LETTER: Typed letter signed, to Anna Louise Strong.
Roosevelt to Strong
On Nazi Germany
Roosevelt, Eleanor. Typed letter signed, “Eleanor Roosevelt,” to Anne Louise Strong, February 17, 1941; two leaves of White House stationery, rectos only.
A remarkable letter to one of America’s most ardent supporters of the Communist regimes of Russia and China, the journalist and author Anna Louise Strong, whom Eleanor Roosevelt met in 1936 when she invited Strong, “the first lady of U.S. radicalism,” to have lunch with her at the White House. “They were fascinated by each other, and a cordial friendship and lasting correspondence developed between the First Lady and one of America’s most notorious heretics” (Eleanor Roosevelt, by Cook, Vol. 2, pp. 342-343).
By early 1941, however, it is clear that the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 was becoming a sore subject, for ER writes:
… You tell me that you met no statesmen or diplomats in Europe who did not think the pact with Germany was shrewd act of national preservation from a war in which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Bullitt had tried unsuccessfully to get them in, and which, if they once got caught, they would have to fight alone. I have no idea whether Mr. Bullitt tried to involve them in war, neither do I know anything about Mr. Chamberlain. I imagine you are entirely right and that it was a shrewd move on their part, but because a thing is shrewd, it doesn’t make it right.
If Russia really believes in freedom of the people and peace, she certainly would not ally herself with the power in Europe which for a long time had been curtailing the freedoms of its people, as well as oppressing cruelly the people of another race.
…We found rather to our disappointment … that Stalin is a dictator in exactly the same
way as Hitler and Mussolini are dictators.
I would be perfectly willing to see the United States deal with any nation in the world and I hope we would deal fairly and honestly with them, but that does not make me want them to control us in this country. It is not the Russian people that I have the slightest feeling about. It is the Russian government. I feel the same way against the German government, but I feel nothing against the German people except surprise and regret that they should be so passive.
I do not know who will decide the future of the world after this war is over. I feel quite sure it will not be a ‘Wall-Street dictated peace’ if the United States has anything to say about it under this administration.
Easily the most ardent, substantive, and important Roosevelt letter we have seen.
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