PM's stand an echo of 1948

[Ted]

PM's stand an echo of 1948

Mackenzie King angered Allies when Canada refused to take part in post-war Berlin airlift, writes Andrew Rettig

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is not the first Canadian leader to take a principled diplomatic stand against a great power's policies.

Few Canadians realize that our foreign policy was in a very similar situation in 1948 as it is today. Then, at the start of the Cold War, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King refused to join another Anglo-American adventure: the 1948 Berlin airlift.

King refused to supply Canadian planes and pilots to break the blockade.

Then, as now, some opposition voices raised concerns about our ability to influence American policy.

Canadian diplomats and politicians, then as now, held a different world view than their American counterparts. Since contemporary America is a superpower while Canada is a waning middle power, their national interests often differ.

King refused to join the Anglo-American organized Berlin airlift because Canada did not have a voice on the control council of post-war occupied Germany.

After 1945 when World War II ended, Canada removed its troops from a defeated Germany as quickly as possible because our government lacked any meaningful influence on Allied post-war councils. Despite thousands of Canadian casualties, a six-year war effort, and an active involvement by 10 per cent of its population, the Big Three — the U.S., the Soviet Union and Britain — had pushed Canada, and other smaller Allied contributors, to the diplomatic sidelines.

Indeed, Canadian generals were barred from Anglo-American strategic planning as well. The latter exclusion was reluctantly accepted for security reasons.

By 1943, King had learned an important lesson: Canada would demand a diplomatic voice when it made significant military and economic contributions to distant wars.

The prime minister made several diplomatic and public protests about the arrogance of the Great Powers, ending them only in 1946 when the Allies signed a peace treaty with Germany's lesser allies.

Indeed, Canadian diplomatic disappointments fed post-war nationalism that led to such milestones as Canadian citizenship and passports in 1948 and the flying of the Red Ensign as Canada's national flag. They figured large in Canada's active role in the early years of the United Nations.

When American and British leaders came knocking on Ottawa's door in June, 1948, King was in no mood to co-operate.

The two countries expected Canada and other Anglo allies to jump smartly and fly food and supplies into Berlin, which had its roads and railways blocked by Soviet guards.

King said no. His brilliant foreign policy adviser Norman Robertson thought of the perfect explanation: Canada, which lacked standing in the occupation treaty, could not fly its planes with its Canadian markings into Germany because the Soviets could use our illegal intervention as a reason to declare war on the West.

King regarded his refusal to be involved as a visible protest to the Great Powers' arrogance in pushing Canada, and others, out of post-war decision-making.

The protest came under review when a very tired and sick prime minister handed over his duties to his successor, Louis St. Laurent, in December, 1948.

Moved by the plight of the Berliners in the winter of 1948 and having a large supply of planes and pilots, Prime Minister St. Laurent and his new foreign minister Lester B. Pearson proposed that the airlift be organized through the emerging United Nations or the developing Atlantic alliance. Here Canada would have a voice in a multilateral arrangement.

But Britain suggested Canada be allowed to fly its own planes with British markings. That proposal, an affront to Canada's post-war nationalism, was quickly rejected.

As for the other Allies, South African and Australian pilots flew British planes but failed to win their countries any additional voice in Anglo-American decision-making.

King held his ground through much of the lengthy stalemate between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, even though the parliamentary opposition and the press argued that Canada was failing to do its duty to help its allies.

Canadian diplomatic history provides some insight into Chrétien's current policies over Iraq.

In this, a war of secondary importance to our security, Canada must defend its multilateral approach in the shaping of the post-Cold War era.

Today, different circumstances demand that Canada stand apart from our Anglo-American friends. The contemporary issues are superpower unilateralism and "regime change."

Limited American diplomacy and the quick resort to brute force trouble a good part of the world.

Canada demonstrated in its U.N. compromise resolution that it, too, believes in the use of American force but only as a last resort after reasonable attempts of multilateral diplomacy.

No Canadian political figure slurred King for his stand on the Berlin airlift. Nobody circulated partisan material, or stooped to mudslinging.

Naive opposition voices in 1948 argued a co-operative Canada would have considerable influence on Anglo-American thinking.

But history had proven that the Great Powers stride confidently across the international stage, paying little heed to compliant smaller allies.


