'Good neighbors and sincere friends': United States policy toward the Soviet Union under Franklin D. Roosevelt

From almost the moment that he assumed office in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt struggled with career State Department and military officials to formulate and implement his policies toward the Soviet Union. With the onset of the Soviet-German War in 1941, Roosevelt firmly committed himself to a policy of unconditional aid to the Soviet Union. Over the loud objections of foreign policy bureaucrats, Roosevelt determined that the survival of the Soviet Union was vitally important to the United States. Bypassing resistance in the State Department and military, Roosevelt established a lend-lease mission in the Soviet Union that operated independent of the United States embassy and aggressively implemented Roosevelt's policy. Competition between the embassy and the lend-lease office in Moscow soon became virulent and public.; To resolve this conflict, in September 1943 Roosevelt replaced the offices of lend-lease and military attaché with a military mission to the Soviet Union under the jurisdiction of a new ambassador (Harriman) who was an outspoken supporter of Roosevelt's policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union. Unhappily for Roosevelt, dealing with difficult Soviet officials soon led Harriman to adopt the attitudes of the Soviet experts in the State Department, and he angrily encouraged harsher dealings with the Kremlin. Roosevelt, however, clung to a belief that his post-war goals could not be achieved without the cooperation of the Soviet Union.; Roosevelt died in April 1945. With him died his personal diplomacy and the vast influence of his unofficial advisers. All that remained to guide the new president were vague notions of what Roosevelt wanted to accomplish and the very officials Roosevelt had worked around for the past 12 years. Subsequent United States foreign policy would bear the mark of those that Roosevelt ignored.; This dissertation focuses on the attitudes and actions of the bureaucrats who formulated and implemented U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union between 1933 and 1945, and examines their role in the development of foreign policy and the evolution of the United States-Soviet relationship.