J. Bradford DeLong allows FDR's VP Henry Wallace's confession of error to be read on his blog;
Before 1949 I thought Russia really wanted and needed peace. After 1949 I became more and more disgusted with the Soviet methods and finally became convinced that the Politburo wanted the Cold War continued indefinitely, even at the peril of accidentally provoking a hot war.
In this article eI shall speak frankly of some of the circumstances which have caused me to revise my attitude.Which Wallace went on to do, quite admirably and candidly--even admitting that he'd been hoodwinked when he visited the Soviet Union in 1944. A trip on which he'd been accompanied by (at least) two Americans we now know were secret Soviet Agents; Owen Lattimore and John Carter Vincent.
Though he did not admit that there were plenty of people who were right about Russia who took a lot of grief for their prescience. People such as Whittaker Chambers and Joe McCarthy, say.
That said, we eagerly await news of whether this comment makes the Semi-Daily Journal (Reality Based Economics) cut;
17Patrick R. Sullivan said...
'This plus the testimony of American ex-Communists convinced me that Russia had been getting information illegally to which neither she nor any other nation was entitled.'
Two of the people responsible for giving that information, illegally, to Russia were former Harvard economists Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White.
'I remember the Red Hysteria well. The Hysterics were all wrong. Wallace was right.'
Wallace, as quoted, says the hysterics had it right, and he was wrong.
Also, there are a couple of new books out that bear on this. 'Stalin's Secret Agents' by Evans and Romerstein, and 'The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order', by Benn Steil
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February 24, 2013 at 10:38 AM
