Churchill's Triumph

by Michael Dobbs

  “Explain to your people. . . ?” Once more, the presidential jaw went wobbly. Listening to Stalin on the subject of public opinion was like a crocodile complaining about the screams of the wildebeest he was chewing up for supper.

  Harriman jumped in: “We would assume that the great Soviet people would understand the, er… many benefits that would accrue to them as a result of the defeat of Japan.”

  “Benefits? And what would they be?” Stalin asked slowly, wiping a finger across his moustache as though he were waiting for a servant to pour soup.

  So they began, bartering the support of the Red Army for the pounds of flesh that would be carved from the Japanese bone. Roosevelt was at first surprised: he had taken as given that the Russians would enter the war against Japan and hadn’t realized there would be a price to pay, but he recovered quickly and flung himself into the game. The results came rapidly: the Russians knew precisely what they wanted. Territory. The southern half of the Sakhalin Islands. The Kuriles. Roosevelt became expansive and threw a vast amount of shipping into the pot that the Russians would be sold on the most favorable terms. And there was the matter of Russian access to the warm-water ports of Darien and Port Arthur, and the railroad near the Russian border that stretched through the infinite reaches of Manchuria.

  There was only one small problem. The ports and the railroad were Chinese, and China was an ally in the war against Japan. . .

  “I’ll have to talk about this to the Chinese,” Roosevelt said, drawing back.

  “But that’s surely impossible. Talking to the Chinese is like taking a megaphone and shouting at the whole world. Tell them something today, and it’ll be common gossip in Tokyo by the time the sparrows start farting tomorrow. We would lose all element of surprise. Why, they might even attack us first!”

  “But I’ve got to talk to the Chinese,” Roosevelt repeated, vaguely.

  “Let me suggest, my dear President, that there is no rush. You and I will agree, and we will put our agreement in writing. Then you can talk to the Chinese at your leisure.”

  And once more the Russian had shown his extraordinary talent for slicing through the tangle of knots. He made things easy for Roosevelt. So it was agreed. A secret protocol. To ensure that Russia would get all that she wanted in the Far East, whether the Chinese liked it or not.

  Of course, there was no way the Chinese would like it, nor many in the U.S. Senate. They would say the secret agreement was despicable, that it violated all the high-minded provisions of Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter and United Nations. They would say it was a betrayal of an ally and a return to the duplicitous ways of the Old World. That’s what would be said, very loudly, when they heard about it.

  Yet Roosevelt was in a terrible hurry. And he was exhausted. He couldn’t fight on every front at once. And he was no longer intellectually capable of sorting through all the consequences of what he had done. But there was one point on which his mind was completely fixed. His Chiefs of Staff had told him that without Russian help in the war against Japan, perhaps another two million Americans would be killed or wounded. That would more than double the number who had already suffered. More casualties, more coffins, more widows, more orphans. He couldn’t bear all that on his conscience.

  “I’ll get Winston to agree to it, too,” Roosevelt said. If he could do that, it would cover at least one half of his presidential rump.

  “He’ll be offended he’s not been invited here.”

  Roosevelt burst into laughter. “You’re so right. He’ll probably want to kill us. But before he does, I’ll get him to sign.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll nudge his elbow a bit. Start talking about his own Chinese ports. Ask him when he plans to give Hong Kong back to China—and India back to the Indians, come to that.”

  “But he’ll never agree.”

  “No.” Roosevelt chuckled, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes. “He’ll be so offended that he’ll want to make another speech and smother us in outrage. Then he’ll sign.”

  And, as they both laughed, they began the betrayal of not only the Chinese but also the British.

  ***

  Adolf Hitler himself had described them as “scraped-up Russian scum,” but the men of the Red Army were coming his way, moving forward in an offensive that the Führer had assured the General Staff would never happen.

