How the War Between America and Russia Started

Eric Zuesse

The war between Russia and America started on 25 July 1945 and was initiated by President Truman’s decision on that date, to accept the advices from both his personal hero Eisenhower, and also UK’s Winston Churchill, that if the U.S. Government wouldn’t ultimately take over the entire world, then the Soviet Union would. I documented this in my 20 July 2024 “Why NATO Cannot Be (& Never Was) a DEFENSIVE Alliance”, where all of the primary evidences proving it can be clicked-through-to via that article's links. As is clear from that evidence: Truman on that date reversed his predecessor FDR’s anti-imperialistic plan for the post-WW2 era, and set this country onto Truman’s plan for the entire world to consist of the U.S. Government and its colonies, especially to include the largest country, Russia.

However, even before that date, America’s aristocracy, its super-rich, who donate more than 50% of the money that fuels political campaigns in the U.S., were determined to reverse FDR’s plan to end imperialism and to instead remake America into the first-ever all-encompassing world empire; and the present article will document how they achieved this turnabout in the U.S. Government’s objective, and so created the world that we live in today.

First, here is the background from which the appointment for Truman to become FDR’s 1944 Vice Presidential running-mate can be accurately understood. To start with, I shall quote a passage from Jeff Greenfield’s terrific 10 July 2016 “The Year the Veepstakes Really Mattered” in Politico:

As the 1944 convention neared, there was no real doubt about who the Democratic presidential nominee would be. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had faced serious opposition in 1940 when he broke the “no third term” tradition that began with George Washington, but in the midst of a global war, there was little appetite for ousting the commander in chief. Besides, the Republicans had nominated 42-year old New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who brought to the campaign his reputation as a liberal reformer and had picked popular Ohio Governor John Bricker as his running mate. The GOP ticket was formidable; FDR, the Democratic powers thought, was the only candidate who could stop them.

That much, they agreed on. There was, however, deep division over who Roosevelt should choose as his running mate — and for a reason that far transcended the normal political arguments: FDR was dying.

It was a conviction held by a wide variety of people who had come in contact with Roosevelt — none of which was revealed to the public.

In choosing his running mate, they were picking the next president. And the public had no idea that this was so.

In March 1944, Dr. Howard Bruenn examined the president at the request of FDR’s physician. Bruenn wrote that Roosevelt was “a drawn, gray, and exhausted individual, who became short of breath on the very slightest exertion. The examination of his eyes revealed some changes due to arteriosclerosis and hypertension.” Other medical experts agreed. In early July, a few weeks before the national convention, a team of doctors studied Roosevelt. One of those doctors, Frank Lahey, wrote a memo to FDR’s primary-care physician, stating flatly: “I did not believe that if Mr. Roosevelt were elected president again, he had the physical capacity to complete a term. … It was my opinion that over the four years of another term with its burdens, he would again have heart failure and be unable to complete it.”

Democratic political insiders privately shared that view. When Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Hannegan and his wife visited the White House in June 1944, they were so appalled by the president’s health that the couple spent anguished hours in conversation about it. As the convention drew closer, the Democratic power brokers knew what the public did not: in selecting Roosevelt’s running mate, they were almost certainly choosing the next president of the United States.

The Vice Presidency No One Should Want

Why, though, was there any choice to be made? Four years earlier, Henry Wallace had been put on the ticket at the insistence of FDR himself; indeed, Roosevelt was so adamant about running with his then-secretary of agriculture that when serious opposition arose — he was too committed to civil rights, too liberal for more conservative Democrats, too “enthusiastic” about spiritualism — the only way Roosevelt got him on the ticket was by publicly threatening that he’d otherwise decline the presidential nomination.

By 1944, Vice President Wallace was a hero to both organized labor and the increasingly powerful African-American communities in America’s biggest cities. But among the Democratic elite, opposition to him was even more fervent than it had been in 1940.

Wallace’s full-throated denunciations of segregation inflamed opposition throughout the South, angering a vital bloc of the Democratic coalition. His leftist impulses led him to answer TIME-LIFE publisher Henry Luce’s 1941 essay about “the American century” with a speech in which Wallace proclaimed it “the century of the common man,” arguing that “no nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. … there must be neither military nor economic imperialism.” For Democratic insiders like Hannegan, DNC Treasurer Ed Pauley, Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly and others, Wallace was simply too undisciplined and unreliable to occupy the Oval Office.

