Churchill had become increasingly doubtful about the possibility of running convoys to Murmansk and Archangel. As early as May 20 he wrote that the PQ 16 convoy of thirty-five ships had left for Russia, but that "unless the weather is again favourable enough to hamper German air operations, we should expect the greater part of the ships and the war materials they carry to be lost." He proposed therefore that the Russians try to bomb German air bases in Northern Norway. Stalin replied that the Russians would give the convoy what air cover they could, but did not answer Churchill's suggestion about the bombing of Norwegian airfields; the Russians, obviously had no bombers available for the purpose.
As it happened, twenty-seven out of the thirty-five ships of the PQ 16 (the one on which I sailed) got through to Murmansk; but the next convoy, the PQ 17 ended in disaster.
Churchill wrote Stalin a long letter on July 18. He recalled that Britain had started running small convoys to Russia as early as August 1941, and that these were not
interfered with until December. The problem had become much more difficult after that.
In February 1942 the Germans had moved "a considerable force of U-boats and a large number of aircraft" to Northern Norway; nevertheless, the convoys "got through with varying, but not prohibitive losses". Not satisfied with these results, the Germans then sent their surface forces to the north.
Before the May convoy (PQ 16) was sent off, the Admiralty warned us that the
losses would be very severe if, as was expected the Germans used their surface
forces to the east of Bear Island. We decided to sail the convoy. The attack by
surface forces did not materialise, and the convoy got through with a loss of one-sixth, chiefly from air attack. But in the case of the PQ 17 convoy the Germans at last used their forces in the manner we had always feared... At the moment only four ships have arrived at Archangel, but six others are in Novaya Zemlya harbours.
These may, however, be attacked from the air separately.
In short, Churchill announced his decision to discontinue the Arctic convoys until further notice:
We do not think it right to risk our Home Fleet eastward of Bear Island... If one or two of our most powerful types were to be lost or even seriously damaged while the Tirpitz and her consorts... remained in action, the whole command of the Atlantic would be lost.
Food supplies by which Britain lived would be affected; and her whole war effort would be crippled.
Above all, the great convoys of American troops across the ocean, rising presently to as many as 80,000 a month, would be prevented... and a really strong Second Front in 1943 rendered impossible.
Churchill had decided to cancel the PQ 18 convoy, but proposed to send "some of the ships" to the Persian Gulf instead. The same letter also mentioned the "three divisions of Poles" who were anxious to get out of Russia, together with their women and children.
Stalin had agreed to their departure, but now Churchill was anxious:
I hope this project of yours, which we greatly value, will not fall to the ground on account of the Poles wanting to bring with the troops a considerable number of
women and children. The feeding of these dependants will be a considerable burden to us. But we think it well worth while bearing that burden for the sake of forming this Polish army which will be used faithfully for our common advantage.
These Poles were to move to Iran and Palestine, and Churchill was obviously in a hurry to get them all out of Russia. On July 23 Stalin sent a furious reply to this message: I gather, first, that the British Government refuses to go on supplying the Soviet Union with war materials by the northern route, and secondly,... is putting off the (Second Front) operation till 1943... Deliveries via Persian ports can in no way make up for the loss... In view of the situation on the Soviet-German Front, I state most emphatically that the Soviet Government cannot tolerate the Second Front in
Europe being postponed till 1943.
Stalin also violently criticised the Admiralty for mishandling the PQ 17 convoy, its dread of losing any warships, and its virtual decision to abandon the supply ships to their fate: Of course, I do not think that steady deliveries to northern Soviet ports are possible without risk or loss. But then no major task can be carried out in wartime without risk or losses... The Soviet Union is suffering far greater losses, and I never imagined that the British Government would deny us delivery of war materials precisely now, when the Soviet Union is badly in need of them.
Churchill was, clearly, thoroughly nettled by this obvious charge of gutlessness and bad faith, and in his very next message offered to meet Stalin at Astrakhan or in the Caucasus.
He said that another effort would be made to run a convoy to Archangel in September.
Stalin replied on July 31 inviting Churchill to Moscow. "The members of the
Government, the General Staff and myself cannot be away at this moment of bitter
fighting against the Germans."
Churchill promptly accepted to go to Moscow.
Churchill's story of that famous visit to Moscow is too well-known to need recalling here in any detail. But a few points should be mentioned. The visit was, obviously, distasteful to him. The task of telling Stalin that there would be no Second Front in 1942 "was like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole." The conversations ranged from extreme unpleasantness to a superficial mateyness; but there is little doubt that there was much about Stalin that impressed Churchill.
I met for the first time the great Revolutionary Chief and profound Russian
statesman and warrior with whom for the next three years I was to be in intimate, rigorous, but always exciting, and at times even genial association.
During his first meeting he gave him all the good reasons for not opening a Second Front in Europe in 1942, but then told him of operation "Torch" (the landing in North Africa).
Stalin "became intensely interested", and finally said: "May God prosper this undertaking." Stalin had quickly grasped the strategic advantages of "Torch": He recounted four main reasons for it: it would hit Rommel in the back... it would overawe Spain; it would produce fighting between Germans and Frenchmen in
France; it would expose Italy to the whole brunt of war.