  These soldiers outnumbered the Wehrmacht almost eleven to one. They had seven times the number of tanks, twenty times the number of artillery pieces and their air superiority was overwhelming, because the Luftwaffe had all but run out of aircraft. Within days, whole German armies were being ripped to shreds, pulverized by ceaseless artillery fire and ground to dust beneath the tracks of innumerable tanks. By early February, there was no continuous front anywhere in the east. The soldiers of the Red Army moved forward in sleighs, in boats, in horse-drawn carts, in trucks, in American Lend-Lease jeeps, and on foot. They were clad in grey-brown padded coats and fur caps, and they came with an insistent battle cry on their lips.

  “Dayosh Berlin! Let us have Berlin!”

  As they came forward, they encountered columns of German civilians fleeing west, back to their homeland. The Red Army didn’t stop. They simply fired indiscriminately upon the columns as they drove past. A few less Germans. . .

  And then the tidal wave lapped around Piorun, right up to the doorway of the Nowak cottage. And beyond.

  Nowak’s wife hadn’t heard them coming. She looked up from her table and suddenly they were there, standing in her doorway. Their faces were broad, brown, squat. Faces from far away. Her hands were still covered with blood from the butchering, but that didn’t stop them spotting her wedding ring. She hadn’t hidden it as her husband had instructed; it was part of her, hadn’t moved from her hand in thirty-eight years.

  It was gone in a second, along with much of the skin of her finger.

  Then they came for the rest of her.

  ***

  It was the moment Churchill called “the crucial point of this great conference.” It was also the moment when Stalin began openly to bare his teeth, the moment Roosevelt cracked.

  Or perhaps “cracked” was too unkind a word; “gave up” would be a better description. After all, the President had got most of what he’d come for. The creation of his United Nations was now merely a matter of detail, and Russia would soon be up to its neck in the war against Japan. It amounted to a famous victory, a diplomatic triumph. He’d saved hundreds of thousands of American lives, brought in Russia from the cold, and secured from the ashes of war a world that for the first time in a thousand generations had a chance of living at peace with itself. Not a bad legacy; in fact, a superb one.

  Yet there were these other two, Stalin and Churchill, arguing once more about that hole in history they called Poland.

  “I’m telling you, the Lublin leaders are very popular with the Poles.”

  “I have other information.”

  “Then your information, Prime Minister, is wrong!”

  Roosevelt could scarcely contain his impatience. He’d met with Stalin in private and within thirty minutes had managed to sort out pretty much the whole of Asia; yet wheel out Winston and even after five days they couldn’t settle the fate of one wretched country. Poland. Always Poland. Winston kept coming back to it, like a dog to its own vomit, until it threatened to sabotage everything they’d won so far.

  The President had already called one recess for tempers to cool and to enable him to gather his own thoughts and strength. It had changed nothing. Still they argued about the western border. Yet was there so much in it? What damned difference did it make if the border was shifted a few miles one way or another? The Americans had bought the whole of Louisiana and Alaska without this much whining. The borders of Poland were like women of the night, forever on the move, and scarcely a matter of much virtue—yet to listen to Winston
you’d think he’d buried his grandmother there.

  Truth was, Winston didn’t like Joe Stalin. For all the smiles and diplomatic gestures, deep down he didn’t trust the Russian an inch, and certainly not with the secret of the atom bomb. Roosevelt had wanted to let Stalin know about their plans, for friendship’s sake, and said so, but Winston had leapt around like he’d got a bee up his butt. Wouldn’t hear of it. Yet Uncle Joe would find out soon enough, and what would he think then, when he realized that such awesome secrets had been kept from him? So much for the Grand Alliance.

