Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  It is a great change from the days when England and her Empire were left alone to face the mighty power of Germany... As for our work here, I shall only say this:

  after Quebec and the long discussions I had with my great friend President

  Roosevelt, I thought it right to see my other friend—as I think I may truly call him

  —Marshal Stalin.

  The smooth working of interallied relations, he said, was greatly assisted by these

  conferences. In the course of these Moscow talks, "we were most deeply involved in the anxious questions concerning Poland, and I am quite sure I am entitled to say that very definite results have been gained and differences have been sensibly narrowed. The

  Polish question stands in a better position than it did and I have good hope we shall reach full agreement eventually among all the parties concerned. Undoubtedly, we must not

  allow Poland to become a sore place in our affairs. We British went to war for Poland, and our sympathy for Poland is great, and Britain has a special interest in her fortunes, now that Poland is about to be liberated by the great manly efforts of our Allies." He made no reference whatsoever to the Warsaw tragedy which had come to its gruesome

  end only a fortnight before.

  Churchill then referred to the "surprising events" that had been occurring in the Balkans, and said that each of the Balkan problems was difficult to handle by correspondence, which was another good reason for coming to Moscow. Eden here had had "a hard time".

  But very sensible results had been achieved in co-ordinating the policies of the two governments in these regions. Then he spoke of the atmosphere of "friendship and comradeship" that had marked these Moscow talks:

  We both have our armies in the field and I am glad the Russians no longer have the heavy feeling that they bear the whole brunt... Unity is essential if peace is to be secure. Let us cast our eyes forward beyond the battle-line to the day when

  Germany has surrendered unconditionally, beaten to the ground, and awaiting the

  decisions of the outraged nations who saved themselves from the pit of destruction that Hitler had digged for them.

  He ended with a Churchillian tirade on Anglo-Russian-American friendship:

  This friendship, in war as in peace, can save the world, and perhaps it is the only thing that can save the peace for our children and grandchildren. In my opinion, it is a goal easily attainable. Very good, very good are the results in the field, very good the work behind the lines, and hopes are high for the permanent results of

  victory.

  He also referred to "the great regard, and respect, and great confidence" he felt for "the great chief of the Russian State".

  The Russians present at the conference were very pleased with the statement; they saw in Churchill a strong supporter of a Big-Three policy.

  No doubt there were difficulties—no real progress was made during the long talks with Mikolajczyk, Romer and Grabski on the one hand, and the Lublin Poles on the other; nor did the agreement on the Balkans amount to very much, except that the Russians seemed ready to abandon Greece—but some useful talks had taken place on the possible partition of Germany, and, above all, Churchill had secured some fairly precise assurances from Stalin about the Russians joining in the war against Japan within three months after the defeat of Germany. At Roosevelt's request the discussion of the disagreements that had arisen at Dumbarton Oaks over UNO was postponed till the next Big-Three meeting.

  So the results of the Moscow talks were rather a mixed bag. Nevertheless, there was a general impression that Churchill and Stalin were now on excellent terms, and that

  Churchill was now genuinely starry-eyed about "the great chief of the Russian State", partly perhaps under the influence of Clark-Kerr.

  The extreme cordiality in the Churchill-Stalin relations is reflected in the correspondence they exchanged during and just after the Moscow visit. These letters are reproduced in the volume published in Moscow in 1957, though they are not quoted by Churchill

  himself.

  Thus, his letter of October 17, in which he asked Stalin to see Mikolajczyk—"in whose desire to reach an understanding with you and with the National Committee I am more

  than ever convinced" —concludes with the words:

  My daughter Sarah will be delighted with the charming token from Miss Stalin and

  will guard it among her most valued possessions. I remain, with sincere respect and goodwill,

  Your friend and war comrade,

  Winston S. Churchill.