I was deeply impressed with this remarkable statement. It showed the Russian
dictator's swift and complete mastery of a problem hitherto novel to him.
According to Churchill this first meeting went off remarkably well, but the next meeting was much less pleasant, and Churchill thought that, in the interval, Stalin had been influenced by the Council of Commissars, "who had not taken the news I had brought as well as he did." In an aide-mémoire Stalin handed Churchill during this second meeting he violently protested against the British decision not to have a Second Front in Europe in 1942. Further Notes were exchanged, to no great purpose.
In retrospect, the most interesting part of Churchill's story is Stalin's assessment of the military situation in Russia: he said a) that, with twenty-five divisions defending the Caucasus, the Germans would not cross the mountain range, and would not break through either to Baku or to Batum and, in two months, snow would make the mountains
impassable, and b) that he had other solid reasons for his confidence, including a counter-offensive on a great scale.
My own feeling (Churchill wrote to Attlee and Roosevelt) is that it is an even chance they will hold, but CIGS will not go as far as this.
[Churchill, The Second World War, vol. IV, pp. 425-8.])
There was also some inconclusive talk of a joint Soviet-British operation in Northern Norway.
Churchill records no talks with Stalin on the subject of the Poles; all he says is that, on his last night in Moscow, he had a meeting with General Anders. Of this he gives no
details.
On his last night (before seeing Anders) Churchill had gone to Stalin's private flat in the Kremlin to have dinner.
Molotov was also summoned. Stalin introduce
d me to his daughter, a nice girl, who kissed him shyly, but was not allowed to dine... The greatest goodwill prevailed, and for the first time we got on to easy and friendly terms. I feel I have established a personal relationship which will be helpful...He would rather have lorries than
tanks, of which he is making 2,000 a month. Also, he wants aluminium. On the
whole, I am encouraged by my visit to Moscow... Now they know the worst and,
having made their protest, they are entirely friendly, and this in spite of the fact that this is their most anxious and agonising time. Moreover, Stalin is entirely convinced of the great advantages of "Torch"...
[Ibid., pp. 450-1.])
Such is the gist of Churchill's story of his visit to Moscow in August 1942. The attitude to the Churchill visit, and to the Western Allies generally, on the part of the Moscow
population is a rather different story. Not only had the "Second Front communiqué" of June 11 been played up to a fantastic degree by the Soviet press, but it was also linked in the public mind with Stalin's somewhat ill-considered May-Day Order about "driving the Fascist invaders out of the Soviet Union in 1942." It was assumed that Stalin would have never issued such an order without being as good as certain that there would be a Second Front in the West.
Not only was the Russian population suffering very serious hardships (the winter had been terrible, and the spring and summer were not much better), but, when the military situation began to look truly catastrophic in July and August, the question of a Second Front in the immediate future became to many Russians almost a matter of life and death.
It should also be remembered that nearly every Russian one met had a father or brother, or son—or several brothers or sons—in the army, or else dead, wounded or missing. In the villages there were hardly any men left at all except youngsters or very old people.
Even at the height of the "honeymoon" there had been distrust of the Americans and especially of the British. The ratification of the Anglo-Soviet Alliance had been marked by a display of a lot of Soviet flags on public buildings, but no British flags. As we have seen, invidious comparisons were made between the desperate resistance at Sebastopol and the "gutless" surrender at Tobruk. I remember an educated-looking old woman in a tramcar saying:
"You can't possibly trust the British. Young people are not educated enough to know; but I know all about Dis-ra-eli" (she uttered the four-syllable name with a snarl); others were very distrustful of Churchill, whose attitude to Russia was often contrasted with that of Roosevelt, who was assumed to be much friendlier. During June, July and August, I
visited a variety of schools and talked to many young people. They were friendly; but there was only one thing they really wanted to know, and that was whether there was
going to be a Second Front, and if so, when.
There was little propaganda to popularise the British and American Allies. In June there were a few posters—one of three darts of lightning, with the Soviet, the American and the British flags striking down a toad-like Hitler, green with fear. Except for some newsreels of the Molotov visit to the USA and England, nothing much was made of the
alliance in either cinemas or theatres; and the only "pro-Allied" show I remember was a variety show at the Moscow Ermitage—which ended, somewhat fatuously, with an
exotic-looking young woman playing Tipperary on an accordion, and singing in a mixture of broken English and Russian, after which the whole company burst into what was meant to be a sort of Anglo-Soviet-American dance, in the setting of a great display of allied flags. The audience showed very little enthusiasm. This was at the beginning of July; the show was stopped soon after, and the three darts-of-lightning posters also disappeared, as well as the displays of the "Victory in 1942" slogan.
One of the minor accompaniments of the Anglo-Soviet Alliance and the American-Soviet Agreement was the formation in June of an Anglo-American Press Association; besides
being a gesture of special goodwill on the part of the Russians who had authorised this purely Anglo-American association to be set up, it gave them an opportunity to
concentrate their propaganda efforts on the British and American press.
