Geoffrey – welcome to Aspects of History. Talk us through the story that led to you compiling and editing this collection of Kathleen Harriman’s letters together.
As the tragedy of the 9/11 terror attacks unfolded, I was in the Library of Congress, combing through the private papers of Kathy’s father, Averell, who was Roosevelt’s special envoy to Churchill and Stalin during World War II. Scattered among hundreds of files were copies of Kathy’s letters. At first, I read them for light relief from the madness of the world outside the LoC’s manuscript reading room, but soon realised they were an amazing source on wartime politics in London and Moscow – well-written, engaging, and insightful – and just had to be published!
When I got back to Ireland, I was delighted to learn that Kathy (b.1917) was still alive. In March 2002, I spent several hours with Kathy in her New York apartment talking about the letters and her wartime experiences. Having been greeted by an Irish concierge and let into Kathy’s place by a maid from County Cork, I felt right at home. But my main mission was stymied by Kathy’s adamant refusal to even countenance publication of the letters: ‘As peace returned many underlings of the war leaders sprang into print. I felt they abused their wartime privilege (& luck) at being on hand as history was made & swore I’d not do likewise’.
To no avail was my argument that there was a world of difference between publishing a self-serving memoir and contemporaneous letters. Dismissed with a laugh was my claim that publishing the letters would turn Kathy into a 21st century feminist icon!
Thankfully, she left a loophole: I could publish the letters when she was gone. After her death in 2011, Kathy’s eldest son, David, gave me access to her private papers, where I discovered that the letters deposited in the LoC by the co-writer of her father’s war memoir, Elie Abel, were merely the tip of a treasure trove of correspondence that Kathy had mostly kept to herself.
Kathleen Harriman occupied a very rare position, at once a journalist, a diplomat’s daughter and a participant-observer at the heart of Allied society. How does that shape what she saw and what she chose to record in these letters?
Kathy witnessed the war from many different angles. She dined with the Churchills, lunched with Tito, banqueted with Stalin and played bridge with Eisenhower. As a war correspondent she saw bombed-out cities, visited munitions factories, toured military bases and wrote stories about daily life on embattled Britain’s home front. Kathy had the singular ability to interact with people from all walks of life. That’s what made her such an acute and imaginative observer of both the people she met and the historic events she observed.
Editing Kathy’s collection of letters was a joy. She had a great writing voice and was able to bring to life ordinary people as well as the many bigwigs she met
It was harder for her to get out and about in Moscow but she learned Russian and escaped from the diplomatic ghetto of parties and receptions. She visited schools, hospitals, churches and air bases. Rode horses and competed against top-class Soviet skiers. Within months of her arrival in Russia in October 1943, she was the best-known American woman in the USSR, with the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt and Deanna Durbin, the Hollywood musical star. The renowned Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein drew caricatures of Kathy and imagined her to be a ‘dollar princess’.
The Smolensk and Katyn episode is one of the most striking passages in the collection. To what extent do her impressions of what she witnesses reveal the extent and success of wartime propaganda? How do you assess that initial acceptance of the Soviet version of events?
The elaborate Soviet charade at Katyn fooled lots of people. Like most of the journalists on that trip to the Katyn murder site, Kathy desperately wanted to believe the Germans had killed the Polish POWs. The Soviets were, after all. the West’s gallant allies, dying in their millions to rid the world of the Nazi scourge. Bear in mind, too, that the Germans were guilty of most the atrocities they were accused of, not least the death camps of the Holocaust.
Of course, when the full truth about Katyn emerged after the war, Kathy readily admitted her mistake and accepted that the Soviets had executed more than 20,000 Polish officers and police officials, captured when the Red Army invade Poland’s eastern territories in September 1939.
In London, often Harriman’s tone can be described as ‘gay’ in its older sense. Do you think that cheerfulness naïveté, social conditioning or a deliberate emotional strategy in the face of war?
By the time Kathy arrived in May 1941 the main Blitz – the Germans’ mass bombing of British cities – was over. But Kathy was horrified by the evidence of its aftermath and unnerved by sporadic air raids on London. But she got used to it. After one particularly devastating raid, which had badly upset her best friend, Pamela Churchill (who had an affair with her father), she wrote ‘perhaps I’m made differently…there’s only a certain point – height of horror emotion that can be reached. I reached that ages ago and now everything is impersonal. Its better…that way.’
She handled her visit to the Katyn massacre site in exactly the same, detached way. When I pointed this out to her, she asked “Ηow was I supposed to handle it?”.
She was present at moments and in company of enormous consequence – Churchill’s leadership during the war, Stalin’s inner circle, the negotiations at Yalta. How far do you reckon her private observations complicate the established narratives of those monumental events?
Kathy was an observer, not a decision-maker. She played an important role in creating and sustaining the social fabric that helped hold the Grand Alliance together. Through her letters we catch unique glimpses of the inter-personal dynamics of the top allied leaders. She writes about the human stuff that rarely feature in (mostly male) military and political memoirs. The general and politicians were more consequential but she is the joy to read!
The Harrimans are not remembered as a political ‘dynasty’ in the way the Kennedys are. Does this volume compel us to reimagine their place in twentieth-century Anglo-American relations?
‘Peak Harriman’ was the Second World War, when Averell was a confidant of both Churchill and Roosevelt and got closer to Stalin than any other allied ambassador. Kathy was crucial to Averell’s effectiveness in London and Moscow. Americans, British, Soviets – they were all charmed by the intelligent and elegant young woman from the USA.
But more than anything, this is a book about Kathy, about her experience of the war. She said the letters were a substitute a diary and asked the recipients to keep them for her so she could re-read them after the war. But to me they read more like an autobiography written in real-time, as her wartime life unfolded.
Finally, publication of these letters was delayed. Why do personal archives like Harriman’s matter in an age of official documentation?
Publication was delayed because I had other projects, not least a book about Stalin’s personal library that took a decade to complete. Publication was spurred by the transfer of Kathy’s private papers to the Library of Congress – something I’d been urging David to do for years. I already had quite an extensive collection of photocopies and digital images of Kathy’s archive but its placement in the LoC facilitated completion of the project.
Also, I was worried someone would steal my idea of publishing an edition of Kathy’s wonderful letters!
Are there any projects you are working on currently? Any more figures like Kathleen Harriman you have in your sights?
When Kathy wasn’t partying, politicking and reporting, she read loads of books, including Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg’s The Fall of Paris. Ehrenburg is the subject of my next book, specifically his role in the international peace movement after World War II and how he helped keep the world safe from nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War.
Geoffrey Roberts is a historian, biographer, political commentator and the editor of Wartime Letters: London and Moscow 1941-1945, published by Yale University Press.