At one point, the clearest alternative to Wallace was James Byrnes, who’d served in the House, Senate, and on the Supreme Court before being plucked by Roosevelt to head the Office of War Stabilization — in effect making him, in Roosevelt’s own words, “assistant president.”

But to put it mildly, there were problems with Byrnes. In his role as “assistant president,” he’d angered labor with edicts about wage increases. He was a Catholic who’d changed his faith when he married an Episcopalian, and party insiders worried that his conversion from Catholicism would offend white ethnics in cities throughout the North. And Byrnes’ views on race were fully reflective of his South Carolina roots: He’d once opposed federal anti-lynching laws on the grounds that lynching was an effective means to “hold in check the Negro in the South.”

The politically very active California major oil company investor Edwin Pauley, who was the Secretary and Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee in 1944 (and who subsequently helped fund the Republican Ronald Reagan into the White House), was the central figure in this matter. Here is what was going on behind the scenes, as taken from “Edwin W. Pauley Oral History Interview”, by J.R. Fuchs, at the Truman Library:

[1]

FUCHS: Mr. Pauley, when did you first become interested in seeing someone other than Mr. Wallace nominated for Vice President in 1944?

PAULEY: Well, I became concerned about Henry Wallace because he was the Vice President. It seemed to me that he was making too many pro-Soviet statements, and his actions were such that I did not think that he would become, either by election or succession, a proper President of the United States. I gave this a great deal of thought; I had considered it

[2]

from my own intellectual experience in Government and interest in Government philosophy. As time went on, I felt that I should pursue this matter further and do something aggressively to prevent his nomination for Vice President of the United States.

FUCHS: Will you date this a little more closely as to when you first felt that you should take such action?

PAULEY: I can date it specifically when I took this action. It was about a year before the convention that I proceeded to prevent his becoming the President. I say "the President," because, in my opinion, it was becoming obvious that the Vice President would become the President because of Roosevelt's health. I organized a campaign to prevent Henry Wallace from becoming the Vice President and used all the influence

[3]

that I had in the Democratic Party to bring this about. This came about by my recruiting all of the Democratic friends of great influence that I had within the party and particularly those that had influence with President Roosevelt, because I knew that no matter what any of us who opposed Wallace might do, we would have to have the backing of Roosevelt to obstruct Wallace's campaign.

FUCHS: How did you go about this specifically?

PAULEY: Well, I recruited all of those friends that I had who were opposed to Wallace. I always felt that the Vice President would become the President; and that subsequently happened. Many people who had not been as close to Roosevelt as I was, didn't realize his infirmities as much as I did at the time.

FUCHS: Some of those who knew Roosevelt at the

[4]

time said that they didn't notice any change in his health until he returned from Yalta in February of '45. Had you seen something before this?

PAULEY: Yes, I did before that time. Ed Flynn, who was then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was ill, and, being secretary and treasurer of the committee, I used to keep the usual morning Tuesday and/or Thursday standing appointments that the Committee chairman had with Roosevelt. During that time, several of our meetings were held in Roosevelt's bedroom upstairs and we discussed political appointments. I realized then that he was failing and that he would not be, if reelected, the same sharp and admirable President that we had had before, and that, therefore, we would have to rely on a successor. At that time the only successor was Henry Wallace, whom I and

[5]

many of my associates believed would not be the proper man to become the President of the United States. Then I seriously activated a campaign against Henry Wallace. I did it regretfully, for many reasons. The prime one was that his wife was so charming and so lovely that I didn't want to do anything to disturb the feeling that we all had in the Democratic Party concerning her. Now then, Wallace was so involved in the Soviet approach to the problems of the United States, that it was almost impossible to talk to him about it. His eyes were always looking to the stars; he felt that he was right, and no one could tell him any different. …

FUCHS: Did Mr. Wallace ever have anything to say to you about your part in this?

PAULEY: No, but he knew how I stood and I didn't anticipate him being my great friend from then on.

FUCHS: Did he ever evidence any animosity toward you?

