184 e lusive v ictories
Th e Anglo-American Allies could do nothing to alter the situation.
It became fashionable after the war, especially on the American right, to
accuse Roosevelt of being naive about Stalin (whom the president
referred to privately as “Uncle Joe”) and claim the Soviet dictator duped
the president about the future of Eastern Europe. But this presumes
the president, otherwise coldly calculating in his dealings with advisors
and political enemies alike, somehow lost his political sense when
dealing with Stalin. A more persuasive explanation exists: the president
recognized how little leverage the Anglo-Americans exercised over the
fate of Eastern Europe. Th ey did not for a moment consider using force
to expel the Red Army. Roosevelt still believed he could draw the
Soviet Union into his design for a postwar security order, and the
American military continued at the time of Yalta to believe Soviet par-
ticipation in the war against Japan would be vital in holding down
American casualties.
For these important objectives, acceptance of Soviet dominance in
Eastern Europe was a necessary price. Churchill knew it, too, despite
his later public statements and warnings about Soviet behavior. When
he tried to negotiate Soviet and British shares of influence in the
Balkans with Stalin in fall 1944, the prime minister recognized as a fait
accompli Soviet control over Poland and much of the region. (He was
much more concerned with the fate of the Mediterranean, and satisfi ed
when Stalin agreed to let the British dictate what happened in
Greece.) ^
Explaining the price for Soviet cooperation to the American
people was another matter, and here Roosevelt fl inched. When the
double-edged nature of liberation by the Red Army became visible in
mid-1944, especially at the time of the Warsaw Uprising, he faced a
closely contested reelection. Th e many Americans of Eastern Euro-
pean extraction, especially Polish Americans, watched with concern as
the Soviets established communist-led governments. To reassure
them, the president insisted he had secured promises from Stalin that
the future government of the liberated countries would be open to
representatives of all factions (a formula that sounded democratic
without actually being so). Reelection did not put a stop to the pos-
turing for American public opinion. At Yalta, Roosevelt cynically
admitted he wanted a fi g-leaf promise of a democratic process for