Chapter 38: Nov 1943 Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin Meet at Teheran

“[Our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tenets and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.”

― Ernie Pyle, Here is Your War

There has been a lot written about the Teheran Conference of 1943 that has gathered dust on library shelves for several generations. The simple fact was that it was still early days in the plan to defeat the Axis and only Churchill seemed confidant of final victory over the forces of evil.

One of the unanswered questions about the timing and the location of this conference was why would the allies have it in Iran after the allies had just invaded that country in a joint Anglo-Russian invasion? Another unanswered question was why had the Free French representative General Charles De Gaulle not been invited as well?

In answer to the first question, all I can speculate was that Stalin and the Soviet Union wanted to curry favor with that oil rich nation and had prepared plans for complete Iranian independence after the war. It was the beginning of a mutually beneficial arrangement between the two countries in the carving up of the Middle East after the Third Reich was defeated.

As to the second question, there was no hiding the fact that Churchill was perturbed to his very core by the attitude of De Gaulle and his staff of Maginot line creators that seemed more attracted to the potential of post-war power rather than the liberation of the French people from the oppression of tyranny. De Gaulle’s actions after the war validated his concerns leaving him to shake his cigar at the Americans and the Russians and shout out, “I told you so!”

Stalin gave De Gaulle no pity because his communist supported resistance groups in both regions of France, the Nazi-occupied territory and the territory of Vichy France were constantly harassed by French authorities that opposed the resistance in France in the most brutal ways imaginable.

The Russians were successful in getting their plans for post-war Iran approved by both Churchill and Roosevelt because the allies were at that time uncertain about the outcome of the war.

In return, Stalin agreed to open a front against the Japanese as soon as the Fuhrer was defeated and they pressed the other allies to agree to open a Western Front across the English Channel no later than June 1944. Stalin requested concessions about land allocation after the war and seemingly encountered little resistance from the war weary Churchill and the President who was in ill health at the time of the conference. The roots of the “Iron Curtain” were planted at this conference causing the unhappy circumstance of the Cold War for decades after it was concluded.

The fact that the conference was held inside the Russian Embassy in Teheran and that President Roosevelt was quartered there for logistical reasons due to his handicap played right into Stalin’s hand because he was able to manipulate the President under the watchful eyes of his Security Services and caused him to vote more often with Stalin than with Churchill who was more willing to see Stalin in a more benevolent light.

The end result was that Stalin was able to pass his agenda virtually unchanged over the objections of Churchill and the silence from Roosevelt. Churchill’s grand plan to incorporate a major operation in the Balkans to complement the invasion of France was overridden and Stalin got his way. The only fly in the ointment to Soviet domination of this important region of Europe was the hostile independence of Tito’s Yugoslavia that walked a dangerous tightrope between non-Soviet Europe and the Soviet Union. It infuriated Stalin but he knew the terrain was not in his favor and that the people preferred the more Socialist form of government under the former Partisan fighter Tito rather than some Soviet Commissar with little familiarity with Balkan politics. Tito didn’t hesitate to rule with an iron fist when required and made certain he did nothing to aggravate the Soviet Union into taking retaliatory action against his rule. Stalin was satisfied that both Greece and Italy had a strong Communist labor movement that gave him just enough influence to slant their economics and politics in favor of the Kremlin and against the policies of the Free West and the American international presence.

When Churchill wrote of the conference in the years after the war, he often expressed his regret that he was not firmer in his demands that they conduct operations in the Balkans despite the persuasion employed by Stalin to get Roosevelt on his side because the dictator was thinking more about the post-war world and the expansion of the Soviet Union into the void created by the defeat of Adolf Hitler. Some speculation was given to the fact that Roosevelt’s wife was exercising her leftist tendencies to favor the Soviet dictator over the jaded Churchill. She was none too impressed by his bulldog body, his excessive drinking and his lighting up a cigar at the most inappropriate times.

I looked at the fly-specked calendar on the wall of my tiny hotel room in my quarters near the docks of Calais and watched the “contact” pull out a small folded notebook from inside her delicate bra packed to the limit with her luscious curves that I pretended not to ogle as she leaned over me from the side of the bed.