The Daughters of Yalta

For nearly a year, Harriman persisted in this assumption, until a much crueller reality became apparent. What Kathy had heard in London from the exiled Polish leaders was borne out in August 1944.

Throughout the war, the Poles had maintained an active resistance network, especially in occupied Warsaw, where they waged a guerrilla battle against the Nazis against heavy odds. For a brief moment in the summer of 1944, conditions tilted in the Poles’ favour. The Nazi troops in Warsaw were weaker, and the Red Army was quickly approaching. The Poles knew they could not expel the Nazis from Poland entirely without Soviet assistance, but they also realised that the Soviet Union would eagerly absorb Poland if given the chance to put boots on the ground, especially with the Americans and the British distracted with their own battles raging across Western Europe and the Mediterranean. If the Polish resistance could secure Warsaw before the Red Army arrived, they could make a compelling case to the western Allies that the Poles were a formidable force worthy of an independent place in the world, not a dispensable people to be cast off to the Soviets the moment they were free of the Nazi yoke. The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1. At first, the plan looked promising. The Polish resistance secured central Warsaw, but food and ammunition quickly dwindled. The fighters expected the Red Army to arrive any day, bringing supplies and reinforcements. However, the Soviets, now just miles from Warsaw across the Vistula River, suddenly stopped. With no ammunition, the Poles became sitting ducks for the Nazis. Their courageous uprising became a mass slaughter. Over 200,000 Poles, mostly civilians, were killed, and the city was almost completely destroyed.

When Harriman discovered that the Red Army was simply sitting and watching from the banks of the Vistula as the Nazis destroyed the Polish resistance, he was shocked. Unable to comprehend why the Soviets would allow the Nazis to retake the upper hand in Warsaw, he lobbied the Soviet government to allow American and British planes to use Soviet airfields to resupply the Polish resistance. Stalin refused. No amount of personal persuasion could move him. Harriman began to realise the West had sorely miscalculated. They had misunderstood the man they had jocularly referred to as ‘Uncle Joe’. Churchill defied Stalin and ordered the RAF to airdrop whatever supplies it could. Meanwhile, Harriman anxiously tried to convince Roosevelt, who at the time was campaigning for re-election, that it was imperative for the Americans to take a hard line with Stalin before the Soviets ran unchecked across Eastern Europe. But Roosevelt and the State Department had other priorities. They were more concerned that such intervention would jeopardise future American-Soviet cooperation, both in military terms and in the Soviets’ commitment to an international peace organisation. Representatives from the three Allied nations would be convening to discuss this organisation at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., on August 21. Roosevelt would allow nothing to derail those plans. While tragic, the resistance in Warsaw was simply another wartime casualty.

As Kathy told her sister in a letter, it was a ‘very bloody time’ for their father. By the middle of August, anxiety over Poland had taken a heavy toll on him. A tall, athletic man, Averell lost an alarming amount of weight, his frame dropping to a mere 160 pounds, and he developed stomach ulcers. Kathy became gravely concerned for his health. But, casting Kathy’s worries aside, he continued to press his case, arguing through the night with Stalin’s deputies, sometimes until 6.30 in the morning. As Averell waited for the inevitable call from the Kremlin every evening, he needed something to calm his racing mind. The only thing that helped was games of bezique. Kathy would sit with him and play trick after trick. Averell usually beat her handily. Over the first seven months of 1944, Kathy accumulated a 100,000-point deficit. Suddenly, in the late summer of 1944, she began winning. She triumphed so often that she nearly drew even, but she knew her victories had little to do with her ability. Averell’s mind was elsewhere.

The ambassador was desperate for help. He could not fight the Soviets on Poland by himself. Finally, Harriman appealed to Harry Hopkins, urging him to make the president understand the severity of the situation, not just for Poland, but also for the United States: ‘The policy appears to be crystallizing to force us and the British to accept all Soviet policies, backed by the strength and prestige of the Red Army … The general attitude seems to be that it is our obligation to help Russia and accept her policies because she has won the war for us. I am convinced that we can divert this trend but only if we materially change our policy toward the Soviet Government … They have misinterpreted our generous attitude toward them as a sign of weakness … Unless we take issue with the present policy there is every indication the Soviet Union will become a world bully.’

