(7 of 7)
But perhaps the most stubborn fact of all was distrust. If the western Allies distrusted the aims of Russia, few could blame Marshal Stalin if he distrusted the aims of the western Allies. Europe was seething with social unrest. As the result of the war, immense political and social dislocations had taken place. Time & again Russia had demonstrated that she had a program, the will and the means to deal with this unrest. But neither Britain nor the U.S. had one.
But until this mutual distrust could be allayed, a specter was haunting Europe—the specter of World War III.
What did Russia want? First & foremost she wanted peace. Peace, it had been widely proclaimed, Russia must have—to restore her depleted manpower, to build up her devastated factories and farms, to complete the socializing of her economy. To do this, she also wanted a $6,000,000,000 credit which she last week asked the U.S. Government to extend her on a long-term basis at low interest. What would she give in exchange? The graves of her heroic dead? If so, it was no deal, since bargains are made for the future, not for the past. A just and durable peace? If so, how did Russia propose to render it just?
Perhaps Marshal Stalin had decided that the most stubborn fact of all was his allies' inability to decide what to do in Europe. Perhaps he thought that if he simply waited while his armies drove on, all Europe, including Germany, might eventually drop into his lap because there was nowhere else for it to drop. But his allies, too, were driven by a historic force, for they knew that if they failed to persuade Joseph Stalin to a united peace, even their united military victory would be a defeat.
* The first: at Teheran, 1943.