Harry Hopkins and Lend Lease 

The Lend-Lease bill passed on March 11, 1941, a program to aid Allies in the war against Germany and Japan. Food, oil, and materiél were given to Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union, Free France, and other allies. 

A large part of the Lend-Lease picture is filled by Harry Hopkins, called co-president, one-man cabinet, Rasputin of the White House, and person in charge of Lend Lease. According to the September 22, 1941 issue of Life magazine:  

"As head of the Lend-Lease program, his control of the destiny of empire is second only to Mr. Roosevelt's. As the President's familiar and constant traveling companion, he is a perfect mirror of executive policy who can make or break a plan or its proponent with as little effort as a grunt or a frown. In the kind of personalized one-man government that war has made of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that man has the greatest influence who has easiest access to the Chief of State's ear. Harry Hopkins sees the President early, late and frequently in between." (p. 130) 

In distributing Lend Lease aid, Harry Hopkins and President Roosevelt gave Stalin preferential treatment, even over the needs of our troops and other Allies: "… the record shows that whatever Moscow 'urgency needed,' Moscow usually got. They needed a weapons and matériel lifeline, and they got Lend-Lease, which, as we've seen, came together after a successful triple play of Stalin's influence team--Hammer to Hopkins to White." (p. 289) 

Roosevelt's naïve assessment of Stalin and his massive Lend Lease aid to Russia would soon come back to haunt the world: "Goodness gracious, call off the agreement with these monsters to whom we have just pledged $1 billion and enough Dodge trucks to occupy eastern and central Europe." (p. 238) 

Russian aid took precedence over U.S. forces in the Philippines 

One of the most startling historical gems Diana West dug up in her research was what she called the "Russia First" policy, which betrayed our American soldiers and Filipino allies: 

"All Hopkins and Marshall could think of, talk about, was a 'second front' in northern France.' That was true from the start, even before Bataan fell, back when MacArthur still had bulldozers working around the clock, carving out four airstrips in the central Philippines and nine on Mindanao because the general believed, really believed, U.S. ships would be full-steaming ahead to bring him supplies, reinforcements, war planes. It wouldn't have taken all that much to turn things around. William Manchester writes that in those first days of war Gen. Hap Arnold 'told an RAF commander that if eighty B-17s and two hundred P-40s could get to the islands, he believed 'we could regain superiority of the air in the theater.'" (p. 258) General "MacArthur would beg Washington for 'just three planes so I can see. You can't fight them if you can't see them. I am now blind.' They never came. Nothing did." (p. 258)  

Yet General MacArthur was promised help from President Roosevelt. In "a late January/early-February 1942 cable of particularly outrageous lies from Roosevelt to Quezon: 'A continuous stream of fighter and pursuit planes is traversing the Pacific.' Well, why weren't they? Why wasn't supplying Americans in the Philippines taking precedence over supplying Russians in Europe? No risk was small enough, apparently, to supply MacArthur, no cost was too large, demonstrably, to supply Stalin. Why? The answer was the American policy of what might as well be called Russia First. The Russia First policy evolved over 1941, the year in which Congress ceded those superpowers to FDR in the Lend-Lease bill--arguably, the most Sovietized piece of American legislation ever (Hammer to Hopkins to White)." (p. 258-259) 

Major George Racey Jordan was a supervisory "expiditer" of Soviet Lend-Lease aid stationed in Great Falls, Montana, who called Lend Lease "the greatest mail-order catalogue" ever. Thanks to Major Jordan's eyewitness account, we now see that the Russia First policy was hampering America's war efforts and had been in effect since 1941. We have hard evidence of this policy, in orders received by Major Jordan on January 1, 1943 that stated: 

"The President has directed that 'airplanes be delivered in accordance with protocol schedules by the most expeditious means.' To implement these directives, the modification, equipment and movement of Russian planes have been given first priority, even over planes for the U.S. Army Air Forces [emphasis added]." (p. 44) 

And what are some of the results of this policy? Let's look at what was happening to our American troops, fighting in the Philippines. 151,000 American and Filipino troops "had just begun their fourth month of unreinforced, unsupplied, death-defying resistance to a massive, concentrated Japanese assault on Bataan and Corregidor". And, "It just happens that also on March 11, 1942, under Roosevelt's order, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was attempting to slip through the Japanese blockade and leave the American island protectorate to take up command of the Southwest Pacific in Australia." (p. 46) 

General MacArthur's escape through the Japanese blockade is portrayed at the end of the classic World War II movie, They Were Expendable, starring John Wayne. 

