"Austria under the heel of the Nazi invaders" ( Pravda June 16), "Executions in Spain"
{Pravda June 15), and so on. Alongside with this went accounts about growing German pressure on Poland, and reports of some of the more violent speeches by Nazi leaders—
such as Goebbels's attack on England in his Danzig speech at the end of June, with its
"hands off Eastern Europe! " slogan. Altogether the growing violence over Danzig was being fully reported, and in a tone very far from friendly to the Germans. These, the Soviet press kept on suggesting, were out for trouble:
Danzig is teeming with German military trucks that have come from Königsberg...
Danzig is being invaded by hordes of "tourists" and other highly suspect elements...
The German papers are continuing to carry screaming headlines about Poland's
"aggressiveness". The Völkischer Beobachter is screaming that the Poles want to invade East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and other German territories.
[ Pravda, July 2, 1939.]
Although, whenever there was any vitally important business to discuss with Hitler, the British Government would send him Eden, Simon, Halifax—or Chamberlain in person,
the British Prime Minister seemed to think that an experienced Foreign Office official, like Mr Strang, was more than good enough for Moscow. This choice had, indeed, been
severely criticised by the Opposition press and Opposition speakers, who had argued that at least somebody of Halifax's or Eden's stature should be sent there. But, in
Chamberlain's view Halifax had other things to do, while Eden was much too friendly to the Russians—he had already gone to Moscow in 1935— and Mr Strang would be better
suited to what Chamberlain wanted to be no more than an exploratory mission—or
merely a sop to the Opposition. He was determined to turn a deaf ear to all the warnings, coming from Churchill and others, that the time factor was of the utmost importance. It was indeed not surprising that the Strang appointment should have aroused little
enthusiasm in Moscow.
There is a remarkable passage in Maisky's reminiscences about the visit he paid Halifax on June 12, the day of Strang's departure for Moscow:
To get the three-power pact concluded with the utmost speed—for that was our
basic object—and to discover our British partners' real intentions, the Soviet
Government decided to invite Lord Halifax to Moscow... On June 12 I was
instructed to call on Halifax in a personal capacity, and to urge him in a friendly but pressing way to go to Moscow without delay to complete the negotiations and to sign the pact.
[I. Maisky, Kto pomogal Hitlern? (Who Helped Hitler?), Moscow, 1962. English translation, London, 1964.]
After pointing out to Halifax the extreme urgency of the problem, Maisky said, "'If you can go to Moscow right away, Lord Halifax, I shall ask my Government to send you an
official invitation.' A hard and mysterious look came over Halifax's face. He looked at the ceiling, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then solemnly declared: 'I shall bear it in mind.' I realised of course that he could not decide on this visit to Moscow without referring the matter to the Cabinet... After a week, there was still no reply."
[In conclusion, Maisky writes that he had an important postscript to make to this account of his meeting with Halifax on June 12. In the Documents of British Foreign Policy
published later by the British Government, there was Halifax's own account of this
meeting. According to this, Maisky had suggested that Halifax should go to Moscow
"when things had calmed down", to which Halifax had replied that nothing would please him better, but that at the present moment it would be impossible for him to leave
London.
Maisky then proceeds to demonstrate that, in Halifax's account of the same meeting, the Foreign Secretary had told "two untruths", both showing that, like Chamberlain, he was less than lukewarm about coming to a quick agreement with Moscow. This lack of
enthusiasm, on both Halifax's and Chamberlain's part, is, of course, fully borne out by Churchill in what he said at the time and wrote later.
"It was decided to send a special envoy to Moscow. Mr Eden, who had made useful contacts with Stalin (in 1935) volunteered to go. This generous offer was declined by the Prime Minister. Instead, on June 12, Mr Strang, an able official, but without any standing outside the Foreign Office, was entrusted with this momentous mission.
This was another mistake. The sending of so subordinate a figure gave actual offence."
(Churchill, op. cit., vol. I, p. 346.)
It should, of course, be remembered throughout that Maisky, a "Litvinov man" at heart, was more enthusiastic about the Tripartite Alliance as "the only way of stopping Hitler"
than were either Stalin or Molotov.]
Strang arrived in Moscow in the middle of June and had, together with the British
Ambassador, Sir William Seeds, and the French Ambassador, M. Naggiar, a number of
meetings with Mr Molotov. The first meeting on June 16, lasted an hour; another meeting on July 1 lasted an hour and a half; and still another, on July 8, two hours.
Let us remember that these discussions arose from the diplomatic exchanges that had
gone on since April. After rejecting the "Litvinov Plan" on April 17, the British Government had asked the Soviet Union to enter into a number of unilateral
commitments; in its Note of May 14—this was already after Molotov had taken over—
the Soviet Government declared that the latest British proposals did not contain the principle of reciprocity, and put the Soviet Union in a position of inequality; the absence of these guarantees to the Soviet Union in case of aggression on the one hand, and the
"unprotected position" of its North-Western frontiers, on the other, might well act as an incentive for the aggressors to attack Russia. It therefore proposed a more detailed version of the "Litvinov Plan" of April 17:
An effective Anglo-Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact, complete with (1) a three-power guarantee to the countries of Eastern and Central Europe exposed to
aggression, these countries to include Latvia, Estonia and Finland, and with (2) a
"concrete agreement" among the three powers as to the nature and the volume of the help they would render each other and to the guaranteed states. "Without such an agreement", the Note concluded, "the mutual assistance pacts may well remain suspended in mid-air, as we know from the experience of Czechoslovakia".
