Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  He [Truman] stood up to the Russians in the most emphatic and decisive manner,

  telling them as to certain demands that they absolutely could not have and that the United States was entirely against them... He told the Russians just where they got off and generally bossed the whole meeting.

  [Stimson, quoted by W. A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, New York, 1962, p. 249.]

  Churchill was delighted with the new President, and fully supported his "tough" line with the Russians and what came to be known as his "Open Door" policy in Eastern Europe.

  He also blew up at the Russians' "effrontery" in wanting to control one of the former Italian colonies on the Mediterranean.

  The Russians were glad to see the last of Churchill, but when, after the British General Election, Churchill and Eden were replaced by Attlee and Bevin, they found that they had nothing to congratulate themselves on. According to Mr Byrnes, Bevin was very

  "aggressive" indeed in his "forceful opposition" to the new Polish boundaries.

  [James F. Byrnes, Frankly Speaking (London, 1948), p. 79.]

  Soon after Potsdam, a member of the Russian delegation remarked to me that he had

  found Mr Bevin an "ochen volevoi chelovek" —a "very strong-willed man", which was a polite way of saying that he had found the new Foreign Secretary extremely pigheaded.

  The foundations for the real division of Germany, officially still to be under Four-Power control, were laid by the reparations agreement reached at Potsdam. Even before Potsdam the Russians had been helping themselves indiscriminately to reparations—still termed

  "booty" at the time—from the Soviet Zone. But they continued to hope that the reparations questions would be put on an all-German basis at Potsdam. This was not to be. On July 23, Mr Byrnes declared Stalin's Yalta figure of twenty billion dollars (half of it for the Soviet Union) to be "unpractical", and refused to name any other. He also reiterated the United States Government's opposition to the Russians' meddling in the control of industry in the Ruhr and other parts of Western Germany. And there followed this conversation:

  Mr Molotov: I understand that what you have in mind is that each country should take reparations from its own zone. If we fail to reach an agreement, the result will be the same.

  Mr Byrnes: Yes.

  Mr Molotov: Would not your suggestion mean that each country would have a free hand in its own zone and would act entirely independently of the others?

  Mr Byrnes: That is true in substance.

  [ Quoted by W. A. Williams, op. cit., p. 251.]

  The Russians fought this proposal for over a week, but, in the end, accepted it, together with the following provisions: they would also have a free hand in collecting German assets throughout Eastern Europe; they would receive a small percentage of the

  reparations available from Western Germany; and, finally, the Western Powers would

  "provisionally" recognise the Oder-Neisse Line—rather to Churchill's disgust, as expressed in the final pages of The Second World War. What this meant in fact was that the all-German treatment of reparations, for which the Russians had fought so

  desperately, was down the drain. Even the small face-saver for this "all-German"

  treatment—the minor reparations deliveries to Russia from Western Germany—was

  scrapped less than a year later, apparently on the personal responsibility of General Lucius Clay, the Military Governor of the American Zone.

  This reparations settlement was crucial: it started the process whereby Russia was kept strictly outside Western Germany but, at the same time, strengthened her economic—and therefore also political—hold on Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe as a whole. This apparent ratification of a "spheres of influence" policy was, of course, in flat contradiction to Truman's Open Door policy, and American experts have continued to

  argue on the real significance of this apparent contradiction.

  There was a direct connection between the American atom bomb and the singular

  reparations deal at Potsdam. This was, in fact, symptomatic of the temporary (as Truman thought) division of Germany and of Europe in two. Although appearances were kept up to some extent for the next two or three years, Potsdam marked in the reality the

  beginning of the end of that "Big-Three Peace" of which the main pillar—as the Russians saw it—was the joint control of Germany.

  Chapter VI THE SHORT RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR-

  HIROSHIMA

  There were two periods in the Soviet-German war when the Russians dreaded a Japanese attack on them. First, during the very first months of the war, and indeed, right up to Pearl Harbour; and again during the disastrous summer and autumn of 1942. As a

  precaution against a Japanese attack, the Russians had to keep substantial forces in the Far East, about forty divisions according to the post-war History. Although in extreme emergencies—during the Battle of Moscow and, again, at the time of Stailingrad—the

  Soviet Supreme Command had to draw on its Far-Eastern forces and bring some

  particularly tough Siberian troops to the Soviet-German Front, the fact remains that, especially during the first eighteen months of the war, Japan rendered Hitler a great service by tying up with its one-million-strong Kwantung Army important Russian forces which would have been of the greatest value in Europe.

  After Stalingrad, and with the war in the Pacific not going quite as well as the Japanese had expected, a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union was "postponed". As the History says:

  Stalingrad struck an irreparable blow at the Japanese plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Having been bogged down in their war against China, the United

  States and Britain, the Japanese now had every reason to doubt a successful

  outcome of their aggressive plans against the Soviet Union... The Japanese

  Ambassador in Berlin told Ribbentrop on March 6, 1943 that the Japanese

  Government "considered it wrong to enter the war against the Soviet Union just now."