  On October 19, Stalin wrote:

  Dear Mr Churchill,

  On the occasion of your departure from Moscow please accept from me two modest

  gifts as souvenirs. The vase, "Man in a Boat" is for Mrs Churchill and the vase

  "With Bow against Bear" for yourself. Once again I wish you good health and good cheer.

  J. Stalin.

  In reply Churchill wrote:

  My dear Marshal Stalin,

  I have just received the two beautiful vases... We shall treasure them amongst our most cherished possessions... The visit has been from beginning to end a real

  pleasure to me... most particularly because of our very pleasant talks together. My hopes for the future alliance of our peoples never stood so high. I hope you may long be spared to repair the ravages of war and lead All The Russias out of the years of storm into glorious sunshine.

  Your friend and war-time comrade,

  Winston S. Churchill.

  After a further message of overwhelming cordiality sent during his and Eden's return journey, Churchill sent Stalin from London an almost gushing message of thanks for the

  "Russian products" (obviously caviare) that had been added to the English party's luggage:

  It is only since my arrival in London that I have realised the great generosity of your gifts of Russian products for myself and members of my mission. Please accept the warmest thanks of all who have been the grateful recipients of this new example of Russian hospitality.

  [ Stalin-Churchill correspondence, pp. 263-6.]

  At all the Moscow parties, Churchill had, indeed, shown a gargantuan liking for caviare.

  Throughout the visit, Stalin had gone out of his way to show Churchill and Eden the

  greatest friendliness; he had even gone to see them off to the airfield. There had been nothing like it since the Matsuoka visit in 1941. The communiqué recorded "considerable progress" in the talks on Poland, "greatly reduced differences" and "dispelled misunderstandings"; agreement on Bulgaria, and agreement on a joint policy on

  Yugoslavia—the Yugoslavs would, of course, be "free to choose their own system", but meantime there would be a fusion of the National Liberation Committee and the Royal

  Yugoslav Government.

  Chapter XII STALIN'S HORSE-TRADING WITH DE GAULLE

  There is a long story behind de Gaulle's visit to Moscow in December 1944. During the Soviet-German Pact the Soviet Union had established diplomatic relations with the Vichy Government, though the Vichy Ambassador, M. Gaston Bergery and his American wife,

  Bettina, the ex-Schiaparelli mannequin, did not arrive in Moscow until April 25, 1941, i.e. after the German invasion of Yugoslavia. When he presented his credentials to

  Kalinin in the presence of Molotov, and urged Russia to "take part in the organisation of the New Order in Europe", his speech was met with stony silence from the Russians. On the following day, Mr Bogomolov, the Soviet Ambassador to Vichy France, who

  happened to be in Moscow at the time, called on Bergery and explained to him, in

  "ideological terms", why the Soviet Union did not think it possible to accept Germany's hegemony in Europe.

  [G. Gafencu. Préliminaires de la guerre à F Est. (Paris, 1944), pp. 234-5. Bogomolov was to become Ambassador to the various "allied" (i.e. exiled) governments in London.]

  Diplomatic relations with Vichy were, of course, broken off the moment the Germans

&
nbsp; invaded the Soviet Union. The first direct contacts between the Free French and the

  Russians were made as early as the beginning of August 1941 on de Gaulle's initiative when M. Jouve, de Gaulle's unofficial representative in Turkey, called on Mr S.

  Vinogradov, the Soviet Ambassador there and informed him that de Gaulle, whom he had just seen at Beirut, would like to send two or three Free French representatives to

  Moscow. Without insisting on recognition—official or unofficial—of the Free French by the Soviet Government, de Gaulle was anxious to establish direct relations with the

  Russians, instead of dealing with them, as hitherto, through the British. According to the Soviet account of the meeting, Jouve pointed out that, in General de Gaulle's view, the Soviet Union and France were both continental Powers which had problems and aims

  different from those of the Anglo-Saxon states. And Jouve added:

  General de Gaulle talked a lot about the Soviet Union. Her entry into the war, he said, represented for us a great chance on which we had not counted before. He also said that while it was impossible to say when exactly victory would be won, he was absolutely certain that, in the end, the Germans would be smashed.

