The Second World War

by Winston S. Churchill

  I had also for several months past been extremely distressed by the apparent inadequacy of the Cairo staff, and I increasingly realised the undue burdens of so many different kinds cast upon our struggling Commander-in-Chief. Wavell himself, together with the other Commanders-in-Chief, had as early as April 18 asked for some relief and assistance. His view was endorsed by his two professional colleagues. The Commanders-in-Chief had felt the convenience of having high political authority close at hand during Mr. Eden’s visit. They were conscious of a vacuum after his departure.

  My son Randolph, who had gone out with the Commandos, now to some extent dispersed, was at this time in the Desert. He was a Member of Parliament and had considerable contacts. I did not hear much or often from him, but on June 7 I had received through the Foreign Office the following telegram which he had sent from Cairo with the knowledge and encouragement of our Ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson:

  Do not see how we can start winning war out here until we have a competent civilian on the spot to provide day-to-day political and strategic direction. Why not send a member of the War Cabinet here to preside over whole war effort? Apart from small personal staff, he would need two outstanding men to co-ordinate supply and direct censorship, intelligence, and propaganda. Most thoughtful people here realise need for radical reform along these lines. No mere shunting of personnel will suffice, and the present time seems particularly ripe and favourable for a change of system. Please forgive me troubling you, but consider present situation deplorable and urgent action vital to any prospects of success.

  It is the fact that this clinched matters in my mind. “I have been thinking,” I replied to him a fortnight later, “a good deal for some time on the lines of your helpful and well-conceived telegram.” And thereupon I took action.

  I had brought Captain Oliver Lyttelton into the Government as President of the Board of Trade in October 1940. I had known him from his childhood. He served in the Grenadiers through the hardest fighting of the First World War, being wounded and decorated several times. After leaving the Army he had entered business and became the managing director of a large metal firm. Knowing his remarkable personal qualities, I did not hesitate to bring him into Parliament and high office. His administration had won respect from all parties in our National Government. I had not liked his proposals of 1941 for clothing coupons, but I found these were received with favour by the Cabinet and the House of Commons, and there is no doubt they were necessary at the time. He was an all-round man of action, and I now felt that he was in every way fitted for this new and novel post of a War Cabinet Minister resident in the Middle East. This would take another large slice of business off the shoulders of the military chiefs. I found this idea most readily acceptable to my colleagues of all parties. Accordingly he was appointed, with the prime duty “to relieve the High Command of all extraneous burdens, and to settle promptly on the spot in accordance with the policy of His Majesty’s Government many questions affecting several departments or authorities which hitherto have required reference home.”

  All these new arrangements, with their consequential administerial reactions, fitted in with, and were appropriate to, the change in the command of the Middle East.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE SOVIET NEMESIS

  NEMESIS personifies “the Goddess of Retribution, who brings down all immoderate good fortune, checks the presumption that attends it … and is the punisher of extraordinary crimes”.* We must now lay bare the error and vanity of cold-blooded calculation of the Soviet Government and enormous Communist machine, and their amazing ignorance about where they stood themselves. They had shown a total indifference to the fate of the Western Powers, although this meant the destruction of that “Second Front” for which they were soon to clamour. They seemed to have no inkling that Hitler had for more than six months resolved to destroy them. If their Intelligence Service informed them of the vast German deployment towards the East, which was now increasing every day, they omitted many needful steps to meet it. Thus they had allowed the whole of the Balkans to be overrun by Germany. They hated and despised the democracies of the West; but the four countries Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, which were of vital interest to them and their own safety, could all have been combined by the Soviet Government in January with active British aid to form a Balkan front against Hitler. They let them all break into confusion, and all but Turkey were mopped up one by one. War is mainly a catalogue of blunders, but it may be doubted whether any mistake in history has equalled that of which Stalin and the Communist chiefs were guilty when they cast away all possibilities in the Balkans and supinely awaited, or were incapable of realising, the fearful onslaught which impended upon Russia. We had hitherto rated them as selfish calculators. In this period they were proved simpletons as well. The force, the mass, the bravery and endurance of Mother Russia had still to be thrown into the scales. But so far as strategy, policy, foresight, competence are arbiters Stalin and his commissars showed themselves at this moment the most completely outwitted bunglers of the Second World War.