PAULEY: All he could, but I didn't have any personal animosity toward him. I believe that he grew up in the wrong school of political thought. I think that he was mesmerized by the Soviet Union. When we look back on it now, I thank God he did not become the President. I think that a great many people in the United States feel that way. I was very proud to be able

[8]

to defeat him.

FUCHS: I understand Pa [Major General Edwin M.] Watson was utilized in your strategy. Would you care to comment on that?

PAULEY: Pa Watson was Appointments Secretary to Roosevelt, and I found out that Pa Watson felt about Wallace as I did. He was ready to block Wallace, and he was a loyal friend of mine in plotting out the course to do this. As you know, when you control the appointments of the President of the United States, which he did, you're a very powerful fellow, because you can send in only those you want to meet the President. So I enlisted his willing aid, and we worked together. We made appointments for the President with Democratic representatives all over the United States, and the ones that got the preference were those who felt the

[9]

same as Pa Watson and I did.

FUCHS: When did you first come in touch with Mr. Truman and become aware of his capabilities?

PAULEY: Well, I first met President Truman when he first became a Senator -- in the office of the Democratic Majority in the Senate. Then my acquaintance grew with him, particularly when he became the head of the committee to investigate the war activities under Roosevelt. Roosevelt was very doubtful about anybody that would have the influence of the Senate in attacking him, and the administration; and so, therefore, it was debated in the high circles of the Democratic Party, primarily, its members within the Senate itself, and I didn't have anything to do with that. But he was selected.

FUCHS: Are you saying that there was some opposition

[10]

to the appointment of such a committee and of Mr. Truman to head it at that time, because it would likely oppose certain measures of the administration?

PAULEY: Roosevelt had by that time come to the conclusion that there was going to be a committee, that there was no way he could stop it. Roosevelt knew that there would be a committee. Barkley and other important Democrats were for Truman, and Truman conducted the investigation in such a manner that he did not intimidate or disgrace anybody; he only pointed out the facts. That, of course, was the one thing that made him the dominant man at the time of the selection of the Vice President. Roosevelt remembered him favorably from that.

FUCHS: What year did you first have appointments

[11]

with President Roosevelt?

PAULEY: It was after the election in ’32. ...

FUCHS: Was it difficult to convince President Roosevelt that the labor people would go along with someone other than Henry Wallace?

[22]

PAULEY: We were worried about it all the time; but that Truman was anti-labor never became an issue in the campaign. ...

Perhaps what had happened is that the same FDR who in 1940 had fought and won to get Henry Wallace as his V.P., was too near death in July 1944 to fight at all. But whatever the reason was, here is what Henry Wallace was, which caused Truman, who had inherited him into his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce, to fire Wallace in 1946:

——

https://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-HenryWallace.htm

https://archive.is/BWI0C

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6906/

https://archive.is/3VZuL

“Cabinet Member Henry Wallace’s Alternative View on Relations with the Soviets”

Commerce Secretary Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture (19331941) and Vice-President from (1941-1945), was one of the few liberal idealists in Trumans cabinet. Wallace envisioned a century of the common man marked by global peace and prosperity. In the following excerpt from a 1946 letter to the President, Wallace urged him to build mutual trust and confidence in order to achieve an enduring international order. Wallace also made public speeches conveying the same message, and he published a piece in the magazine New Republic (1946) that contained excerpts from this letter to Truman. Not long after, Truman asked Wallace to resign.

—

The Secretary of Commerce

July 23, 1946

The President

The White House

My Dear Mr. President:

I hope you will excuse this long letter. Personally I hate to write long letters, and I hate to receive them. My only excuse is that this subject is a very important one — probably the most important in the world today. I checked with you about this last Thursday and you suggested after Cabinet meeting on Friday that you would like to have my views.

I have been increasingly disturbed about the trend of international affairs since the end of the war, and I am even more troubled by the apparently growing feeling among the American people that another war is coming and the only way that we can head it off is to arm ourselves to the teeth. Yet all of past history indicates that an armaments race does not lead to peace but to war. The months just ahead may well be the crucial period which will decide whether the civilized world will go down in destruction after the five or ten years needed for several nations to arm themselves with atomic bombs. Therefore, I want to give you my views on how the present trend toward conflict might be averted. …

How do American actions since V-J Day appear to other nations? I mean by actions the concrete things like $13 billion for the War and Navy Departments, the Bikini tests of the atomic bomb and continued production of bombs, the plan to arm Latin America with our weapons, production of B-29s and planned production of B-36s, and the effort to secure air bases spread over half the globe from which the other half of the globe can be bombed. I cannot but feel that these actions must make it look to the rest of the world as if we were only paying lip service to peace at the conference table.