On April 9, 1942, the U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered to the Japanese on the Bataan peninsula. "Approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March." (Read more) 

Harry Hopkins and nuclear secrets 

Before we move on to Major Jordan's big discovery, we need to supply some background on Harry Hopkins, who had "extremely intimate awareness of and central involvement in setting up and monitoring what became known as the Manhattan Project." Winston Churchill would conduct "his correspondence on the atomic project with Hopkins rather than with the President." (p. 185)  

The Soviet Union plotted to steal U.S. atomic technology through an espionage plot codenamed "Enormous." But "when this same massive espionage plot first came under FBI surveillance, Hopkins warned the Soviets" (p. 186). Harry Hopkins betrayal of America was just beginning, as we shall see.  

Thankfully, Major Jordan kept copious notes of the suspicious goings-on in Great Falls, Montana. According to Diana West, "he recorded the names, ranks and functions of some 418 Russians who deplaned and illegally entered the United States." Jordan stated, "I would see them jump off planes, hop over fences, and ruin for taxicabs.… It was an ideal set up for planting spies in this country." (p. 121) 

Then Major Jordan started "spot-checking the contents of those black suitcases, which at a certain point, started shipping through the airfield, fifty at a time, and under armed Russian guard. The mystery of these suitcases particularly troubled Jordan." (p 122) 

One midwinter night Jordan slipped away from a vodka party hosted by his Russian comrades and went to the airport, to find a Lend-Lease plane warming up, waiting for clearance. "Jordan pushed and ducked his way past 'a barrel-chested Russian,' as he wrote, one of two armed couriers aboard, to clamber into the plane's cabin…. As Jordan made his intentions clear, he and the guards began to scuffle, the Russian shrieking probably the one English word they knew: Deeplomateek!'" (p. 122) 

Jordan then called for an American soldier who was on patrol about thirty feet away. Asking the soldier if he had had combat experience, the soldier replied he did. Jordan then told him, "I'm going to open more of this baggage. I want you to watch these two Russians. Both are armed. I don't expect any trouble. But if one of them aims a gun at me, I want you to let him have it first. Understand?" The American soldier asked if that was an order. He said it was. 

Jordan, using a flashlight, proceeded to examine roughly every third suitcase and take notes on the contents. 

Diana West describes, "What a memorandum it was. It listed the road maps he found pinpointing American industrial sites ('Westinghouse,' 'Blaw-Knox'). Maps of the Panama Canal Zone. Documents related to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, 'one of the most sensitive areas in the war effort.' Folders stuffed with naval and shipping intelligence. Stacks of papers on oil refineries, machine tools, and foundries, and the like. Groups of documents on stationery from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and State…. a thick map bearing the legend that Jordan recorded as 'Oak Ridge, Manhattan Engineering District.'… He also found a carbon copy of a report from 'Oak Ridge' containing a series of 'outlandish' words Jordan made a note to look up later: 'cyclotron,' 'proton,' deuteron.' There were also 'curious' phrases, he wrote, 'energy produced by fission' and 'walls five feet thick, of lead and water, to control flying neutrons.'" (p. 123) 

Jordan didn't know fully at the time what was going on, but "He did, however, have that gut-checking hunch that these documents, so many of them obviously classified (including, for example, confidential reports to the secretary of state originating in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow), shouldn't be heading out of the country to a foreign power. Jordan didn't know it, but he was witnessing the last days of the pre-Atomic Age, when the Manhattan Project was the biggest state secret the United States had. Or thought it had. As we now know, Stalin was not at all surprised when Truman informed him of the atomic bomb at Potsdam in 1945. Turns out, Russian knowledge of the effort was surprisingly widespread." (pp. 123-124) 

Diana West questions whether Lend-Lease had become a rogue operation under Harry Hopkins: "was the Lend-Lease atomic flow, indeed, all right, kosher, and aboveboard from the point of view and national interest of Uncle Sam? Or was Lend-Lease covering up a rogue operation? Was Lend-Lease, as run out of the White House by the president's top adviser Harry Hopkins, itself a rogue operation?" (p. 126) 

More evidence backs up Major Jordan's credibility and his claims. "In his 1995 book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes mines Jordan's memoir as a reference, reproducing Jordan's list of twenty-three atomic materials (including nearly fourteen million pounds of aluminum tubes) as extracted from Lend-Lease tallies the Soviets gave Jordan. Rhodes describes these ingredients as 'useful in constructing and controlling a nuclear reactor.'" (p. 126) 

Major Jordan's 1949-50 testimony before Congress would include descriptions of the black suitcases and a note Jordan found on White House stationery, with the initials "H.H.", affixed to two documents: (1) a thick map "as wide as the span of my extended arm" with a legend Jordan recorded as "Oak Ridge Manhattan Engineering District," the top secret headquarters of the U.S. atomic project. (2) The second document was a carbon copy of a report with those curious words and phrases, "cyclotron," "deuteron," "energy produced by fission", and "walls five feet thick" (p. 139). 