[AVP SSR (Soviet Foreign Policy Archives) Anglo-Franco-Soviet talks, vol. III, f. 39, quoted in Istoriya velikoi otechestvennoi voiny Sovietskogo Soyuza (History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union), vol. I (Moscow, 1960). Referred to in future as
IVOVSS.]
The joint Anglo-French proposals of May 27, in reply to this Note, were a marked
improvement on earlier efforts; they provided for direct Anglo-French aid to the Soviet Union in the event of a "direct attack", but left the question of the Baltic States still unresolved. Molotov's new Note of June 2 now stressed the need for "all-round, effective and immediate" mutual aid, and proposed to cover Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Rumania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland in the joint guarantees. It even provided that the mutual assistance would apply in cases when one of the signatories had become involved in war by helping a neutral European country that had applied for such help.
[AVP SSR, vol. III, ff. 46-47.]
What Molotov was in fact suggesting was a mutual assistance pact covering practically the whole of Europe.
The talks were becoming increasingly complicated. The Russians raised the question of
"indirect aggression". This meant in the first place, the use by Germany of the Baltic States as a base for aggression "with the connivance" of the governments of those countries. The possibility of Russian preventive action here could, in the British view, not be ruled out. The Ru
ssians also wanted to know if their troops could have access to
Polish territory in case of need. They wanted a concrete agreement on the precise military contribution the Soviet Union, Britain and France would make to the "common effort".
Looking back on these crucial days Grigore Gafencu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister,
wrote: "The Western Powers were seeking for a psychological effect (they did not hide this fact). They wished to create a solidarity between the West and the East which would prevent Hitler from starting his war. This plan was perfectly justified ... and any delay in its realisation seemed intolerable. The Soviet view was equally tenable: Moscow did not want to engage itself lightly. If despite agreement in principle, war broke out, the greatest German effort might be made against the USSR."
[The trouble is that, as Stalin was to say to Churchill in 1942, he (Stalin) knew perfectly well that such a "psychological effect" was totally insufficient to restrain Hitler.]
Anyway, the Strang-Molotov talks were leading nowhere, and, on July 23 Molotov
finally proposed that France and Britain send a military mission to Moscow.
The manner and motions of this mission were to show before long how "intolerable" Mr Chamberlain thought "any delay". What he still wanted "without delay" was a
"psychological effect"; on the other hand a military convention—to the Russians "the only real test of Western sincerity"—was precisely what he was not in a hurry to sign.
But were the Russians wholehearted about an alliance with Britain and France? On June 29 Zhdanov published in Pravda a sharply critical article on the Western Powers, almost suggesting that an alliance with the "Munichites" would be a doubtful asset. References to the Siegfried Line also appeared in the Soviet press from time to time, suggesting that France's striking power against Germany might be insufficient. And among the Soviet
hierarchy there might well have been the lingering thought that, so soon after the Army Purges, the Red Army had better not take on a powerful enemy like Nazi Germany,
unless some definite military convention could be reached with Biritain and France. Short of this, it might (as Stalin had already suggested on March 10) be preferable to remain
"neutral". But how?
Nor did it escape the Russians' notice that since Munich, and indeed to the very moment the war broke out, there were important people in power or near the levers of power in Britain and elsewhere who in their frantic efforts to appease Hitler, were prepared to go to almost any lengths.
[The list of appeasers—Mr Hudson, Sir Horace Wilson, Lord Kemsley, etc.—which
emerges from the Dirksen archives, that is the papers of the German Ambassador in
London until the outbreak of the war, captured by the Russians and published
subsequently, Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny. T.II Arkhiv Dirksena (1938-39), (Moscow, 1948), even allowing for a good deal of selective editing, certainly bears out what every experienced and sober observer of the political scene must have known or strongly suspected at the time.]
In all circumstances the Russians had to prepare themselves for an imminent Nazi thrust eastwards against Poland and the not unlikely event that such an offensive might
encompass the Baltic States and possibly Rumania, that is, a front extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Even if the German offensive stopped in the face of the Russian winter, the Russians must have feared a German invasion in the spring of 1940 with the West taking a ringside seat behind the Maginot Line, unless of course definite guarantees of co-ordinated military action were mutually provided.
On August 4, Pravda reported from London that Britain and France had agreed to send a military mission to Moscow. This report was accompanied by an account of the House of Commons debate, in the course of which Eden welcomed the decision. He thought that
this would "resolve distrust", and hoped that these talks would soon lead to an agreement.
He proposed, however, that, in addition to admirals and generals, the British Government should send "a representative political leader" to Moscow, "so that all the talks could be concluded within a week". There was no time to lose, Eden said, since Poland was now being threatened, as Czechoslovakia had been, and it was essential to create a peace front with the utmost speed, so as to discourage aggression. To these warnings Chamberlain turned a deaf ear.