These facts rather make it appear either (1) that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or (2) that we are trying to build up a predominance of force to intimidate the rest of mankind. How would it look to us if Russia had the atomic bomb and we did not, if Russia had 10,000-mile bombers and air bases within a thousand miles of our coastlines, and we did not? …

In a world of atomic bombs and other revolutionary new weapons, such as radioactive poison gases and biological warfare, a peace maintained by a predominance of force is no longer possible. Why is this so? The reasons are clear:

FIRST. Atomic warfare is cheap and easy compared with old-fashioned war. Within a very few years several countries can have atomic bombs and other atomic weapons. Compared with the cost of large armies and the manufacture of old-fashioned weapons, atomic bombs cost very little and require only a relatively small part of a nation’s production plant and labor force.

SECOND. So far as winning a war is concerned, having more bombs even many more bombs than the other fellow is no longer a decisive advantage. If another nation had enough bombs to eliminate all of our principal cities and our heavy industry, it wouldn’t help us very much if we had ten times as many bombs as we needed to do the same to them.

THIRD. And most important, the very fact that several nations have atomic bombs will inevitably result in a neurotic, fear-ridden, itching-trigger psychology in all the peoples of the world, and because of our wealth and vulnerability we would be among the most seriously affected. Atomic war will not require vast and time-consuming preparations, the mobilization of large armies, the conversion of a large proportion of a country’s industrial plants to the manufacture of weapons. In a world armed with atomic weapons, some incident will lead to the use of those weapons. …

In general there are two overall points of view which can be taken in approaching the problem of the United States-Russian relations. The first is that it is not possible to get along with the Russians and therefore war is inevitable. The second is that war with Russia would bring catastrophe to all mankind, and therefore we must find a way of living in peace. It is clear that our own welfare as well as that of the entire world requires that we maintain the latter point of view. …

I should list the factors which make for Russian distrust of the United States and of the Western world as follows: The first is Russian history, which we must take into account because it is the setting in which Russians see all actions and policies of the rest of the world. Russian history for over a thousand years has been a succession of attempts, often unsuccessful, to resist invasion and conquest by the Mongols, the Turks, the Swedes, the Germans and the Poles. The scant thirty years of the existence of the Soviet Government has in Russian eyes been a continuation of their historical struggle for national existence. The first four years of the new regime, from 1917 through 1921, were spent in resisting attempts at destruction by the Japanese, British and French, with some American assistance, and by the several White Russian armies encouraged and financed by the Western powers. Then, in 1941, the Soviet State was almost conquered by the Germans after a period during which the Western European powers had apparently acquiesced in the rearming of Germany in the belief that the Nazis would seek to expand eastward rather than westward. The Russians, therefore, obviously see themselves as fighting for their existence in a hostile world.

Second, it follows that to the Russians all of the defense and security measures of the Western powers seem to have an aggressive intent. Our actions to expand our military security system, such steps as extending the Monroe Doctrine to include the arming of the Western Hemisphere nations, our present monopoly of the atomic bomb, our interest in outlying bases and our general support of the British Empire, appear to them as going far beyond the requirements of defense. I think we might feel the same if the United States were the only capitalistic country in the world, and the principal socialistic countries were creating a level of armed strength far exceeding anything in their previous history. From the Russian point of view, also, the granting of a loan to Britain and the lack of tangible results on their request to borrow for rehabilitation purposes may be regarded as another evidence of strengthening of an anti-Soviet bloc.