Harriman asked permission to come to Washington to brief Roosevelt in person. His request was denied. Meanwhile, the Nazis continued to ravage Warsaw. In September, Stalin finally agreed to aid the Poles, but by then it was too late. One-quarter of the city’s population was dead.

While the Warsaw Uprising fundamentally altered Harriman’s view of the Soviets, it also drove a wedge between the ambassador and the president who had appointed him. Though Harriman and Roosevelt were the patriarchs of two of New York’s elite families, they did not always see eye to eye. In fact, the Harrimans and Roosevelts had clashed long before either FDR or Averell Harriman rose to prominence. In the early 1900s, Averell’s father and FDR’s cousin Teddy Roosevelt developed a fierce political rivalry in New York State, prompting Teddy Roosevelt to launch an antitrust investigation into E. H. Harriman’s way holdings. And though Averell Harriman had joined FDR’s New Deal administration partly out of the sense of civic duty inherited from his liberal-minded father, he was not initially a true believer in its progressive agenda. Formerly a Republican, he had shifted his allegiance to the Democrats in part out of pragmatism. But it required a nudge from his sister, Mary Harriman Rumsey, the founder of the Junior League and Roosevelt’s appointed chairman of the Consumer Advisory Board, for Harriman to join the New Deal. At the time, the newspapers mocked him, dubbing him one of the administration’s ‘tame millionaires’, but he formed an unlikely and genuine friendship with Harry Hopkins, who had risen from his early days as a poor Midwestern social worker to become Roosevelt’s closest adviser. It was Hopkins who had convinced FDR to appoint Harriman as his Lend-Lease envoy in London at the end of 1940.

But the deeper problem between Harriman and Roosevelt had to do with control. Averell Harriman’s fortune outstripped FDR’s by orders of magnitude. With such wealth came both purchasing power and a certain degree of political independence. Unlike the rest of FDR’s inner circle, who depended on the president for position and prestige, Harriman did not need proximity to FDR to gain influence, nor did he rely on government funds. He took no salary as Lend-Lease envoy and paid for much of the Moscow embassy entertainment for the Soviets out of his own pocket. Roosevelt therefore lacked the necessary tools to rein in Harriman, save for one. FDR could control him by granting, or refusing to grant, access. Before the Atlantic Charter meeting with Churchill in 1941, Harriman had to seek the president’s permission to attend multiple times before FDR finally agreed to bring him. FDR similarly refused to dispatch Harriman to represent American interests at the Moscow Conference in 1942, forcing Harriman to appeal to Churchill to send Roosevelt a message requesting Harriman’s presence at the meeting. Churchill did so happily. Eventually, FDR relented.

Though the two were never overtly at odds, relations between Roosevelt and Harriman reached a low point in October 1944 – with Warsaw already reduced to rubble – when Harriman was finally allowed to return to Washington to brief Roosevelt on Eastern Europe. During their first meeting, Harriman quickly found his efforts frustrated. It was nearly impossible to speak with the president alone. Harriman had much experience with FDR’s ever-present coterie, but a new individual now seemed to be his mainstay: Anna was never far from his side. Harriman had no personal grievance with Anna, but her presence did cause complications. Harriman had travelled five thousand miles to brief the president on the desperate situation in Warsaw and to update him on developments in the Pacific. But at their first meeting, he could not fully disclose all information, as he did not know if Anna had clearance to hear classified reports. Then, during another meeting, Anna’s son Johnny wandered in with his Labrador retriever. The president stopped to chat with the boy, so Harriman’s briefing had to wait until Johnny ambled off to the garden.

