S8 Ep886: FDR faced significant domestic opposition from powerful congressional voices like Harry Truman and Hiram Johnson, who viewed both Hitler and Stalin as "monsters" or "beasts." Internal polls showed that 54% of Americans opposed aiding the Soviet Union, wit

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Arts, Books, News, Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

FDR faced significant domestic opposition from powerful congressional voices like Harry Truman and Hiram Johnson, who viewed both Hitler and Stalin as "monsters" or "beasts." Internal polls showed that 54% of Americans opposed aiding the Soviet Union, with majority support in only 11 states. To bypass this political resistance, the Roosevelt administration kept the early stages of Soviet aid secret for six months. Sean McMeekin notes that it was only after the Soviet regime survived the 1941 winter that Roosevelt publicly admitted to a multi-billion dollar credit line with no strings attached, effectively winning the political battle through executive discretion. (2/8)
1900 BAKU

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is CBSI in the world.
0:07.0	I'm John Batchel with Professor Sean McMeakin.
0:09.7	His new book is Stalin's War, a new history of World War II.
0:12.8	Stalin's setting the imperialist states against each other, tear each other up, and I'll gobble up territory.
0:18.5	Except Stalin was out of equipment, weapons, food, in order to
0:23.4	continue the fight. So he came to depend almost like a child on the arsenal of democracy.
0:33.2	The arsenal of democracy run by FDR and the American people.
0:38.2	However, we come to troubles, especially early 1942-43, in which FDR and Churchill make a deal, although it was Eisenhower who did it,
0:52.2	with the French commander of the North African forces,
0:55.8	a man who switches side, goes from being a fascist sympathizer to an American sympathizer.
1:01.2	His name was Darlane. It's an obscure detail of history. But it did bother FDR, I learned from
1:07.4	the professor a lot. So we come to January, 1943, the Casablanca conference in North Africa.
1:14.3	Stalin does not attend.
1:16.1	Churchill's there.
1:17.2	Roosevelt's there.
1:18.7	Sean, why does FDR announce unconditional surrender?
1:24.3	Well, it's a great question, John.
1:25.9	And the Darlon deal and the kind of almost political stench surrounding, it definitely has something to do with this in part because Roosevelt was used to the kind of the conservative Southern Democrats and the Republicans attacking him for various things from the quote unquote right. But he's getting it from the left now, too. They're all saying he's sort of soft, that he's cut some deal with this fascist
1:45.1	vichy regime, that he's soft. And this is a little bit of an obsession for Roosevelt, because of course, it plays in with his own complex that really the U.S. is not doing enough to really fight the Germans. I mean, after all, it was a little strange to begin with that he had declared Germany first as the priority, this is back in Arcadia, December 41 after Pearl Harbor.
2:03.4	And then on top of that,
2:04.3	they declared the number one priority inside of Germany first was aid to Russia's offensive by all
2:08.5	available means. And he's done everything he can to please Stalin. They've sent him just
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 2 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.