Finally, our resistance to her attempts to obtain warm water ports, and her own security system in the form of friendly neighboring states, seems, from the Russian point of view, to clinch the case. After twenty-five years of isolation and after having achieved the status of a major power, Russia believes that she is entitled to recognition of her new status. Our interest in establishing democracy in Eastern Europe, where democracy by and large has never existed, seems to her an attempt to reestablish the encirclement of unfriendly neighbors which was created after the last war and which might serve as a springboard of still another effort to destroy her.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO

If this analysis is correct, and there is ample evidence to support it, the action to improve the situation is clearly indicated. The fundamental objective of such action should be to allay any reasonable Russian grounds for fear, suspicion and distrust. We must recognize that the world has changed and that today there can be no one world unless the United States and Russia can find some way of living together. For example, most of us are firmly convinced of the soundness of our position when we suggest the internationalization and defortification of the Danube or of the Dardanelles, but we would be horrified and angered by any Russian counter-proposal that would involve also the internationalizing and disarming of Suez or Panama. We must recognize that to the Russians these seem to be identical situations.

We should ascertain from a fresh point of view what Russia believes to be essential to her own security as a prerequisite to the writing of the peace and to cooperation in the construction of a world order. We should be prepared to judge her requirements against the background of what we ourselves and the British have insisted upon as essential to our respective security. We should be prepared, even at the expense of risking epithets of appeasement, to agree to reasonable Russian guarantees of security. …

We should be prepared to negotiate a treaty which will establish a definite sequence of events for the establishment of international control and development of atomic energy. This, I believe, is the most important single question, and the one on which the present trend is definitely toward deadlock rather than ultimate agreement.

We should make an effort to counteract the irrational fear of Russia which is being systematically built up in the American people by certain individuals and publications. The slogan that communism and capitalism, regimentation and democracy, cannot continue to exist in the same world is, from a historical point of view, pure propaganda. Several religious doctrines, all claiming to be the only true gospel and salvation, have existed side by side with a reasonable degree of tolerance for centuries. This country was for the first half of its national life a democratic island in a world dominated by absolutist governments.

We should not act as if we too felt that we were threatened in today’s world. We are by far the most powerful nation in the world, the only Allied nation which came out of the war without devastation and much stronger than before the war. Any talk on our part about the need for strengthening our defenses further is bound to appear hypocritical to other nations.

This proposal admittedly calls for a shift in some of our thinking about international matters. It is imperative that we make this shift. We have little time to lose. Our postwar actions have not yet been adjusted to the lessons to be gained from experience of Allied cooperation during the war and the facts of the atomic age. …

Respectfully,

H.A. Wallace

——

http://jahrbuch2002.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Weltmacht/Way_to_Peace/way_to_peace.html

https://archive.is/sTDJv

“Henry A. Wallace: The Way to Peace”

(September 12, 1946)

When the United States were still mighty by all meanings, Wallace gave this speech in the New York Madison Square Garden. One week later he was forced to resign by President Harry S. Truman.

—

…

I say this as one who steadfastly backed preparedness throughout the thirties. We have no use for namby-pamby pacifism. But we must realize that modern inventions have now made peace the most exciting thing in the world – and we should be willing to pay a just price for peace. If modern war can cost us four hundred billion dollars, we should be willing and happy to pay much more for peace. But certainly, the cost of peace is to be measured not in dollars but in the hearts and minds of men.

The price of peace – for us and for every nation in the world – is the price of giving up prejudice, hatred, fear, and ignorance.

Let’s get down to cases here at home.

First we have prejudice, hatred, fear, and ignorance of certain races. The recent mass lynching in Georgia was not merely the most unwarranted, brutal act of mob violence in the United States in recent years; it was also an illustration of the kind of prejudice that makes war inevitable. …

Second, in payment for peace, we must give up prejudice, hatred, fear, and ignorance in the economic world. This means working earnestly, day after day, for a larger volume of world trade. It means helping undeveloped areas of the world to industrialize themselves with the help of American technical assistance and loans.

We should welcome the opportunity to help along the most rapid possible industrialization in Latin America, China, India, and the Near East. For as the productivity of these peoples increases, our exports will increase. …

Certainly we like the British people as individuals. But to make Britain the key to our foreign policy would be, in my opinion, the height of folly. …

To achieve lasting peace, we must study in detail just how the Russian character was formed – by invasions of Tartars, Mongols, Germans, Poles, Swedes, and French; by the czarist rule based on ignorance, fear, and force; by the intervention of the British, French, and Americans in Russian affairs from 1919 to 1921; by the geography of the huge Russian land mass situated strategically between Europe and Asia; and by the vitality derived from the rich Russian soil and the strenuous Russian climate. Add to all this the tremendous emotional power which Marxism and Leninism gives to the Russian leaders – and then we can realize that we are reckoning with a force which cannot be handled successfully by a “Get tough with Russia” policy. “Getting tough” never bought anything real and lasting – whether for schoolyard bullies or businessmen or world powers. The tougher we get, the tougher the Russians will get.