  God help him, but now they were haggling like fishwives over the makeup of the Provisional Polish Government. Think about it, Winston! Pro-vi-sion-al. Temporary. Something to plug the gap. Until the elections. Elections that they all agreed would have to take place soon. So why did it matter to the bloody man so much? Yet here he was, saying that he’d never accept the Lublin Poles as legitimate, that they didn’t have the support of the majority in Poland, that he wasn’t about to brush aside the claims of the London Poles or the hundred and fifty thousand brave Polish soldiers who were fighting alongside British forces in France and Italy. Look at him! Waving his arms, stabbing away with his spectacles. And going over the top. Always going over the top. He couldn’t resist it, the hyperbole, the chance to throw words around the room, saying it would be “an act of betrayal,” insisting he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it, that if he tried they’d take a rusty blade to his balls as soon as he got back to the British Parliament. Well, bully for the boys back home.

  Roosevelt sat back and waited for the flow to pause, for Winston to catch his breath and allow him back in. Yet when the moment came it was the Russian who grasped it.

  “All this talk about a government for Poland,” he said dismissively. “There already is a government in Poland. The people of Poland like these men from Lublin. They are brave men, who stayed behind and fought and played their part in the liberation of Poland, who spent their war suffering and making sacrifices, not screwing around in the dark corners of some faraway foreign capital.” Suddenly, both fists beat down upon the table. “Those men who ran away to London are cowards, by God, cowards!”

  Such an outburst of anger was unusual for Stalin and it deeply impressed the others around the table, as he had intended. It was time now to dance to a different tune, to make life simple once more for his old friend, the American President, for when life is simple, old men are blind.

  “I ask the conference to forgive my outburst, but I am sure you all understand my passion when I talk of the sacred rights of Russia. And it is the soldiers of the Red Army who have liberated Poland. But I’m not trying to pretend that makes everything easy between us Russians and the Poles. The Poles hate us—yes, hate. That is the word I use. And with good reason. The tsars treated the Poles like serfs, and the country as though it was their own. But. . . ” the Oriental eyes wandered around the table “. . . that was a sin. A sin of the tsars. A sin we shall make good.”

  Roosevelt sat, his cheeks hollowed from ever-deeper shades of grey, nodding in hope.

  “Almost every yard of Poland has now been liberated. Much Russian blood has been spilt, and it has washed away the past. There is shared sacrifice between us. And now there is goodwill. It is a goodwill that I intend to make sure will last.”

  And the fist that had banged the table in anger was now turned to the palm of peace, laid directly over his Russian heart. It had been a most impressive performance, but he hadn’t finished. Stalin had a Georgian’s eye for opportunity, and one was screaming at him in the form of this ailing American who wanted so very much to believe.

  “All this concern about the temporary government in Poland. I understand it, but. . . I am also a little confused. We are the three great liberating powers. Our objective is to release every country from beneath the boot of Hitler. But—what then? I think we are agreed that these countries must be ruled by their own people, not by some foreign power. Although,” Stalin said, turning to face Churchill directly, “not quite every country, it seems. Not some colonies. At least, not for a while.”

  The Englishman forced himself back into the depths of his chair to stop himself squirming in indignation. Poland and the British Empire? It wasn’t the same thing, not the same thing at all. Yet Roosevelt was smiling, admiring the carefully directed thrust, ganging up with the Russians. Well, it was to be expected. Nowak had warned him.

  “And your own armies,” the Marshal continued, “they have liberated France—well, most of it…”—another fine piece of swordplay—“… and you have put in place a provisional government, your dear friend de Gaulle.” Now Stalin was twisting the blade. “Perhaps I’m being slow, but I really don’t understand the difference. While we wait for elections, we recognize provisional governments. In Poland, in France, everywhere. I don’t object to what you have done in France, I understand the need. And I presume there will soon be elections in France, just as there will be in Poland?”

  And still Roosevelt was smiling, in relief. Once more, Uncle Joe had given him a simple way out. And that was when he cracked, gave up the struggle and cast Churchill adrift.

  “How soon, Marshal Stalin, might there be proper elections in Poland?”

  “Why, Mr. President, within a month.”

  “Excellent.”

