They say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but did that apply to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Soviet counterpart, Joseph Stalin, during the Second World War?Despite their ideological differences, the United States and the USSR joined ranks on January 1, 1942, attacked by Japan and Nazi Germany, respectively. Their leaders would meet for the first time almost two years later at the 1943 Tehran conference.Don is joined by Phillips Payson O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrews. Phillips is the author of 'The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler – How War Made Them, And How They Made War'.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.
What is the unlikely alliance between FDR and Stalin?
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The dynamic plays out quite interestingly at Tehran, because they end up actually as housemates, don't they? I don't mean that in the casual sense, of course, but rather than staying elsewhere at the U.S. Embassy and so forth, they share a domicile during this period. I guess that would have been a practical matter as well, because you've got a man with polio.
FDR is dealing with his condition all the way, and so it's difficult for him to move around.
Well, that wasn't the plan, though. The plan was that Roosevelt was going to stay in the US consulate and Stalin was going to stay in the Soviet Union. The Soviets had a very big compound. But what happens is Stalin, I hope, wants to bring Roosevelt into his orbit.
And what happens is when Roosevelt gets there, the Soviets say, well, we have reports that there's going to be an assassination attempt on you as you travel between the two places. So why don't you come stay with us? And Roosevelt, I think, is quite skeptical of the reality. I think they understand that this might be a ploy by Stalin.
But to show how trusting he is and how much he wants the relationship to work, he agrees. And he could only bring two people with him. So he could only bring his two closest advisors, or Harry Hopkins and Bill Leahy. They're the only ones allowed to live with Roosevelt.
And by the way, this is an extraordinary moment, because the President of the United States is basically a prisoner of the Soviet Union. Because he's living in a Soviet compound, which is patrolled overwhelmingly by Soviet soldiers, who could have taken the President hostage at any time, had they wanted to.
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