Throughout the world there are numerous reactionary elements which had hoped for Axis victory – and now profess great friendship for the United States. Yet, these enemies of yesterday and false friends of today continually try to provoke war between the United States and Russia. They have no real love of the United States. They only long for the day when the United States and Russia will destroy each other.

We must not let our Russian policy be guided or influenced by those inside or outside the United States who want war with Russia. This does not mean appeasement.

We most earnestly want peace with Russia – but we want to be met halfway. We want cooperation. And I believe that we can get cooperation once Russia understands that our primary objective is neither saving the British Empire nor purchasing oil in the Near East with the lives of American soldiers. We cannot allow national oil rivalries to force us into war. All of the nations producing oil, whether inside or outside of their own boundaries, must fulfill the provisions of the United Nations Charter and encourage the development of world petroleum reserves so as to make the maximum amount of oil available to all nations of the world on an equitable peaceful basis – and not on the basis of fighting the next war.

For her part, Russia can retain our respect by cooperating with the United Nations in a spirit of open-minded and flexible give-and-take.

The real peace treaty we now need is between the United States and Russia. On our part, we should recognize that we have no more business in the political affairs of eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, western Europe, and the United States. We may not like what Russia does in eastern Europe. Her type of land reform, industrial expropriation, and suppression of basic liberties offends the great majority of the people of the United States.

(Audience hissing.)

Yes, I’m talking about people outside of New York City when I talk about that, and I think I know about people outside of New York City. Any Gallup poll will reveal it – we might as well face the facts.

But whether we like it or not the Russians will try to socialize their sphere of influence just as we try to democratize our sphere of influence. This applies also to Germany and Japan. We are striving to democratize Japan and our area of control in Germany, while Russia strives to socialize eastern Germany.

As for Germany, we all must recognize that an equitable settlement, based on a unified German nation, is absolutely essential to any lasting European settlement. This means that Russia must be assured that never again can German industry be converted into military might to be used against her – and Britain. Western Europe and the United States must be certain that Russia’s German policy will not become a tool of Russian design against western Europe.

The Russians have no more business in stirring up native communists to political activity in western Europe, Latin America, and the United States than we have interfering in the politics of eastern Europe and Russia.

Now, when I say that, I realize that the danger of war is much less from communism than it is from imperialism, whether it be of the United States or England – or from fascism, the remnants of fascism, which may be in Spain or Argentina.

Let’s get this straight, regardless of what Mr. Taft or Mr. Dewey may say, if we can overcome the imperialistic urge in the Western world, I’m convinced there’ll be no war.

We know what Russia is up to in eastern Europe, for example, and Russia knows what we are up to. But we cannot permit the door to be closed against our trade in eastern Europe any more than we can in China. I’m Secretary of Commerce, and I’m interested in trade. And I want the biggest market we can get. I want China, I want eastern Europe, as places where we can trade. But, at the same time, we have to recognize that the Balkans are closer to Russia than to us, and that Russia cannot permit either England or the United States to dominate the politics of that area.

China is a special case and although she holds the longest frontier in the world with Russia, the interests of world peace demand that China remain free from any sphere of influence, either politically or economically.

(Audience hissing.)

And I know of my own positive knowledge that that was in Roosevelt’s heart and mind, most specifically in the spring of 1944 – because I talked it over with him in detail ...

(Again hissing.)

Mr. Truman read that particular sentence, and he approved it...

All right – you’ve already passed a good resolution on this, and I understand you’re forwarding it. That’s enough.

We insist that the door to trade and economic development opportunities be left wide open in China as in all the world. However, the open door to trade and opportunities for economic development in China are meaningless unless there is a unified and peaceful China – built on the cooperation of the various groups in that country and based on a hands-off policy of the outside powers.

