The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners Read Online Free PDF

      That
the USSR might make a separate peace with Germany.
    ·       That
the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan was essential to victory

or necessary to save thousands of American lives.
    Such
premises, in other words, fall into the category we would later identify as
Soviet dezinformatsiya – disinformation purposefully planted, fed,
primed, echoed, and amplified according to Kremlin plan. Accepting Baldwin’s
list, then, we might consider two possible explanations. We, ourselves, arrived at these false premises. Or we, subverted
from within by hundreds of agents loyal to a foreign power and aided and
abetted by exponentially more fellow travelers and useful fools, were convinced to arrive at these false premises and were duped by a massive
Communist influence operation into making these and many, many other mistakes.
This is the shocking new scenario that begins to take shape with the overlay of
intelligence history onto diplomatic, military, and cultural history.”
    Radosh makes no mention of my
thematic treatment of such “great mistakes” – in part, at least, the
apparent fruits of Soviet propaganda/disinformation   even though it is discussed throughout American Betrayal . The reason, I
surmise, may explain why Radosh also repeatedly distorts my study and analysis
of Soviet influence over Roosevelt administration policy-making into
Soviet “control” of FDR. Many readers, as Radosh no doubt hopes, will reject
the cartoon of Soviet “control” he falsely claims American Betrayal depicts as being, as Radosh describes me work,
“unhinged.” His pattern of caricature, I believe, is an effort to avoid and
deny and even hide the impact of Soviet infiltration on the formation of US
policy that American Betrayal explores.
    THE
RADOSH PATTERN
    While it is up to me to flag what is
missing in the Radosh review, there is a discernible pattern to watch for.
    Radosh will condemn me and my book
for not bowing to the conventional consensus − in this case, the
conventional consensus on “the fear of a separate peace.”
    Next, he will lay out the
conventional consensus, quoting from conventional consensus historians.
    These, he labels “pre-eminent,”
“definitive” and the like. I, on the other hand, fall not just outside this
liberal orthodoxy, but am also a purveyor of “yellow journalism conspiracy
theories.”
    To make his calumny stick, he will,
as usual, omit mention of my copious sources that led me to my non-conventional
conclusions.
    THE
“MILITARY REALITY ON THE GROUND”
    A piece of liberal consensus on
World War II that Radosh defends to the death is the notion that the “military
reality of the ground” dictated all manner of US and British appeasement of
Stalin, from Lend-Lease profligacy to Yalta betrayal. Indeed, I have come
realize this becomes his battering ram against my book’s premise – my
re-examination of the role Soviet agents of influence played in shaping US
policy. His thinking seems to be that if the “military reality on the ground”
made Soviet appeasement our only choice, then the influence of a Harry Dexter
White or Lauchlin Currie or Nathan Gregory Silvermaster or Alger Hiss or Harry
Hopkins is just so many moot points of mere academic interest. In other hands,
such as mine, he condemns any other analysis of these spies and influence
agents’ impact as “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”
    To prove this point vis a vis the separate peace fear
factor, Radosh writes:
    “In
March 1942, when the Allies were facing major military setbacks, Churchill
wired FDR that the “gravity of the war” forced him to conclude that Britain and
the U.S. could not deny Stalin the frontiers he wanted in Eastern Europe, even
though it might contradict the goals of the Atlantic Charter. It was not Soviet
agents who led Churchill to this judgment, but the military reality on the
ground.”
    Who knows what led Churchill to this
judgment? I don’t. Radosh