This is the most recent installment of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College, on his book revealing how communists, from Moscow to New York to Chicago, have long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials from Soviet archives, FBI files, and more. Larry Schweikart, author of A Patriot’s History of the United States, calls Dupes “a great contribution.” Burt Folsom, author of New Deal or Raw Deal, says Dupes is “so fascinating and so revealing that I couldn’t put it down.”
“Man of the Year?” Really?
Big Peace: Professor Kengor, this week Russian President Dmitri Medvedev arrives in Poland. This comes after a major announcement by the Duma conceding Russian responsibility for the Katyn Woods massacre. What was that massacre, and how did it produce dupes as high up as the Oval Office?
Kengor: It occurred in the spring of 1940, shortly after the Soviets and Nazis commenced their dual invasion and dissection of Poland, launching World War II. Both then proceeded to do to Poland what they did best: mass murder.
As to Katyn, that’s a general name for a horrible war crime committed by the Soviets, mainly at the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia. They rounded up 22,000 Polish POWs and systematically executed them, one by one. The NKVD assassins were consumed by a 24/7 bloodlust, shooting these handcuffed Polish officers in the back of the head as they kneeled. The operation had to run 24/7—do the math. The communists, who, as Michael Novak has stated, were always better liars than the Nazis, used pistols rather than gas ovens.
Several of these NKVD assassins turned their revolvers on themselves when they finished. The demons had crowded in; the torment was too much.
Big Peace: Stalin personally ordered the killings?
Kengor: Yes. The surviving document, which I quote in Dupes, including with attesting signatures by Molotov, Mikoyan, and Kaganovich, is signed by Stalin, condemning these poor souls, who should have been accorded prisoner-of-war protection, to “the supreme penalty.”
By the way, the date of the document is March 5, 1940, which, as fate would have it, was the precise date that Stalin himself would ultimately perish, March 5, 1953, as the demons crowded in around him. Stalin suffered a horrible death, as described by his daughter, Svetlana. In his final gasp, Stalin shook his fist upward at God and seemed to be waving his arms fending off unseen things in the room. The Soviet officials at his bedside were mortified.
Big Peace: Stalin died 13 years to the day he signed the execution order for the Polish prisoners?
Kengor: Precisely.
Big Peace: Again, the significance of this right now is that the Russian Duma has just admitted that Russia was responsible for this dreadful act.
Kengor: That’s correct, although, naturally, the lingering Bolsheviks still haunting Russia in the small but not insignificant Communist Party continue denying it. In fact, Communist Party members in the Duma voted against the declaration, dubbing the massacre “one of the greatest myths of the 20th century.” Stalin salutes them from the grave, howling with delight.
But, yes, the action by the Duma is a wonderful, long-awaited development, especially to Poles, including some elderly folks who were mere children when their dads were taken from them and shot, buried in the woods by a thin layer of dirt.
Bear in mind, it was just last spring that the Polish president and his entire entourage were tragically killed in a plane crash en route to Katyn to pay homage to their lost brethren.
Big Peace: Let’s get to the dupes in this. Here’s the key point: The world learned about this tragedy in the middle of World War II, but the Soviets denied responsibility. Among those who you say swallowed the Soviet line was the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Kengor: Correct. The mass graves were discovered by the Nazis, who were then at war with the Soviets, driving the Soviets out of Poland. The Nazis happened upon the corpses, half-rotted in the snow. They told the world what they found. The Soviets, as masterful liars, said they didn’t kill the men, instead pointing the finger at the Nazis. The rest of the world had to try to figure out who was guilty.
Among them was FDR, who, despite what his hagiographers tell you, seemed somewhat enamored with “Uncle Joe” Stalin.
Big Peace: Those words “somewhat enamored” will raise the ire of the Roosevelt lovers in the academy.
Kengor: Yes, but I can back that up. And I say that as someone who, overall, has rated FDR favorably. I was one of the presidential scholars polled by C-SPAN for its ranking of presidents. That survey was brilliant in its ability to remove partisanship and ideology from the evaluation criteria. Also, in Dupes, I defend FDR vigorously against the egregious communist attempts to smear him. Go to the website for my book (click here) and view the documents from the Comintern Archives, where communists trashed FDR, calling him a fascist, imperialist, warmonger, slave-master.
That said, I don’t see an FDR who, overall, lamented “holding hands with the devil”—Stalin—in order to “cross the bridge,” meaning World War II. I have a full chapter of jaw-dropping quotes from FDR revealing the man to be Carter-esque in his naïveté toward the Soviet dictator. Everything is carefully cited. Facts are facts. It’s nothing personal.
Big Peace: Maybe you can give us additional examples next week, but tell us how this applied to Stalin and Katyn.
Kengor: Sure. I also develop this, by the way, in an article being posted at FoxNews.com.
In short, FDR didn’t want to believe that Stalin and the Soviets were responsible. He dispatched a special emissary, George Earle, an old-school Democrat, war hero, former Pennsylvania governor. It took Earle little time to conclude the Soviets were guilty. He reported precisely that to FDR, presenting the evidence directly, telling the president it was “overwhelming.” FDR refused him. “George, the Germans could have rigged things up,” FDR said repeatedly.
Eventually, Earle became so frustrated that he threatened to go public. An angry FDR ordered him silent. To ensure that silence, Earle was sent to the island of Samoa, 7,000 miles away, immediate appointment as assistant head of the Samoan Defense Group.
Big Peace: FDR actually did this?
Kengor: That’s what George Earle claimed. And Earle testified to a Congressional inquiry on Katyn in 1951.
Incredible, isn’t it? FDR’s academic hagiographers will studiously ignore this one, just as they ignore his executive order locking up Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
Earle’s son survives. He was interviewed for an outstanding PBS documentary series by Laurence Rees. In Dupes, this material is on pages 170-74, with all the sources.
Big Peace: This is one of many occasions you document of FDR being duped by Stalin. Importantly, Stalin wasn’t the only communist to deceive FDR.
Kengor: There were FDR aides who were communist spies who misled and disserved the president and America: Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Alger Hiss, among others. There was also Harry Hopkins.
Big Peace: That’s a huge item in your book. You report that Harry Hopkins, FDR’s right-hand man, may have been a Soviet spy. That’s stunning.
Kengor: That would fundamentally alter our understanding of the period. I don’t resolve the question, but I lay out the sources claiming Hopkins was “Agent 19” in the Venona transcripts. These are credible, careful, serious sources. We could pick up with that next week.
For this week, though, let’s remember what happened in Katyn 70 years ago. At long last, some small measure of justice has been served.
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