When Harriman was finally able to describe the alarming developments to Roosevelt in detail, he was sorely disappointed by FDR’s response. ‘The President consistently shows very little interest in Eastern European matters except as they affect sentiment in America,’ Harriman wrote in his minutes, noting that FDR had ‘no conception of the determination of the Russians to settle matters in which they consider that they have a vital interest … on their own terms,’ particularly in Poland. Ten months earlier, when the subject had turned to the beleaguered country at the Tehran Conference, he had callously joked, ‘I don’t care two hoots about Poland … Wake me up when we talk about Germany,’ before pretending to fall asleep. Frankly, he told Harriman in May 1944, he ‘didn’t care whether the countries bordering Russia became communized’, as it had little impact on U.S. public opinion.

But perhaps even more concerning was the fact that FDR remained convinced that Stalin would bend to American will through personal persuasion, just as Harriman had once naively believed. Roosevelt had previously told Churchill, ‘Being brutally frank … I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.’ After so many failed negotiations during the Warsaw Uprising, Harriman had painfully learned that such confidence in candour and apparent friendship was futile. Harriman would not go so far as to forcefully express his opinions; that would risk alienating Roosevelt. He had seen Gil Winant, the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, do this as he strenuously advocated for the exiled Polish government living in London. The result, of course, was that Winant found himself iced out of the upcoming conference. Harriman enjoyed his position at the heart of geopolitics and had political aspirations that reached beyond serving as an ambassador in the Roosevelt administration. Still, he returned to Moscow in late November 1944 thoroughly disheartened and dejected. ‘I do not believe that I have convinced the President of the importance of a vigilant firm policy in dealing with the political aspects in various Eastern European countries when the problems arise,’ he concluded in his memorandum.

By the time Averell left Kathy in Yalta as he departed for Malta, his dire outlook had not changed. Though Poland’s postwar borders and governance were to be a major topic of discussion at Yalta, like Churchill, Harriman feared it was already too late. The Americans had failed to truly challenge the Soviets on Poland throughout the latter half of 1944, and now the Red Army controlled Polish territory up to the Oder River, just miles from the German border. Regardless of what the western Allies argued at the conference, it seemed that Soviet designs on Poland were, as Harriman warned the new secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, ‘virtually a fait accompli’. Not even the famous Roosevelt charm could change that.

When Roosevelt returned from his tour of the island at 4.30, Harriman finally learned that his services were required – only it was not the president who required them. As soon as FDR had arrived back at the Quincy, he went straight to a military briefing with his Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Roosevelt who needed Harriman’s help was Anna. FDR had given her seventeen dollars to shop for gifts to bring home to the White House staff, as there would be no souvenirs to buy at Yalta. There were two problems with that. First, seventeen dollars was not nearly enough. Second, the shops would close in less than half an hour. The normally stoical ambassador took pity on Anna. FDR did not want his advice. He had nothing better to do. He might as well help her.

Averell Harriman was one of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world, an expert across many areas of business and government. But he did happen to know a particular detail about shopping in Malta: the world-renowned Maltese lace was just the gift required. As Averell never carried a wallet, he had already asked a local administrator’s wife to collect some for him. He generously told Anna she could take her pick from his own selection. They could go to the woman’s house and look at it right away. Anna readily agreed, so the ambassador and the president’s daughter went off together to examine piles of lace.

FIVE

February 2–3, 1945

Shortly after 11 p.m., Sarah, Anna, and their fathers arrived at Malta’s RAF Luqa. Official cars were descending on the airport in droves, and the British and American delegates now spilled out of the vehicles onto the tarmac and made their way to their assigned Yorks and C-54 Skymasters, their path illuminated by one lone spotlight in the blackout. ‘The Russians had been told that we were bringing 35 people a piece,’ Sarah had remarked to her mother the day before. ‘The total complement of souls is now 535!’ Some were already based in Russia or had travelled there by ship, but the majority now stood on the airfield. Thousands of pieces of luggage and supplies were being loaded onto the planes: personal bags marked with white labels, hand luggage with buff labels, and cases containing secret documents bearing distinctive yellow labels with black bands. Roosevelt and his party looked on at the bustling activity as their bags were ferried away to their aircraft. Standing near the president was the forty-four-year-old secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, his customary Homburg covering his prematurely white hair, which contrasted starkly with his heavy, dark eyebrows. The president joked to Stettinius that the combined western delegation was so large that it might appear to the Russians to be ‘a minor invasion’.

