2019.
While wartime Japan and Germany were advertised as totalitarian, militaristic “devil countries,” the communist Soviet Union was explained to the people as a democratic nation.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Soviet spies involved in the Great War.
Watanabe.
As I wrote in detail in my book published this June, America’s Defeat in World War II (Bunshun Shinsho), Roosevelt and Churchill advertised wartime Japan and Germany as totalitarian, militaristic “devil countries,” while explaining the communist Soviet Union to their people as a democratic nation.
But after the Allied Powers defeated the “two devils,” Japan and Germany, what happened?
Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had any clear plan whatsoever.
Churchill’s only thought regarding the Second World War was simply, “I want to maintain the glorious British Empire.”
And in Roosevelt’s mind there was nothing more than a fairy-tale-like delusion that “the world order would be reconstructed by the four policemen, the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union.”
He dreamed that when a new collective-security organization by the four policemen, the United Nations, was created, Roosevelt himself would become its head.
At the time of the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt’s health had already deteriorated to the point that death was near, but Stalin judged that Roosevelt, at the final stage of his life, would make any compromise for the sake of establishing the United Nations.
As the basis for this, two Soviet spies, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss, had penetrated the center of the administration and grasped almost exactly what Roosevelt was thinking.
Of the two, White is also known as the man who wrote the draft of the “Hull Note,” which was effectively the final ultimatum to Japan.
However, his influence is still underestimated in some respects.
White was the right-hand man of Morgenthau, who held the post of Secretary of the Treasury for as long as eleven years in the Roosevelt administration.
Morgenthau’s path to advancement began with the fact that his own residence was near Roosevelt’s home.
The reason he was treated as the effective number two in the Roosevelt administration was, in short, that he was the president’s “favorite.”
However, Morgenthau’s specialty was agriculture, and because he was not well versed in economics as a whole, he often relied on White.
In this way, the opinions of White, who was extremely capable as an economist, were conveyed to the Roosevelt administration through Morgenthau and came to be reflected in policy.
White, who was merely an official of the Treasury Department, extended his influence even into the diplomatic field outside his jurisdiction and came to write the draft of the “Hull Note.”
In other words, White, who was a Soviet spy, was able to act as the effective number three in many scenes of the policy-planning process of the Roosevelt administration.
Previously, I was astonished when I read a passage saying that because White was a Treasury Department man, there was no way he could interfere in diplomacy, which was a State Department matter, and therefore he could not have been an important figure.
Unless one knows the informal human relationships inside the White House at the time, including likes and dislikes, there is a danger of misreading the causality of history.
Nakanishi.
One must not apply the common sense of Japan’s Kasumigaseki, where vertical administrative divisions are thorough, to Anglo-Saxon administration, especially to America at the time of the Great War.
This is one of the serious errors into which Japanese Showa historians always fall, but even now there is no sign that they will correct it, bitter laugh.
So, conceding a hundred steps and explaining it in a way even they can understand, one must not forget that the series of economic sanctions against Japan beginning with the notification of the termination of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and the United States in July 1939 was carried out under the leadership of the U.S. Treasury Department.
Furthermore, the subsequent embargo on scrap iron, the freezing of assets in the United States, and the total oil embargo were also implemented one after another on the initiative of that department.
And all of these were carried out under the command of Morgenthau, who used White heavily as his close aide.
The notification of termination of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and the United States in the summer of 1939, which became the starting point of sanctions against Japan, drove Japan toward the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940, and the subsequent step-by-step strengthening of sanctions against Japan drove Japan toward war with the United States.
This was exactly as Roosevelt had desired, but in this, the role of White, who wielded power as Morgenthau’s confidant, was extremely large.
Watanabe.
Furthermore, it was actually White who formulated the Morgenthau Plan, which decided to turn Germany, the enemy of the Soviet Union, into an agricultural nation.
During the Truman administration, he was suspected of being a Soviet spy and was summoned as a closed witness by HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, on August 14, 1948.
Two days later, White died mysteriously.
It is thought that he committed suicide out of pessimism over being indicted for treason, but no certainty has been obtained.
Nakanishi.
White was the drafter of the “Hull Note,” which drove Japan into war with the United States, namely the Pearl Harbor attack, and moreover, if Alger Hiss, the other major spy, was deeply involved in the Yalta secret agreement that encouraged the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan, then we must say that the existence of these two Soviet spies had decisive meaning in the history of the Second World War.
I think that Showa historians who deliberately try to reject this as a “conspiracy view of history” are merely trying to defend their own old theories.
In that sense as well, I think Professor Watanabe’s America’s Defeat in World War II, which approaches the activities of many Soviet spies inside the Roosevelt administration, including Hiss and White, is a book that I very much want many Japanese people to read.
This article continues.