Major Jordan also told Congress of a personal phone call he had received from Harry Hopkins in April 1943. Jordan testified that this was his only contact with him. "Hopkins went on to tell Jordan about 'a certain shipment of chemicals' that would be coming through Great Falls and would need expediting…. 'I don't want you to discuss it with anyone,' Hopkins said, 'and it is not to go on the records. Don't make a big production of it, but just send it through quietly, in a hurry.'" (p. 139) 

It ended up these chemicals were uranium, coming from a mine in Canada. 

"This uranium shipment--news of which Jordan first brought to the public in December 1949 following that first, successful, and shocking Soviet atomic test--was confirmed to have been pushed through to the USSR by federal agencies led by Lend-Lease…. This shipment, which Hopkins apparently tipped off Jordan to, was the second of three shipments totaling nearly three-quarters of a ton." (p. 139) 

Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel and KGB London chief reported in 1990 that as a young KGB agent he had heard Iskhak Akhmerov (a Soviet spymaster) devote most of a lecture at KGB headquarters "to the man whom, he alleged, was the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States. Harry Hopkins." (p. 142) 

As Diana West put it, Harry Hopkins "was said, on credible authority, to have been a Kremlin agent, the supreme Kremlin agent in the United States during World War II--and no one cared." (p. 146) 

The implications are truly astounding. Soviet agent Harry Hopkins was able to deflect the course of the United States in multiple aspects, to favor communist Russia. How many more influential agents still remain undetected within the U.S. government/military? 

"A Soviet spy and American traitor advised the president and himself made policy before and during World War II. This is a thesis that demands further confrontation even if it might shift the balance of our historic understanding." (p. 148) 

Site of D-day invasion - Stalin's choice vs. Churchill's / Eisenhower's choice  

President Franklin Roosevelt's naïve chumminess with Stalin blinded him to the fact that he was being used by Stalin. In order to stay on Stalin's good side, President Roosevelt appears to have bent himself into a pretzel on many decisions, one being the site of the D-Day invasion. Although both Winston Churchill, General Eisenhower, and other military commanders on the ground advocated Italy as the site of the great D-Day invasion (already Allied territory), Stalin had other plans. Stalin insisted on northern France which, we will see, played into his plans for a future invasion of Eastern Europe.  

Diana West writes: 

"the historical record shows that Stalin was, arguably, the primary booster of the invasion of northern France that the [D-day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia] memorial commemorates; without doubt, he was its leading non-American booster. Another fact is, Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's precious friend and Stalin's precious asset, was also, arguably, the primary non-Russian booster of the extremely contentious decision to stage the main Allied assault on northern France (Stalin's choice) rather than on southern Europe (Churchill's choice)." (p. 251) 

General Eisenhower, along with Churchill, considered Italy "the correct place" to stage D-Day: 

"More significantly, the top U.S. commander of ground forces in Europe, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, agreed with this same assessment--at least he agreed with it before he was made top U.S. commander of ground forces in Europe. On November 26, 1943, at the Cairo Conference, which immediately preceded the Tehran Conference, Ike told a beribboned, bemedaled gathering of the American and British brass how vital Italy and southern Europe were to the war. Quote: 'Italy was the correct place in which to deploy our main forces and the objective should be the Valley of Po. In no other area could we so well threaten the whole German structure including France, the Balkans and the Reich itself. Here also our air would be closer to vital objectives in Germany' (emphasis added)." (pp. 263-264) 

Yet the Cairo Conference records, and General Eisenhower's statement about Italy being the right place to invade, didn't come to public light until 1961: 

"Of course, no one would be able to see that in black and white until 1961, when the State Department finally published the 1943 Cairo Conference records. Still, you didn't need to be a military genius to know what would happen if the Allies abandoned southern Europe as a priority. All you needed was a map to see that the conquering Red Army would roll into the resulting vacuum on Dodge trucks, right up to and including Berlin. (Even so, it almost didn't come off until Eisenhower halted U.S. forces before they could liberate Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. That was odd, too.)" (p. 264-265) 

And so Stalin's evil plans against Eastern Europe came together, with the help of a duped President Roosevelt, and the ever-so-useful Kremlin agent, Harry Hopkins: 

"Reinvading Europe through both northern France (OVERLORD) and, often forgotten, southern France (ANVIL), rather than pressing on from the already established Allied front and bases in Italy, and expanding operations from the Adriatic and Aegean Seas into south central Europe, as Churchill repeatedly and quite desperately proposed, left Eastern and Central Europe wide open to millions of Red Army troops. Unopposed, unchecked, these Red Army troops would ride their Lend-Lease fleets of Jeeps and Dodges deep into a Europe that was being ethnically cleansed of millions of anti-Bolsheviks by U.S. and British troops." (p. 253) 

Greasing the skids for Soviet takeover in Eastern Europe