Sarah Churchill knew what an invasion looked like. She had spent the autumn of 1942 at RAF Medmenham preparing for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. As a section officer in the aerial reconnaissance division, Sarah and her fellow intelligence analysts worked around the clock scrutinising pilots’ aerial photographs of German and Italian shipyards, railways, troop movements and factories – vital information that informed Allied naval invasions, ground assaults and bombing strategies. The training was intensely difficult for men and women alike. They had to look at photographs taken from ten thousand feet above ground and discern whether an area of grass had been disturbed by troop movements or grazing animals. They learned to differentiate between types of ships solely by the shadows they cast, and how to layer images to create three dimensions, use complicated slide rules, and compute logarithms.

For Sarah, Operation Torch represented one of the triumphs of her war experience – but not because of the invasion itself. During a weekend leave that November, Sarah had driven to Chequers, the country estate of British prime ministers north of London, on an army motorcycle. When she arrived, she immediately went up to see her father, who was dressing for dinner. While meticulously brushing the two or three hairs that remained on his otherwise bald head, he conspiratorially turned to Sarah and said, ‘At this very moment, sliding stealthily through the Straits of Gibraltar under cover of darkness, go five hundred and forty-two ships, for the landings in North Africa.’

It was rare that Sarah knew any military subject better than Winston, but on this occasion, she did. ‘Two hundred and forty-three,’ she corrected him, unable to help herself.

‘How do you know?’ he shot back.

Sarah had spent the past three months poring over images of the region. She had analysed the locations where the ships would drop anchor and knew exactly how large a fleet would land along the French Moroccan and Algerian coasts.

Impressed, her father demanded to know why she had not told him what she had been working on. Sarah retorted, ‘I believe there is such a thing as security.’ Instead of erupting in a ‘blaze of anger’ at this apparent impertinence, Winston chuckled. Later that night, he proceeded to regale his guests with the story. He also repeated it to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was in England, visiting British women engaged in war work. Amused, she in turn told the tale to the American press.

Several days later, Sarah found herself summoned to the Air Ministry. Officials there accused her of breaching security by divulging the details of a major Allied invasion. ‘Who told Mrs Roosevelt this story?’ they insisted.

Sarah could only reply, ‘My father.’

Her superiors were simultaneously frustrated and amused. There was nothing the Air Ministry could do about it.

This evening, however, there was little room for humour. As Winston and Sarah bid their delegates from the Foreign Office a temporary goodbye as they were shown to their respective aircraft, neither the prime minister nor the foreign secretary yet had any concrete information about the fate of their colleagues and friends whose York had crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Surely the tragedy cast an air of unease over the flight ahead – one that was, objectively speaking, far more dangerous than the trip from Britain to Malta. The transport planes were unpressurised, so the two delegations would fly to the Crimea at a low altitude – no more than six thousand feet – leaving them exposed to the smattering of Nazi anti-aircraft units that remained on the Aegean Islands. There was also a real risk of Turkish anti-aircraft fire. Still technically neutral, the Turks did not intend to fire at Allied planes, but they had mistakenly shot at a British plane carrying part of the advance team from Malta to the Crimea ahead of the conference; the attack left the tail riddled with shell holes. Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s planes would each travel surrounded by six P-38s for protection, but for the dozen remaining transports, the only safeguard was to fly under the cover of darkness. It was imperative that each aircraft take off at a precisely scheduled moment. Once the planes reached the Crimea, further complications could arise. It was reported that heavy fog was expected to hover over the Saki airfield for most of the day, leaving a narrow window of time for the VIP-laden planes to make a safe landing. Soviet airfields lacked the technological support a pilot needed to land a plane using instruments alone in conditions of poor visibility.

