1. By Harrison E. Salisbury Special To the New York Times, Feb. 3, 1951
Core takeaway
Harry Truman (June, 1941) during the alliance with the Soviet Union:
“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible”WEST’S ‘TREACHERY’ ASSAILED IN SOVIET; Press Denounces Truman for ’41 Advice to Let Germany, Russia Bleed Each Other Obligation Held Unfulfilled Singles Out Commandos
MOSCOW, Feb. 2- The Soviet press advanced today the theme that the United States and Britain, during World War II, had conducted a “treacherous” and “criminal” policy in line with President Truman’s statement in June, 1941, when he was a United States Senator, that Germany and Russia should be allowed to fight it out, killing as many Germans and Russians as possible. Commenting on the anniversary of the Stalingrad victory, several newspapers recalled the statement by Mr. Truman that: “If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.” [Mr. Truman’s sentence as quoted in THE NEW YORK TIMES of June 24, 1941, concluded with the words, “although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious in any circumstances.”] Such important Soviet journals as Pravda, Izvestia, the army newspaper Red Star and labor’s Trud declared that this exactly had been the policy followed by the United States and Britain.
Obligation Held Unfulfilled
They declared that although the United States, Britain and Canada had millions of trained troops available for action in the summer of 1942, the three countries “treacherously” and in “criminal violation” of their obligations did not launch an attack on the European continent.
The Soviet press charged that the “second front” deliberately and wilfully had been delayed to weaken the Soviet Union. Izvestia declared that Hitler’s ’42 summer offensive designed to smash the Soviet front and capture Moscow had “corresponded with the intentions of England and the United States, which hoped the Hitlerite war machine would break the might of the Soviet Union.”
Writing in Pravda, Maj. Gen. N. Talensky declared that the main purpose of the United States ruling circles during the war had been an “all-out weakening and the bleeding white of the Soviet Union through a war of attrition.” He said that the United States and Britain not only had evaded their “second front” pledge, but had tried “in every manner to make easier the position of the Hitlerite command.”
Singles Out Commandos
Pravda maintained that the Commando raids against St. Nazaire, Boulogne and Dieppe had demonstrated conclusively to the Hitler command that there would be no invasion of Europe, and enabled it to transfer all available combat troops to the East.
“Such an unworthy, mercenary policy and strategy of the American-British command gave Hitler a chance literally to clear all reserves from his whole Western European rear and to throw all the forces of Hitlerite Germany and its allies to the Soviet-German front,” Pravda said.
It charged the United States and Britain with having sabotaged deliberately the movement of supplies to the Soviet Union in 1942 at the time when supplies were most needed because of the evacuation of Soviet industry to the East. The Anglo-American command deliberately failed to take the “necessary measures for the proper supply of the Soviet Union,” Pravda continues.
In addition, it said the British Navy had allowed the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to pass through the English Channel and to move “north and fight on the naval communications of the Soviet Union.”
