The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners by Diana West Read Free Book Online Page B

although the war was
not yet over.”
    In fact, the war, at least for
American and British armies in late March 1945, was largely a matter of being
restrained or diverted so the Red Army could take up its positions in Berlin,
Prague and Vienna. Except for that gross oversight, Ronald Radosh has actually
written a factual statement about my book.
    I notice, however, he doesn’t share
my abhorrence at the failure of FDR and other US officials to do more to save
thousands of American GIs, former POWs of Nazi Germany, who, according to the
document trail presented in American
Betrayal , appear to have been liberated from Nazi POW camps only to be
imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag.
    A word about “retaliatory measures.”
The phrase is Averill Harriman’s, whom Radosh singles out for praise elsewhere
in his review, but does not acknowledge in this instance. Rather than permit
the conventional military understanding of “retaliatory measures” stand, I will
turn to Harriman’s explanation on pp. 316-317 of American Betrayal :
    “On March
14, 1945, Harriman cabled the whole sorry story [of Soviet intransigence on POW
negotiations] to the secretary of state. He detailed Soviet obstruction of U.S.
evacuation and medical teams waiting to enter Soviet-captured territory; the
“serious hardships” of sick and wounded American GIs after years of war and
privation in German prison camps; and obvious Soviet evasions of
responsibility, as when Foreign Minister Molotov tried to blame the
(Soviet-controlled) Polish Provisional Government for the pure-Moscow snafu.
    “Then
Harriman suggested something novel and sensible. In the event that a follow-up
cable from Roosevelt failed to move Stalin, the administration should consider
`retaliatory measures.’ What a concept. Harriman suggested restricting the
movement of Soviet contact officers riffling through Displaced Persons camps in
the Western zone for hapless returnees (there were over 150 Soviets at
Eisenhower’s own headquarters where a special section of the staff was
designated to assist them; Americans and British had no equivalent setup with
the Red Army), or perhaps halting further consideration of `non-military’
Lend-Lease material (Stalin was angling for another big `loan’). Harriman also
recommended something even more effective—something for the ages.
Harriman tentatively suggested `that consideration be given to allowing our
prisoners of war en route to Naples to give stories to the newspapers of the
hardships they have been subjected to’ in the Soviet zone.
    “This was
what was lacking, and this was what was needed. At any point, exposure, loud
and clear, could have changed the U.S.-USSR dynamic in every way. It was the
reality that We, the People were almost always, always deprived of in order to
drive the Soviet conspiracy of Western silence forward, fueled by acquiescence,
accommodation, participation and incorporation of all the Big Lies going back
to the very first, the Terror Famine.
    “Dream
on.”
    Continuing his pattern of overlooking what is actually in the book ,
Radosh sums up by criticizing me again for something that isn’t in the book
– namely, Truman’s “line in the sand opposing further Soviet expansion”
that “led to a Cold War that ended with the collapse of the Communist system.”
    I “show no awareness” of the Truman
doctrine, Radosh writes; nor, he continues, do I confront this argument
“because it would be inexplicable if America was a Soviet occupied state run by
Stalin’s agents.”
    Having been through the excruciating
exercise of rebutting this “review,” I have come to see more clearly that
Radosh’s undue focus on criticizing me for elements that are not covered in my book – in this
case, Truman’s “line in the sand” – is a sustained if desperate act of
misdirection. We are all supposed to look at Truman’s “line in the sand,” Stalin’s “correlation of forces,” and the
“separate-peace” fear