  The subsequent developments of World War II did not change the situation in

  Japan's favour: by 1943 the strategic initiative in the war in the Pacific passed into the hands of the United States forces... By the spring of 1944 the Japanese General Staff began to elaborate defensive plans in the event of a war with the Soviet Union.

  [IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 526. Note the much greater credit given to the USA and Britain in this 1963 publication than in earlier Soviet histories of the war.]

  There is good reason to suppose that even if the exact words uttered by the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin after Stalingrad were not known to the Russians at the time, they had an excellent idea of the real position: their espionage service in Japan was

  exceptionally good. Up till 1942 they enjoyed the invaluable services of Richard Sorge, a German journalist, who had the confidence of Ambassador Ott himself!

  The Russians had stored up by then quite a number of grievances against Japan: they had reason to suppose that during the earlier stages of the war the Japanese Embassy in

  Moscow or Kuibishev had been transmitting much valuable information to the Germans

  and, at least until Stalingrad, the Japanese had created great difficulties for Soviet shipping in the Pacific, especially for ships bringing supplies from the United States. 178

  Soviet ships had been stopped and searched by the Japanese between the beginning of the war and the end of 1944 (mostly during the earlier period), and three Russian cargoes had been sunk by submarines which the Russians later claimed were Japanese.

  [IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 529. It can, of course, be argued that Japan rendered Russia a great service in not attacking her (and many Russians were fully conscious of this at the time), but this was not a point to stress in 1945!]

  For all that, in 1943 and 1944, diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Japan remained cool but correct, and the Japanese Ambassador continued to be invited to

  official recept
ions. At Teheran and on many other occasions the British and Americans were told that there could be no question of the Soviet Union joining in the war against Japan until after the defeat of Germany. All the same, there were already some curious straws in the wind as early as the middle of 1944; one of them was the publication of a long novel by A. Stepanov called Port Arthur which, without actually justifying the Tsarist government's policy of imperialist expansion in the Far East, nevertheless

  represented the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 as a "national" war, and as a humiliating national defeat which called for revenge. Anything less "Leninist" was hard to imagine.

  It was not, however, till Yalta, in February 1945, that the Soviet leaders firmly committed themselves to entering the war against Japan; the Soviet Union was to receive Southern Sakhalin lost to the Japanese in 1905 and the Kurile Islands.

  [Under a Russo-Japanese agreement of 1855 Sakhalin was to be administered jointly by the two countries, while the Kurile Islands were divided between them. In 1875 Japan abandoned her claims on Sakhalin, but received all the Kurile Islands. Under the 1905

  peace treaty, Japan received the southern half of Sakhalin. The Russians now not only demanded the return of Southern Sakhalin, but all the Kurile Islands which they

  considered as Japanese bases interfering with Russian shipping in the Pacific. Maybe they also suspected even then that the USA had an eye on the Kuriles as a potential air base.]

  The clauses of the Yalta Protocol on the recognition of the status quo for Mongolia and on Russian privileges in China were subject to "concurrence" by the Chinese Government, i.e. by Chiang Kai Shek. It was agreed, however, at Yalta that in view of its top-secret nature, the Protocol on Japan could not be communicated to Chiang Kai Shek until after the defeat of Germany.

  On April 5, 1945 the Russian people were left in little doubt that they would still have to fight Japan. On that day the Soviet Government denounced its Neutrality Pact with Japan; Molotov informed the Japanese Government that, since the conclusion of the Pact in

  1941, the situation had "radically changed"; Germany had attacked the USSR and Japan had helped Germany. Moreover, Japan was fighting a war against Britain and the United States, which were Allies of the Soviet Union. "In virtue of Article 3 ... allowing the right to denounce the Pact one year before its expiry, the Soviet Union hereby does so, as from April 13, 1945."

  [ Juridically, the Five-Year Neutrality Pact was valid till April 13, 1946, despite this repudiation, and Russia's attack on Japan in August 1945 was in fact a violation of the Pact.]

  On May 15, 1945 the Japanese Government annulled its alliance with the now non-

  existent German government and other Fascist governments. The Soviet Government

  considered this as a preliminary to a new series of peace-feelers the Japanese were about to put out; but there is nothing to show that they intended to respond favourably to them.

  While, at the end of May, Harry Hopkins found the Russians extremely sticky on

  questions like Poland, he found them perfectly co-operative as regards Japan. He cabled to Washington on May 28 saying that, according to Stalin, the Soviet Army would be

  "properly deployed in the Manchurian positions by August 8"; that Stalin repeated the Yalta statement that the Russian people "must have good reason for going to war", and that this depended on the willingness of the Chinese to agree to the Yalta proposals; he therefore asked that T. V. Soong come to Moscow "not later than July 1 ", and urged that the USA (as Roosevelt had promised) take up the matter with Chiang Kai-shek.

  Stalin's views on China, as reported by Hopkins, are particularly interesting, in the light of what happened later:

  He [Stalin] categorically stated that he would do everything to promote the

  unification of China under Chiang Kai-shek. His leadership would continue after

  the war, because no one else was strong enough. He specifically stated that no

  communist leader was strong enough to unify China. In spite of his reservations

  about Chiang Kai-shek, he proposed to back him.