  Hitler’s “Barbarossa” directive of December 18,1940, had laid down the general grouping and primary tasks of the forces to be concentrated against Russia. At that date the total German strength on the Eastern front was 34 divisions. To multiply that figure more than thrice was an immense process both of planning and preparation, and it fully occupied the early months of 1941. In January and February the Balkan adventure into which the Fuehrer allowed himself to be drawn caused a drain-away from the East to the South of five divisions, of which three were armoured. In May the German deployment in the East grew to 87 divisions, and there were no less than 25 absorbed in the Balkans. Considering the magnitude and hazard of the invasion of Russia, it was improvident to disturb the concentration to the East by so serious a diversion. We shall now see how a delay of five weeks was imposed upon the supreme operation as the result of our resistance in the Balkans, and especially of the Yugoslav revolution. No one can measure exactly what consequences this had before winter set in upon the fortunes of the German-Russian campaign. It is reasonable to believe that Moscow was saved thereby. During May and the beginning of June many of the best trained German divisions and all the armour were moved from the Balkans to the Eastern Front, and at the moment of their assault the Germans attacked with 120 divisions, seventeen of which were armoured and twelve motorised. Six Roumanian divisions were also included in their Southern Army Group. In general reserve a further 26 divisions were assembled or assembling; so that by early July the German High Command could count on at least 150 divisions, supported by the main striking power of their Air Force, about 2,700 aircraft.

  Up till the end of March I was not convinced that Hitler was resolved upon mortal war with Russia, nor how near it was. Our Intelligence reports revealed in much detail the extensive German troop movements towards and into the Balkan States which had marked the first three months of 1941. Our agents could move with a good deal of freedom in these quasi-neutral countries, and were able to keep us accurately posted about the heavy German forces gathering by rail and road to the south-east. But none of these necessarily involved the invasion of Russia, and all were readily explainable by German interests and policy in Roumania and Bulgaria, by her designs on Greece and arrangements with Yugoslavia and Hungary. Our information about the immense movement taking place through Germany towards the main Russian front, stretching from Roumania to the Baltic, was far more difficult to acquire. That Germany should at this stage, and before clearing the Balkan scene, open another major war with Russia seemed to me too good to be true.

  There was no sign of lessening German strength opposite us across the Channel. The German air raids on Britain continued with intensity. The manner in which the German troop concentrations in Roumania and Bulgaria had been glozed over and apparently accepted by the Soviet Government, the evidence we had of large and invaluable supplies being sent to Germany from Russia, the obvious community of interest
between the two countries in overrunning and dividing the British Empire in the East, all made it seem more likely that Hitler and Stalin would make a bargain at our expense rather than a war upon each other. This bargain we now know was within wide limits Stalin’s aim.

  These impressions were shared by our Joint Intelligence Committee. On April 7 they stated that there were a number of reports circulating in Europe of a German plan to attack Russia. Although Germany, they said, had considerable forces available in the East, and expected to fight Russia some time or other, it was unlikely that she would choose to make another major war front yet. Her main object in 1941 would, according to them, remain the defeat of the United Kingdom. As late as May 23 this committee from the three services reported that rumours of impending attack on Russia had died down, and that there were reports that a new agreement between the two countries was impending.

  Our Chiefs of Staff were ahead of their advisers; and more definite. “We have firm indications,” they warned the Middle East Command on May 31, “that the Germans are now concentrating large army and air forces against Russia. Under this threat they will probably demand concessions most injurious to us. If the Russians refuse the Germans will march.”

  It was not till June 5 that the Joint Intelligence Committee reported that the scale of German military preparations in Eastern Europe seemed to indicate that an issue more vital than an economic agreement was at stake. It was possible that Germany desired to remove from her Eastern frontier the potential threat of increasingly powerful Soviet forces. They considered it as yet impossible to say whether war or agreement would result.

  I had not been content with this form of collective wisdom, and preferred to see the originals myself. I had arranged therefore, as far back as the summer of 1940, for Major Desmond Morton to make a daily selection of tit-bits, which I always read, thus forming my own opinion, sometimes at much earlier dates.

  It was thus with relief and excitement that towards the end of March 1941 I read an Intelligence report from one of our most trusted sources of the movement and counter-movement of German armour on the railway from Bucharest to Cracow. This showed that as soon as the Yugoslav ministers made their submission in Vienna, three out of the five Panzer divisions which had moved through Roumania southward towards Greece and Yugoslavia had been sent northward to Cracow, and secondly that the whole of this transportation had been reversed after the Belgrade revolution and the three Panzer divisions sent back to Roumania. This shuffling and reversal of about sixty trains could not be concealed from our agents on the spot.

  To me it illuminated the whole Eastern scene like a lightning-flash. The sudden movement to Cracow of so much armour needed in the Balkan sphere could only mean Hitler’s intention to invade Russia in May. This seemed to me henceforward certainly his major purpose. The fact that the Belgrade revolution had required their return to Roumania involved perhaps a delay from May to June. I cast about for some means of warning Stalin, and, by arousing him to his danger, establishing contacts with him like those I had made with President Roosevelt. I made the message short and cryptic, hoping that this very fact, and that it was the first message I had sent him since my formal telegram of June 25, 1940, commending Sir Stafford Cripps as Ambassador, would arrest his attention and make him ponder.

