Editor's Note

Keynoting a “Beat Dewey” rally at Madison Square Garden on September 12, 1946, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace warned Americans against the Truman administration’s “get tough with Russia” policy. The secretary had been Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president from 1941 to 1945 before moderate Democratic Party leaders replaced him with Harry Truman despite Wallace’s popularity with Party voters. But as the US moved closer to Britain and turned against the Soviet Union, he became frustrated. At the rally he said, “‘Getting tough’ never brought anything real and lasting—whether for schoolyard bullies or businessmen or world powers.” According to him, America had no interests in Eastern Europe and should leave it to the Soviet Union. For the sake of peace in the new atomic age, the US should cooperate with the USSR before it developed the bomb. He also thought that countries in the American and Soviet-led blocs would move from being either communist or capitalist into a middle way: “Under friendly peaceful competition the Russian world and the American world will gradually become more alike. The Russians will be forced to grant more and more of the personal freedoms; and we shall become more and more absorbed with the problems of social-economic justice.”

The speech was front-page news. Journalists originally reported that Harry Truman approved Wallace’s keynote as a major policy speech, which undermined Secretary of State James Byrnes, who was negotiating with now-confused allies in Paris. The administration corrected the misunderstanding, ordered Wallace to stop discussing foreign policy, and fired him on September 20 when refused to keep quiet. In 1948, Wallace ran for president as a third-party candidate. Many, including Niebuhr, expected the darling of the left to break apart the Democratic coalition that Roosevelt built.

In October 1946, Reinhold Niebuhr criticized Wallace’s speech and emphasized the need for firmness with the Soviet Union. Yet he also emphasized the need for patience, alluding to his editorial the previous month in which he argues that “patience and lack of provocation may through the years allay Russian fears and mitigate Russian truculence.” In that piece he criticizes anti-communist Catholics and writes that “hysterical reactions to Russia are irresponsible.” Deciphering where Niebuhr and other contributors drew the line between a firm policy and a soft policy is difficult. For example, in a November 1946 editorial, John C. Bennett said the US was right to resist Russian expansion in Europe. But the Christianity and Crisis co-founder argued that the US should abandon European bases that appear threatening to the USSR because “fear is one factor in the Russian drive for power.” Bennett may have thought this was a reasonable, patient, and firm policy, but he appears to be promoting an appeasement of sorts, especially if the US withdrew troops without the USSR giving up something in return.

Ironically, parts of Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech could have been copied and pasted from the 1946 pages of Christianity and Crisis. Or at least the writers regularly criticized the anti-communist right and explained why the US should treat the USSR generously. Like Wallace, the journal’s contributors wrote that the Soviet Union misbehaved because it feared the United States, so America must placate those fears and cooperate with Moscow. Both Wallace and Charles Gilkey spoke about meeting the Soviet Union “half way” (or in Gilkey’s words, “more than half-way”). Wallace criticized Britain and its imperialism for undermining US-USSR relations, but so did Niebuhr, who criticized Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech. Even when Wallace talked about a global convergence of communism and capitalism, he resembles Niebuhr’s approving talk of “a middle way between too much planning and a too unregulated freedom.” Similarly, after the Soviet-backed Czechoslovak coup in February 1948, Bennett mourned the loss of a country that could have represented the convergence of communism and liberty: “It is at least arguable that Russia and some of the feudal countries in eastern Europe have gained something from Communism… But here is a country that, to a considerable extent, had the best of our Western forms of freedom and which was on the way to a democratic socialism.”

The shift from criticizing anti-communists to criticizing Wallace within a month may have surprised Christianity and Crisis readers, and some were angry. During a donation drive in early 1947, the journal asked readers if the publication should continue, and most responded positively. Yet a significant minority responded that the journal should not continue because the editors were “too intransigent toward Russia” and wrongly opposed Wallace.

Despite any original common sentiments between Christianity and Crisis and Wallace, after the September speech they went in different directions. Even though Niebuhr and others wanted the US to work with America’s wartime ally and treat it generously, the reality of USSR misdeeds gradually convinced them to become more anti-Soviet Union. For example, the journal strongly supported the Marshall Plan while Wallace denounced it. The former vice president meanwhile moved into the left-wing fringe; his speeches even used lines that originally appeared the Daily Worker, a New York-based communist newspaper.

When Wallace ran against Truman in the 1948 presidential election as a third-party candidate, Christianity and Crisis did not focus on the details of his foreign policy. Instead, contributors appeared mostly annoyed with his incompetence, communist connections, and threat to President Truman’s reelection prospects. Niebuhr initially worried that Wallace would help isolationists retake the government, but internationalist Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey allayed that fear. Then he worried that Wallace would help reactionaries gain power, which would spread a hysteria that helped communist propaganda. Yet the journal also remained critical of Truman as he sought to contain the Soviet Union; Niebuhr on the eve of the presidential election writes, “Mr. Truman does not understand foreign policy,” though he approved of the administration’s foreign policy team. He elaborates, “Our foreign policy being far from perfect, a really great statesman might give it a new creative impulse which would put our cause on the moral offensive rather than the defensive. But such a venture is not within the competence of Mr. Wallace.” Though most thought Dewey’s victory was inevitable, Truman won; Wallace was a non-factor and received fewer votes than Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond. Edward Leroy Long Jr., a recent graduate of Niebuhr’s Union Seminary, argued in December 1948 that Wallace was a flawed, naïve candidate with too many communist connections. But he “spoke just enough truth to make the major parties uneasy” and was “mildly corrective of certain types of American self-righteousness.” He also writes that “a Communist is dangerous since he holds political allegiance to Moscow, not because of his viewpoints on specific questions.”

Reading Christianity and Crisis from the fall of 1946 can be jarring as Niebuhr and company go from blasting Catholics for being hysterically anti-communist—in which case the Catholics were closer to the wiser policy—to blasting Henry Wallace—who at first glance appears to be closer to what the journal wanted. An episode Niebuhr describes maybe explains the shift. Earlier he traveled in Germany and criticized the Americans’ presence and behavior, as did another contributor who suggested that the Russians treated their occupied territory better. Yet the Germans were later glad when they heard that the US troops would stay. Niebuhr found this popularity “pathetic,” but he learned that Germans preferred American occupation and feared the USSR. If this news surprised him, then as Marc LiVecche notes, he didn’t know the facts about Soviet occupation or chose to ignore them. Still, the episode emphasizes the need for Christian realists to understand realities on the ground while developing policy advice. They should also be flexible enough to adjust their recommendations to respond to the new evidence.

Perhaps Niebuhr and his contributors were reluctant to recognize the threat of communist totalitarianism the same way they recognized the threat of fascist totalitarianism because they came from left-wing, socialist backgrounds. They rightly warned Americans about their pride and imperfection in 1945–46, but in the process they veered too close to drawing a moral equivalence between democracy and communism. Nevertheless, over the next few years they thankfully joined Truman and others to resist the Soviet Union, even if they arrived late.

— Mark Melton
Managing Editor