Danger aside, Anna Roosevelt was relieved to be getting underway as she boarded their C-54 – nicknamed the Sacred Cow – the first plane ever custom-made for the president of the United States. She enjoyed being her father’s girl Friday, but he did not make the job easy. She had spent the past eight hours in a frenzy. Her father seemed to assume that Anna could read his mind. After the tour of Malta and the potential souvenir debacle, which Harriman had sorted out for her, FDR had instructed Anna to make arrangements for dinner. He did not tell her whom he wished to invite, nor even how many people would attend, and as he had already left for the military briefing, all she could do was make an educated guess. Then she ‘frantically’ raced around, distributing invitations. Meanwhile, she was fretting about her father’s condition after the strain of the long, exhausting day – with dinner still ahead. After the briefing with the chiefs of staff, she thought FDR would finally be able to take a short break, but Stettinius and Eden slipped into his room for a pre-dinner chin wag when she was not looking. Then an unannounced visitor appeared out of the blue: Randolph Churchill, the prime minister’s son. Churchill decidedly had not asked him along for the conference. Randolph, who was stationed in Yugoslavia, had come to Malta en route to Italy to have some dental work done, which just so happened to coincide with his father’s visit. Having heard that Randolph ‘annoy[ed] his father’, Anna tried to keep him out of the way. She invited Randolph and Sarah for drinks in her cabin while she plotted the most diplomatic way to get rid of him before dinner. After all, Sarah had explicitly been invited, but Randolph had not. (‘We had a visit from Randolph,’ Sarah cryptically reported to Clementine, knowing just how much her brother could frustrate Winston. ‘I will tell you about that in another letter.’) Randolph quickly realised he was getting the brushoff; fortunately he excused himself, without making a scene, for a ‘pressing engagement’ back on the Sirius.

Dinner finally came and went, and just when Anna thought she had a few minutes to quickly throw her things into the appropriate cases and bags before leaving for the airfield, a peeved Harry Hopkins – who had just had a run-in with Anthony Eden – turned up at her room, looking for a drink. Anna begrudgingly opened the case she had finally finished packing and offered him a dram of the scotch she had brought along. But when her back was turned, Hopkins walked off with the bottle. She was not terribly upset to lose the scotch itself. However, the bottle was packed in a special box her husband had carried with him while serving in the Mediterranean; keeping it with her made Anna feel as if some small piece of him was nearby. Hopkins had taken it without a thought.

At 11.30 p.m. the engines of the planes scheduled to leave first roared to life. The noise was thunderous. They took off at ten-minute intervals and soared eastward into the night, blue flames trailing behind them. One by one over the next four hours, the planes disappeared into the dark sky until just two transports and their fighter escorts remained. At 3.30 a.m., the Sacred Cow took flight, followed minutes later by the prime minister’s Skymaster.

Much to the chagrin of Dr Bruenn and the chief of the president’s Secret Service detail, Mike Reilly, Roosevelt refused to use a safety belt while he slept in his bed during the flight. Concerned that the president might roll out and injure himself if the plane braked suddenly on takeoff, Dr Bruenn had crept over to FDR’s berth and lain down along the side. The young doctor thought he had managed to sneak in without Roosevelt’s realising he had an uninvited bunkmate. The doctor was wrong. FDR later told him, with a wink and a smile, ‘It’s lucky I recognized you as you came in.’

At 8.30 a.m. local time, the planes began to break through a low ceiling of clouds, landing at Saki with perfect choreography. Everything around the airfield was carefully staged for their arrival. The Soviets had erected tents brimming with refreshments beside the runway, a resplendent Red Army band stood ready to burst into triumphant martial music, and a long line of black armoured Lend-Lease Packards and Russian-made hearselike ZiS limousines were poised to take the delegates off to Yalta, once they had been feted properly.