When FDR Had Cocktails With Molotov

ON MAY 29, 1942, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, arrived in Washington, D.C. to try to convince the Americans to open a Western front. The conversation between Molotov and President Franklin Roosevelt began awkwardly, with Molotov—a man so gruff and bureaucratic that Lenin called him “Comrade Filing Cabinet”—struggling to make small talk. But the formality faded that evening, as they sat side by side on a couch, with cocktails, talking until each retired to his White House bedroom. When Molotov returned home a week later, he brought with him a promise of American preparations for a second front and a framed photograph of the president, signed, “To my friend Vyacheslav Molotov.”