  Prime Minister to Sir Stafford Cripps 3 Apr 41

  Following from me to M. Stalin, provided it can be personally delivered by you:

  I have sure information from a trusted agent that when the Germans thought they had got Yugoslavia in the net—that is to say, after March 20—they began to move three out of the five Panzer divisions from Roumania to Southern Poland. The moment they heard of the Serbian revolution this movement was countermanded. Your Excellency will readily appreciate the significance of these facts.

  The British Ambassador did not reply till April 12, when he said that just before my telegram had been received he had himself addressed to Vyshinsky a long personal letter reviewing the succession of failures of the Soviet Government to counteract German encroachments in the Balkans, and urging in the strongest terms that the U.S.S.R. in her own interest must now decide on an immediate vigorous policy of co-operation with countries still opposing the Axis in that area. “Were I now,” he said, “to convey through Molotov the Prime Minister’s message, which expresses the same thesis in very much shorter and less emphatic form, I fear that the only effect would be probably to weaken impression already made by my letter to Vyshinsky.…”

  I was vexed at this and at the delay which had occurred. This was the only message before the attack that I sent Stalin direct. Its brevity, the exceptional character of the communication, the fact that it came from the head of the Government and was to be delivered personally to the head of the Russian Government by the Ambassador, were all intended to give it special significance and arrest Stalin’s attention. I was eventually told that Sir Stafford had handed it to Vyshinsky on April 19 and Vyshinsky had informed him in writing on April 23 that it had been conveyed to Stalin.

  I cannot form any final judgment upon whether my message, if delivered with all the promptness and ceremony prescribed, would have altered the course of events. Nevertheless I still regret that my instructions were not carried out effectively. If I had had any direct contact with Stalin I might perhaps have prevented him from having so much of his Air Force destroyed on the ground.

  We know now that Hitler’s directive of December 18 had prescribed May 15 as the date for invading Russia, and that in his fury at the revolution in Belgrade this had been postponed for a month, and later till June 22. Until the middle of March the troop movements in the north on the main Russian front were not of a character to require special German measures of concealment. On March 13 however orders were issued by Berlin to terminate the work of the Russian commissions working in German territory and to send them home. The presence of Russians in this part of Germany could only be permitted up to March 25. During this time the 120 German divisions of the highest quality were assembling in their three Army Groups along the Russian front. The Southern Group, under Rundstedt, was, for the reasons explained, far from well found in armour. Its Panzer divisions had only recently returned from Greece and Yugoslavia. Despite the postponement of the attack till June 22 they badly needed rest and overhaul after their mechanical wear and tear in the Balkans.

  On April 13 Schulenburg came from Moscow to Berlin. Hitler received him on April 28, and treated his Ambassador to a tirade against Russia. Schulenburg adhered to the theme which had governed all his reports. “I am convinced that Stalin is prepared to make even further concessions to us. It has already been indicated to our economic negotiators that (if we applied in due time) Russia could supply us with up to 5 million tons of grain a year.”* Schulenburg returned to Moscow on April 30, profoundly disillusioned by his interview with Hitler. He had a clear impression that Hitler was bent on war. It seems that he had even tried to warn the Russian Ambassador in Berlin, Dekanosov, in this sense. And he fought persistently in the last hours for his policy of Russo-German understanding.

  Weizsacker, the official head of the German Foreign Office, was a highly competent civil servant of the type to be found in the Government departments of many countries. He was not a politician with executive power, and would not, according to British custom, be held accountable for State policy. He was nevertheless condemned to seven years’ penal servitude by decree of the courts set up by the conquerors. Although he is therefore classified as a war criminal, he certainly wrote good advice to his superiors, which we may be glad they did not take. He commented as follows upon this interview:

  I can summarise in one sentence my views on a German-Russian conflict. If every Russian city reduced to ashes were as valuable to us as a sunken British warship, I should advocate the German-Russian war for this summer; but I believe that we should be victors over Russia only in a military sense, and should, on the other hand, lose in an economic sense.

  It might perhaps be
considered an alluring prospect to give the Communist system its death-blow, and it might also be said that it was inherent in the logic of things to muster the Eurasian continent against Anglo-Saxondom and its following. But the sole decisive factor is whether this project will hasten the fall of England.…

  A German attack on Russia would only give the British new moral strength. It would be interpreted there as German uncertainty about the success of our fight against England. We should thereby not only be admitting that the war was going to last a long time yet, but we might actually prolong it in this way, instead of shortening it.