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Andrew Rettig is a Toronto freelance writer with a Ph.D in Canadian-European relations.

The Star

[Glocksman]

Perhaps PM King had other reasons for not assisting with the Berlin airlift.

Pining for Stalin

IN THE FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher specialist in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, defected to Canada. He brought with him incontrovertible evidence of Soviet espionage in Canada, which involved spy rings that were transmitting intelligence to the Soviet Union.

The Second World War had just ended and the Soviet Union and Canada were supposed to be allies. The Canadian Prime Minister at the time, Mackenzie King, loved Joseph Stalin so much that he didn’t like the news that Gouzenko brought. Obsessed with maintaining good relations with Stalin, the Prime Minister tried to ignore Gouzenko.

When the Soviet defector first approached Canadian officials with his revelations, King instructed that he be turned away. Gouzenko ended up roaming the streets of Ottawa, just barely escaping a kidnapping attempt by his superiors. The Soviet behavior backfired. The Canadian government now decided to take Gouzenko seriously. It gave him political asylum and protection.

In February 1946, the Canadian government apprehended twelve suspects connected with the Gouzenko case, many of whom were subsequently found guilty of divulging state secrets to the Soviets.

Throughout these developments, King attempted to paint the Gouzenko affair as a misunderstanding between East and West. He suggested to President Truman that someone had to sit down with Stalin, present him with the “known facts,” and make him understand the importance of what had happened. King counse led that once the West approached the Soviet leader in a sincere way, Stalin would not only decide to terminate espionage activity, but also abandon his insistence on veto power in the Security Council. The Prime Minister related these ideas to Lord Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington. He told him it was time to give Stalin the secret of the atomic bomb. While King articulated this wisdom to Lord Halifax, the British embassy's counselor, Donald Maclean, a spy for the Soviet NKVD, attended the meeting.

After the arrest of suspects in February 1946, King tried harder to maintain cordial relations with the Soviets. He told two Soviet embassy staff members (one of whom was Vitali Pavlov, the Soviet embassy's chief of NKVD intelligence operations who led a break-in at Gouzenko's apartment) that he was “sorry” to have to inform them of the Gouzenko case. He regretted having "to speak of these matters at all" and told the two Soviets "that we were all close friends, and that nothing should destroy that relationship." A month later, King explained to the House of Commons that ”We in Canada want only the best of relations with the USSR," and that "I believe it is true that there are agencies working ...at the side of the Russian embassy which are doing things that possibly are unknown to the ambassador himself and members of his staff." The Prime Minister then announced to the House of Commons that he had considered going to Russia himself to speak with Stalin, because

What I know, or have learned, of Mr Stalin from those who have been closely associated with him in the war, causes me to believe that he would not countenance action of this kind [espionage] on the part of officials of his country. I believe that when these facts are known to him and to others in positions of full responsibility, we shall find that a change will come that will make a vast difference indeed.

What it was, exactly that King knew or "learned" about Stalin by 1946 remains a curious issue. Confirmed evidence about the show trials, the purges, and forced collectivization policies already existed at this time. Stalin's forced collectivisation campaign liquidated more than 15 million people. Directed primarily at Russian peasants in the early 193Os, the official massacre by deportation and terror-famine dealt Ukraine the hardest blow: approximately five million Ukrainians were executed or died from forced labour and officially induced starvation in 1932-33. Mackenzie King distinguished himself well in sacrificing Canadian and Western security for the sake of staying good friends with Stalin. In this behavior, he provided an excellent example for a future Prime Minister: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who came to power in 1968 and outdid almost all Western leaders in humiliating himself in pursuit of Soviet friendship. Trudeau never met a communist he didn’t like – and that’s why he praised Mao and Fidel Castro every chance he had.

It might do well for Canadians to reflect a little bit on their history, and to reconsider what verdict should be reached on the legacy of some of their Prime Ministers.

From the original article:

King regarded his refusal to be involved as a visible protest to the Great Powers' arrogance in pushing Canada, and others, out of post-war decision-making.

One would think that simple humanitarianism would be motivation enough to help out with the airlift. Or did King really 'love' Stalin as Glazov suggests?

His refusal to assist is hardly admirable given the brutality with which Stalin ruled Eastern Europe.