As time went on, the exasperation about the lack of a Second Front grew. Stories went round Moscow of German leaflets showered on the Russians, saying "Where are the English?" [These were almost exactly like those dropped on French troops in 1939 and 1940.] or "The Rumanians and Hungarians are better allies to us than the English are to you."
In this atmosphere, the news of Churchill's visit was received with rather mixed feelings.
The first guess made by people like Ehrenburg was, roughly, the correct one: that
Churchill had come to "plead with Stalin and to withdraw the Second Front
communiqué". Apart from that the Russians were completely silent; and the two other sources of information, or rather, sources of hints, seemed unable to agree. The British Embassy kept hinting that Stalin and Churchill were "getting on like a house on fire" and, on the last day, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr described the meeting as "an epoch-making event"—which was going to create a lot of confusion soon afterwards. Mr. Harriman and the Americans, on the other hand, kept on suggesting that the meetings had not gone well at all, and that if the Russians were to expect any immediate results from these bad-tempered meetings, they were going to be disappointed. It was also learned that the
British had asked for air bases in the Caucasus, a proposal the Russians had rejected.
However, even the Americans admitted that the atmosphere had improved somewhat
towards the end, and was "almost jovial" at the Kremlin banquet. It was said that Churchill had complimented Stalin on the "splendid Russian soldiers" to which Stalin had replied "Don't exaggerate. They aren't all that hot. In fact they are pretty bad still. But they are learning and improving every day; and they'll be all right before long."
The Russian public saw nothing of Churchill; he did not go to any theatre show; there was no embassy reception of any kind, and he even decided not to see the British and American press, who were seen instead by the Ambassador who then uttered that ill-considered phrase about the "epoch-making event".
However, the newsreel men were kept busy, and on his arrival at the airfield, Churchill's V-sign was interpreted by some Russians who saw it on the screen as meaning "Second Front". (In a cinema I heard a young girl, when the band played "God Save the King", asking her girl friend what the tune was, and receiving the reply: "Don't you know? That's the 'Internationale' in English.")
The communiqué published at the end of the Churchill visit and the editorials in the Russian press spoke of the close bonds between Britain and the Soviet Union, but were not very illuminating, and did not suggest any immediate results. Significantly, the Army paper, Red Star, did not publish an editorial of its own, but merely reprinted the Pravda editorial. Also, on the day of Churchill's departure, when, in his final statement, he said that he had "spoken his mind" to Stalin, Pravda printed an angry Yefimov cartoon ridiculing the German cardboard defences on the Channel—a theory Dieppe was,
unfortunately, going to disprove a few days later. Not that the Russians thought that Dieppe had proved anything, except perhaps a desire on the part of the British to show that the Second Front was "impossible".
The Russians also disliked Churchill's "hobnobbing" with General Anders during his Moscow visit, even though he appears to have had only one short meeting with him. It was (probably correctly) assumed that the stories Churchill was told about the
"imminent" defeat of the Red Army (whether he believed them or not) emanated in the first place from Anders, who, as the Russians knew only too well, was in a great hurry to pull the greatest possible number of Poles out of Russia. The story widely current in Moscow that Churchill had encouraged the Poles to leave the "sinking ship" added to Russian annoyance.
These stories did not appear in the press, but it should be remembered that the Party wen
t in for a good deal of verbal propaganda, and kept up a fairly heavy barrage in this way against both the "saboteurs of the Second Front" and, more particularly, against the Poles.
In ideological terms, there were many "class enemies", and Churchill and certainly the Anders' Poles were amongst them. The fact that these Poles had some highly
understandable grievances against the Russians was, of course, overlooked.
On August 23 Stalingrad was bombed by 600 planes and to the north of the city the
Germans broke through to the Volga; this was not announced at the time. For the next week the communiqués rather vaguely (but ominously) spoke of "intensive" fighting northeast and north-west of Stalingrad, with occasional mentions of some local success.
During the first fortnight of September, the whole tone of the press was distinctly nervous in its comments on Stalingrad; and it was not till September 20 (five days after the arrival of the Rodimtsev division) that it began to speak of "heroic Stalingrad".
During the greater part of September, the press blew hot and cold: while admitting that the situation at Stalingrad was very serious, it gave some general reasons for being reasonably confident. Thus, much was made of the enormous progress made by the war
industries, of the supplies that were now reaching the army, and of the growing
discouragement among the Germans. In particular, much as he may have disliked doing
it, Ehrenburg frequently quoted desperate letters to German soldiers at the Russian front about the terror and horror of "British thousand-bomber raids". There was no Second Front, but the RAF was, all the same, having its uses.
Two things began to characterise the Soviet press coverage of Stalingrad during the last ten days of September: the detailed description of the peculiar nature of the fighting there (above all, the house-to-house fighting) and the birth of the Stalingrad Legend. Thus, on September 22, Red Star published an extremely detailed article on the technique of house-to-house (and even floor-to-floor and room-to-room) fighting.
Russia at war Page 55