  [ Sovietsko-Frantsuzskie otnosheniya.., 1941-1945. (Moscow 1959), pp. 43-44.]

  During the same week MM. Cassin and Dejean called on Mr Maisky, the Soviet

  Ambassador in London proposing to him the establishment of "some kind of official relations" between the Soviet Union and the Free French. They suggested that these relations be modelled on those existing between the Free French and the British

  Government. On September 26, 1941, Maisky informed de Gaulle that the Soviet Union

  recognised him as the leader of all the Free French who had rallied to him, "regardless of where they were". It also promised the Free French all possible aid in the common struggle against Germany and her allies.

  [Ibid., p. 47.]

  De Gaulle was anxious, almost from the outset, to give tangible form to the military cooperation between the Free French and the Soviet Union, and wanted to send to Russia a French division then stationed in Syria. But this apparently met with opposition from the British and, in April 1942, Dejean proposed that the French send to Russia thirty airmen instead, and thirty ground staff—to begin with.

  Thus the foundations were laid for that French Normandie Squadron which arrived in

  Russia later in the year. No doubt they were little more than a token force, but they represented an important political factor and a symbolic link between Russia and the French Resistance. The French airmen fought gallantly on the Russian Front, suffered very heavy casualties, and Russian military decorations were lavishly conferred on them.

  Great publicity was given to this French unit.

  In March 1942 a small diplomatic mission, headed by M. Roger Garreau, and with

  General E. Petit as the Military Attaché, arrived in Moscow. Garreau was (at least at that stage) a strong supporter of de Gaulle and, in his conversations with the Russians, never made any secret of the disagreements between de Gaulle on the one hand and the British and Americans on the other.

  [In this he was closely following de Gaulle's example in London. In talking to Soviet diplomats the General frequently complained about the British Government: thus, on

  November 26, 1941, in reply to Ambassador Bogomolov's remark that he regularly read

  his (de Gaulle's) paper, France, de Gaulle angrily snapped back: "That isn't my paper, that's the paper of the British Ministry of Information." On another occasion, on September 26, 1942, he told Bogomolov that the British were trying to build up Herriot as his rival, adding "with great irritation" that the British were trying all the time to overthrow him by making use of all sorts of other people. (Ibid., pp. 50 and 96).]

  Garreau (like de Gaulle) attached the greatest importance to the support given by Russia to the Free French, and on March 23,1943, went so far as to tell Molotov that "but for the Soviet Government's support, Fighting France would not have survived the great

  November (1942) crisis when various attempts were made in North Africa to set up quite a different government."

  [Ibid., p. 118. ]

  In June 1943 the question arose of recognising the French Committee of National

  Liberation in Algiers, and on the 23rd, the British Ambassador, in a letter to Stalin, said that he had learned "with alarm" of the Soviet intention of recognising this Committee.

  [ Ibid., p. 167.]

  Under British and American pressure, this recognition was delayed, but when it was

  finally granted in August 1943, the Soviet "formula" of recognition was much shorter and more straightforward than that of the British and American Governments, with its

  numerous conditions and reservations. When, finally, in August 1944, the de Gaulle

  Government established itself in Paris, the Russians pressed Britain and the United States for an early recognition as the French Provisional Government. So, on the whole, de

  Gaulle had every reason to be satisfied with the backing the Soviet Government had

  given him ever since 1941.

  His decision to go to Moscow to see Stalin at the end of 1944 had been largely

  determined by a good deal of irritation and annoyance caused him by the British and

  Americans, by their "domineering" position in France, and by his desire to show that he had an independent policy and was nobody's satellite. The Russians, for their part, were interested in France in so far as this was a country in which the communists had played a leading part in the Resistance and were making their influence felt inside the French Government.