  Roosevelt looked across the table to Churchill. The Englishman wanted to roar and rage, to denounce the twisted logic and the bogus comparisons, but in order to do so he would have to deny Stalin’s word, suggest that he didn’t believe in this wretched Russian or his promise of elections, and if he were to do that it would bring an end to everything. To Yalta, to the United Nations, to the Grand Alliance, to everything they’d been fighting for. It would cast the world into darkness, possibly into another still more terrible war, democracies pitted against dictatorship, a new dark age, and they would say that he alone was responsible. It might come to that, but the world wasn’t ready for it, not yet. And neither was he.

  “Free and unfettered elections,” Churchill heard himself say. “They must be free and unfettered. Universal suffrage. Secret ballot. The right of all parties to nominate candidates. A government that is representative of all the people. It must be written.”

  “We’ve already agreed on that,” he heard Roosevelt say dismissively.

  “And I promise not to take too close an interest in affairs in France,” Stalin said jovially, then moved on quickly to another subject.

  So it was done. Churchill knew now that Poland would be lost. He couldn’t save her on his own. He had nothing to fight with, except words, and he knew that words alone wouldn’t be enough. Poland was about to be buried beneath this table of untruths.

  And if Poland was lost, what else might he lose? Win the war, yet lose the peace—the timeless legacy of fools.

  ***

  “Nie kulturny,” she had cried, “nie kulturny.” Just as her husband had taught her. But the words had done her no good.

  The mighty forces of liberation had just about finished with Nowak’s wife. Having stripped her of her wedding ring, they had then stripped away her clothes and every last shred of her womanhood. That she had suffered so much before at the hands of Germans did nothing to lessen this fresh onslaught of pain. She was treated as a beast of the field, to be used, beaten, then cast aside when they were done. She no longer felt a woman, no longer even felt human. They had stripped her of every certainty of her long life, except the knowledge that she was a Pole.

  When they were done with her, they threw open the cupboards, smashed all the crockery then ripped apart her bed and threw stools through every window. Soon there was little left of her humble home. Then they urinated on the carcass of the freshly butchered cow. Nowak’s wife—Maria was her name, although she no longer felt she deserved anything so touchable and intimate as a name—did nothing: she had learned that to protest or to cry out would only increase her suffering
. They lit a fire of straw in the middle of the room in an attempt to smoke out any other woman who might be hiding within her pitifully small cottage, but when none came, and the room was well ablaze, they departed, leaving her with nothing but fragments.

  Her torment was neither isolated nor casual. She suffered far less than others.

  There were only a few Volksdeutsche left in the Settlement outside Piorun, those who were either too old, or too frail, or too stupid to have left earlier. There were some who, even now, still believed. The Russians found one family in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town: a husband and wife, a son aged twelve, and daughters of sixteen and ten, along with an elderly Polish maid and her husband, the handyman. The Poles were allowed to leave when it became clear who they were, fleeing into the February drizzle that had begun to fall. The father and son were ordered to kneel on the floor while every stitch of clothing was ripped from the mother and girls. Soldiers pinned them down, spreading their arms and legs, while the officer inspected them. Then, while the father and son looked on in horror, he entered the mother and the eldest daughter in turn, toying with them at first, but growing more brutal, enjoying the terror that filled their eyes and the screams that burst forth from somewhere deep inside.

  The youngest of the family, the daughter of ten, was still clutching a doll when the officer turned to her. He took it from her hand, and smashed its head on the floor. Then he laughed and reached for her.

  It was at this point that the father found himself. He knew he was going to die, and preferred death rather than to watch his child being raped. He threw himself forward, catching his guards by surprise and hammering his head into the face of the officer, breaking his nose. It stopped the bastard laughing. A shot rang out, the father slumped, but he was not yet dead, for as the officer grabbed at his hair and wrenched back his head, the eyes still flickered. The officer stood, shouted, and the father was dragged out through the door by two of the soldiers. And still the captain stood, for he was waiting. He was listening for something.