But for several days after that very little more was said in the Soviet press about this military mission. For over a week a carefree holiday mood seems to have reigned in
Moscow. On August 1, indeed, a monumental Agricultural Exhibition opened in the
capital, with Molotov presiding over the opening ceremony. Stalin was represented by a colossal statue at the entrance of the Exhibition. Although, only a fortnight before, the Soviet press had reported a highly critical speech by Khrushchev on the state of stock-breeding in the Ukraine—a speech in which he castigated the half-heartedness of so
many kolkhozniki who wholly lacked the proper collectivist spirit, and were, in fact, enemies of the collective sector of the kolkhozes—the opening of the Agricultural Exhibition gave rise to rapturous eulogies on the state of Soviet Agriculture.
With this exhibition [Pravda wrote on August 1] we are celebrating a glorious victory of socialism. This is the tenth birthday of the kolkhoz system, and a report on its achievements. It was in the autumn of 1929 that the peasants started entering the
kolkhozes by whole villages and districts. It was the year of the Great Change. The incantations of the Trotskyite and Bukharinite agents of Fascism about the
inevitable clash between the workers and the peasants, and about the impossibility of building socialism in one country have been thrown into the dustbin of history.
New machinery has taken the place of the individual peasant's plough, wooden
harrow, sickle and scythe.
These raptures continued for several days, and 20,000 to 30,000 people a day visited the exhibition, with its ornate domes, Stalin-Gothic spires and its orgy of fountains, colossal statues of Lenin and Stalin, and with Vera Mukhina's giant silver statue of the worker with the hammer and the kolkhoznitsa with the sickle sweeping into a glorious future above the main entrance. The opulent and luscious exhibits in all the various palaces and pavilions were there to show that agriculture under the kolkhoz system had become a magnificently going concern, whereas, according to Pravda, the peasantry in Nazi Germany was "undergoing a process of continuous pauperisation".
Moscow was in a festive mood, and the blessings of peace seemed wonderful under the
wise leadership of Comrade Stalin. No doubt, not all was well—least of all in a great number of kolkhozes—but conditions had certainly become easier in the last five years.
The Exhibition teemed with lemonade and ice-cream stalls and eating places, and, in their light summer clothes, people looked cheerful, contented and even superficially
prosperous. War seemed a long way away, whatever the papers said about "more Nazi provocations in Danzig".
At last, on August 12, Pravda announced the arrival in Moscow of the British and French Military Missions:
The Missions, headed by Admiral Drax and General Doumenc, were met yesterday
morning at the Leningrad Station by a number of Soviet personalities... Later in the day, Comrade V. M. Molotov received the leaders of the Missions. Present at the
meeting were also Sir William Seeds, M. Naggiar, and the Deputy Foreign
Commissar V. P. Potemkin... Later they were received by Defence Commissar
Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Army Commander
of the 1st rank, B. M. Shaposhnikov.
In the evening a banquet was given in honour of the British and French Military
Missions, and all the Soviet top brass were there— Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Budienny, Timoshenko, heads of the Kiev and Belorussian Military Districts and leaders of the
Navy and Air For
ce. "Friendly toasts were exchanged between Comrade Voroshilov and the heads of the British and French Military Missions."
[ Pravda, August 12, 1939.]
That was as much as the Soviet public were allowed to learn at that stage about the
Anglo-French visit. What did it really amount to? The visit had been announced more
than three weeks before; but the British and French had obviously been in no great hurry to come, having travelled by slow boat to Leningrad. Needless to say, nobody had ever heard of Admiral Drax or General Doumenc. Why had nobody of note come to Moscow
—Halifax or Daladier?—not Chamberlain, of course, for who would want to see him! All the same, there was obviously "something in it" if all the top army and navy and air-force leaders were attending the banquet... These were the kind of confused impressions people had in Moscow at the time. Certainly nothing had been done in London or Paris to fire the Soviet public's imagination.
Present-day Soviet historians treat this Anglo-French Military Mission with the utmost severity. "Here were generals and admirals who had either reached the retiring age, or were holding only secondary posts... The British Government's attitude to the Mission was so frivolous that it had not even given them any powers. Only towards the end of the talks, after a lot of insisting by the Soviet side, did Drax produce some sort of credentials, but even these did not allow him to sign any kind of agreement with the USSR. The
credentials of the French general were no better. All they had been empowered to do was to conduct negotiations with us." The History recalls that after the Soviet Government had proposed that Britain and France send military missions to Moscow, these people
"had taken eleven days to prepare for their departure, and had then taken six more days to travel by slow cargo-passenger boat to Leningrad, and thence to Moscow".
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 168. In Maisky's Memoirs Admiral Drax is made to look like
someone straight out of P. G. Wodehouse]
The principle underlying the Soviet proposals was not only reciprocity, but also equality in the war effort to be put into this mutual assistance by the two sides. But even before Shaposhnikov outlined his proposals in detail, he had already been taken aback by the British reaction to his first mention of the "respective contributions":
Russia at war Page 6