  And yet, in the conditions prevailing at the end of 1944, the most important question for the Russians was to finish the war against Germany as quickly as possible, and Stalin expected the French communists to subordinate their own political interests to this end—

  as we know, for instance, from the instructions Stalin obviously gave Maurice Thorez soon afterwards to approve the dissolution of the Patriotic Militias (the para-military communist organisations of the Resistance), and to co-operate with de Gaulle.

  [See the author's France 1940-1955 (London, 1956), pp. 244-5.]

  During de Gaulle's visit to Moscow Stalin made a point of urging the General half-

  jokingly "not to shoot Thorez—at least not for the present"—since the communist leader was going to behave as a good patriotic Frenchman. Thorez, who had been in Moscow

  throughout the war, had returned to France in November 1944—where he had just been

  amnestied for his "desertion" from the French Army in 1939, and was later (in 1945) also going to be appointed one of the Ministers of State in de Gaulle's government.

  De Gaulle's visit to Moscow was, above all, a move to break away from an excessive

  dependence on Britain and the USA. In those pre-atomic days de Gaulle continued to

  think of France and Russia— as he had already done in 1941—as the two great future

  military Powers on the Continent of Europe which could keep Germany down, and whose

  points of view and interests were different from those of the "Anglo-Saxons". It was precisely on this point that, in 1944, Stalin was unable to see eye-to-eye with de Gaulle—

  for the simple reason that, in purely military and economic terms, France was totally insignificant compared with Britain and America. So, much to de Gaulle's

  disappointment, Stalin refused to take France seriously at that stage as a military ally.

  Instead, Stalin tried to use de Gaulle as a means of breaking Western unity over the Polish question. De Gaulle, for his part, tried to force the hands of Britain and America by getting Stalin to accept the annexation of the Rhine-land by France. In the end, de Gaulle refused to recognise the Lublin Committee, and Stalin refused to recognise the Rhine frontier, and de Gaulle finally "triumphed" by taking back to Paris a Franco-Soviet Treaty of Alliance, on the lines of
the Anglo-Soviet Pact of 1942. But this was by no means everything that either de Gaulle or Stalin had originally hoped to achieve.

  There was something slightly comic about the whole de Gaulle-Bidault visit that

  December. The Russians treated the French with a good deal of condescension, and the French, at the time, felt this very keenly, though there is not the slightest suggestion of that in de Gaulle's Memoirs.

  Travelling via Baku and Stalingrad, de Gaulle, Bidault, General Juin and a handful of diplomats arrived in Moscow on December 2. First de Gaulle dropped a brick at

  Stalingrad where there was a reception in his honour at which he presented the city with a memorial tablet from the people of France. In his speech he referred to Stalingrad as "a symbol of our common victories over the enemy", a description of the defence of Stalingrad which the Russians did not much relish, especially coming from a Frenchman.

  At the Kursk Station in Moscow two days later, the French party were met by Molotov

  and a guard of honour. The Diplomatic Corps were also there in force, and a large crowd had gathered outside the station, attracted by the numerous official cars. Emerging from the station, de Gaulle looked at this big crowd in the square: and the crowd looked back, not quite sure who he was, and nobody even murmured "Vive de Gaulle!" or anything.

  So he drove off, wondering what a queer country this was.

  [In his Memoirs, de Gaulle writes: "A considerable crowd had gathered, from which rose a hum of sympathetic voices." Op. cit., p. 68; I was there, and was totally unaware of any kind of "hum".]

  In 1944, de Gaulle was a very great man in France, and it shocked him not to be treated as such anywhere else.

  The minutes of the three Stalin-de Gaulle meetings on December 2, 6 and 8, as published by the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1959, as well as the minutes of the Molotov-Bidault talks are of the greatest interest, since in substance and especially in their overtones they differ considerably from de Gaulle's rather glib account of what happened.

  [ Sovietsko-Frantsuzskie otnosheniya, 1941-45. (Moscow, 1959).]

  The minutes are also one of the few first-hand accounts we have of how Stalin conducted negotiations during the war.