We are still arming to the hilt. Our excessive expenses for military purposes are the chief cause of our unbalanced budget. If taxes are to be lightened we must have the basis of a real peace with Russia – a peace that cannot be broken by extremist propagandists.

Russian ideas of social-economic justice are going to govern nearly a third of the world. Our ideas of free-enterprise democracy will govern much of the rest. The two ideas will endeavor to prove which can deliver the most satisfaction to the common man in their respective areas of political dominance. But by mutual agreement, this competition should be put on a friendly basis. Let the results of the two systems speak for themselves.

We should close our ears to those among us who would have us believe that Russian communism and our free enterprise system cannot live, one with another, in a profitable and productive peace.

Under friendly peaceful competition the Russian world and the American world will gradually become more alike. The Russians will be forced to grant more and more of the personal freedom,  and we shall become more and more absorbed with the problems of social-economic justice.

(Audience hissing.) …

In the worldwide, as distinguished from the regional, field, the armed might of the United Nations should be so great as to make opposition useless. Only the United Nations should have atomic bombs and its military establishment should give special emphasis to air power. It should have control of the strategically located air bases with which the United States and Britain have encircled the world. And not only should individual nations be prohihited from manufacturing atomic bombs, guided missiles, and military aircraft for bombing purposes, but no nation should be allowed to spend on its military establishment more than perhaps 15 percent of its budget. …

During this period, every effort should be made to develop as rapidly as possible a body of international law based on moral principles and not on the Machiavellian principles of deceit, force, and distrust – which, if continued, will lead the modern world to rapid disintegration.

In brief, as I see it today, the World Order is bankrupt - and the United States, Russia, and England are the receivers. These are the hard facts of power politics on which we have to build a functioning, powerful United Nations and a body of international law.  ...

I believe that peace – the kind of a peace I have outlined tonight – is the basic issue, both in the congressional campaign this fall and right on through the presidential election in 1948. How we meet this issue will determine whether we live not in “one world” or “two worlds” – but whether we live at all.

Weeks later, the pro-U.S.-empire Henry Luce’s TIME magazine, on 30 September 1946, headlined “National Affairs: This Great Endeavor”, and characterized Wallace this way, so as to deceive the American public against Wallace:

https://archive.is/flJGc#selection-1003.0-1011.454

He is a man who has read much but is not well read, thought much but is not a thinker, known too many people to have made many real friends. He is a scientist who is governed by his emotions, a believer who has rejected faith. He has sincerity without principle.

He turned his back on principle when he took advantage of bumbling Harry Truman’s endorsement of his speech. Even the sympathetic leftist Nation pointed out: “He should have known that Mr. Truman’s endorsement turned it [the speech] into a bombshell.” He not only should have known, he did.

No Other Decent Course. Was he now turning his back on an even greater principle? Wallace knows as well as anyone the nature of his proposal. He knows the background of postwar U.S.-Russian relations. The U.S. had already tried the friendly hand. But Russia interpreted friendliness as weakness. Russia had used the veto to block virtually every majority ruling which incurred her dislike. Russia had seized 270,000 square miles of territory since 1939. [That was during WW2, when Russia took control over countries that Hitler had conquered. America had taken control over even more territory than that — and, now, its NATO = 25.07 million square kilometers = 9.68 million square miles, which includes all of those 270,000 square miles.]

Wallace’s statements there can be compared to FDR’s own views, which can be seen here.

Based upon all this evidence, I believe that the widespread and frequently expressed view by historians, that the change from FDR to Truman did not cause the Cold War, massively deceives the public about history, and thus endangers the future. To make progress, history must be entirely truthfully and broadly known.

By far the biggest blunder by FDR was his almost passive acquiescence in the megadonors’ insistence that he allow V.P. Wallace to be replaced. FDR in his last year appears to have been oblivious not only to the fact that he was dying, but to the enormous consequentiality of whom the V.P. nominee would be.

Both of America’s two best Presidents, Lincoln and FDR, were immediately followed by America’s two worst Presidents, Andrew Johnson and Truman; and, in each instance, that successor weakened and even reversed his predecessor’s most important policies, and so became a curse upon the country for decades if not centuries into the future.

The U.S. Constitution’s Presidential-succession clauses need to be thoroughly amended.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.