ABSTRACT
A Gallup poll in July 1941 found that seventy-two percent wanted a Russian victory, while only four percent favored Germany. When Germany invaded Russia the New Republic’s first instinct was to remember the lesson so painfully learned. It agreed with Churchill that everything possible should be given Russia to keep her in the war. Bruce Bliven addressed the question of why Russian morale was higher than America’s. It went back to the depression, he explained, when relief and assistance were given out so grudgingly. The moral and intellectual corruption of the thirties was deeply rooted. It needed only a Russia at war to flourish once again, more extravagantly than before. More typical was Richard Lauterbach, a popular journalist who had been sent to Moscow in 1943 by Time-Life. “The thoroughgoing organization of the war economy, the civilian resistance, the guerilla warfare could only be achieved in a war that had become democratic in its inner nature.”.