  [Sherwood, op. cit., p. 892. None of this is reported in the present-day Soviet History which treats the Chinese Communists as the only force in China at the time not defeatist in its attitude to Japan.]

  In another message to Washington Hopkins stated that Stalin was all in favour of the Open Door for the USA in China, since she alone was capable of giving large financial aid to that country, Russia having her own reconstruction to take care of. Stalin also intimated that the Soviet Union wanted an occupation zone in Japan.

  The full story of the events that led to the capitulation of Japan is one of the most intricate in the whole of World War II. It is clear that, at Yalta, both Roosevelt and Churchill were still extremely anxious that Russia should join in the war against Japan as quickly as possible. The position becomes much less clear after Truman became President. Judging from the Hopkins' mission to Moscow in May, Truman still wanted Russia in the war—

  which was one of the chief reasons why the new President also wanted to meet Stalin at Potsdam. The Russians now argue, however, that even before he had the atom bomb,

  Truman was desperately anxious to get Japan— or at least "the Japanese armed forces"—

  to surrender unconditionally before Russia entered the war. They may have suspected this at the time, on the strength of the American broadcasts to that effect, which began as early as May 8 [Much is made of these in the Soviet History. (IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 536)], but consoled themselves with the thought that Japan could not be defeated—at least not within a short time—without the Russians smashing the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.

  They had understood from Roosevelt at Yalta that, without Russian participation, the war against Japan would have to go on till 1947, and would cost the Americans and British at least another million men.

  As early as February-March, the Japanese sought Russian mediation in their desire to end the war with the USA and Britain. The Soviet History enumerates several such peace-feelers:

  First of all, two "private" persons approached the Russians on behalf of the Japanese Government—Mr Mijakawa, the Japanese Consul-General in Harbin and

  Mr Tanakamaru, a fishing magnate.

  On March 4, the same Tanakamaru called on Mr J. Malik, the Soviet Ambassador

  in Tokyo, saying that neither Japan nor the United States could start speaking of peace. A "divine outside force" was necessary to bring about a peace settlement, and the Soviet Union could play that rôle.

  After the formation of the Suzuki Government, these peace-feelers became even

  more explicit. Foreign Minister Togo asked Mr Malik on April 20 to arrange for

  him a meeting with Mr Molotov.

  Still anxious to avoid unconditional surrender to the USA, Togo sent ex-premier

  Hirotake Hirota to see Malik on June 3. He stressed Japan's desire to improve her relations with the USSR. A second meeting took place on the following day, and two further meetings on June 24.

  [IVOVSS, vol. V, pp. 536-7.]

  The History dismisses all these Hirota visits to Malik and his offers of large-scale Soviet-Japanese economic co-operation as "a piece of effrontery coming from a gang guilty of so many treacherous acts towards the Soviet Union"; but the fact remains that Malik consented to see Hirota four times.

  Nevertheless, the Hirota mission failed, and the Japanese Government now tried to

  establish direct contact with the Soviet Government in Moscow. The Emperor decided to send Prince Konoye to Moscow on July 12, and Mr Sato, the Japanese Ambassador in

  Moscow was instructed to inform the Soviet Government of the Emperor's desire. But in vain. In the words of the History:

  This Japanese proposal was left without an answer by the Soviet Government which

  was, moreover, preparing to go to the Big-Three Conference at Potsdam. Here the

  Soviet delegation fully informed its allies of these Japanese "pe
ace" moves. Thus, the Japanese imperialists' attempts to split the Allies failed completely.

  [IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 538.]

  At Potsdam the American military wanted to know when exactly the Russians would

  attack in the Far East. The Soviet Chief of Staff, General Antonov confirmed that all would be ready by August 8, but much depended on the outcome of the Soviet-Chinese

  talks which had begun in Moscow shortly before the Potsdam Conference.

  As we now know, the Americans were, in fact, no longer interested at the time of

  Potsdam in Russian participation in the war against Japan. Churchill tells with

  undisguised glee how he and Harry Truman fooled Stalin.

  As Churchill tells the story:

  On July 17 (at Potsdam) world-shaking news arrived... "It means", Stimson said,

  "that the experiment in the Mexican desert has come off. The atomic bomb is a reality".

  And almost the first thought that occurred to Churchill was that the Russians could be dispensed with in the war against Japan:

  We should not need the Russians. The end of the Japanese war no longer depended

  on the pouring in of their armies... We had no need to ask favours of them... I

  minuted to Mr Eden: " It is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan."

  There was no doubt, he wrote, that the bomb would be used.

  A more intricate question was what to tell Stalin. The President and I no longer felt we needed his aid to conquer Japan... In our opinion they (the Soviet troops in the Far East) were not likely to be needed, and Stalin's bargaining power, which he had used with such effect upon the Americans at Yalta, was therefore gone.

  And then came Churchill's singularly tortuous mental compromise:

  Still, he had been a magnificent ally in the war against Hitler, and we both

  (Churchill and Truman) felt that he must be informed of the great New Fact which

  now dominated the scene, but not with any particulars.

  [Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 552-4.]