The Greatest Battle

by Andrew Nagorski

  In return, Stalin tried to maneuver Sikorski into a discussion of the postwar boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union. “I think it would be useful if we discussed it,” he said. “After all, the alterations I want to suggest are very slight.” The Polish leader insisted that he had no right to discuss even the tiniest change in his country’s “inviolable” borders, and Stalin dropped the subject.

  Sitting down for his first meeting with Stalin in Moscow on December 16, Eden was hoping that he’d also succeed in skirting this politically charged issue and new suspicions that his government was caving in to Soviet demands. In Washington, Roosevelt had been trying to reassure the Poles that he was sensitive to their concerns and that he was sticking by the commitment he and Churchill had made in the Atlantic Charter, which they had proclaimed during their summit at sea back in August. At that meeting, they had promised there would be no territorial changes “that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.” He urged Churchill not to make any commitments to Stalin about postwar arrangements. For Eden, the less said about all this in Moscow, the better.

  Stalin wasn’t about to play along. The Soviet leader immediately handed Eden drafts of two treaties, one for the wartime military alliance between their two countries and the other for dealing with postwar arrangements. He then jolted his guest by proposing a secret protocol to the second treaty, which would spell out the future of European borders. “Russian ideas were already starkly definite,” Eden grimly noted later. “They changed little during the next three years, for their purpose was to secure the most tangible physical guarantees for Russia’s future security.” There was a recent precedent for such secret protocols on the redrawing of borders: the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

  While this time Stalin wasn’t plotting to wipe out the Polish state, the similarity didn’t end there. Once again, Poland and the Baltic states figured as the primary losers in such an arrangement. For Poland, Stalin insisted that its eastern border should run along the Curzon line, the armistice line suggested by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon during the Russo-Polish War of 1919–1920. Polish victories during that war produced a border that ran much farther east, which meant that interwar Poland controlled a large swathe of territory that the Kremlin coveted. As a result of the partition of Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Soviet Union seized this portion of Poland and set up a boundary very close to the original Curzon line. Now Stalin wanted to make that arrangement permanent.

  To compensate for the loss of its territory, Stalin indicated that Poland should be given a good chunk of eastern Germany. He also called for restoration of a separate Austrian state, depriving Germany of the Rhineland and possibly Bavaria, and creation of a council of the victors who would decide what to do with a defeated Germany. And he wanted to know what Eden thought about the possibility of Germany paying reparations for the damage it was inflicting. As for the Baltic states, they were to be swallowed up once again by the Soviet state, and the Soviet borders with Finland and Romania would revert to what they had been before the Germans attacked. In short, he was proposing many of the terms that would eventually figure in the discussions of the great powers in Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945.

  Eden knew how he had to respond and tried to do so as tactfully as possible. His government, he said, was open to considering such issues as how to organize military control over a defeated Germany, and it certainly favored an independent Austria. Given the disastrous impact of reparations after the previous war, it would oppose any effort to demand reparations after this one. As for the key issue of future borders, he explained that his hands were tied. “Even before Russia was attacked, Mr. Roosevelt sent a message to us, asking us not to enter into any secret arrangement as to the postwar reorganization of Europe without first consulting him,” he told Stalin.

  In fact, John Winant, the American ambassador in London, had been instructed to deliver a precise message to Eden from Secretary of State Cordell Hull shortly before his British counterpart left for Moscow. Dated December 5, the cable stressed that the postwar policies of both countries and the Soviet Union were encapsulated in the Atlantic Charter and it would be “unfortunate” for any of these governments “to enter into commitments regarding specific terms of the postwar settlement.” It added, “Above all, there must be no secret accords.”

  With those warnings in mind, Eden kept emphasizing to Stalin that Russia, Britain and the United States needed to be in agreement on the major issues and that he couldn’t commit to anything on his own.

  “What about the attachment of the secret protocol?” Stalin asked, refusing to give up.

  When Eden reiterated that this would require consultations with his own government and Washington, the Soviet leader claimed to agree, saying that a united front was crucial to their efforts. The discussion then shifted to the military situation. While there were some tricky issues there as well, the foreign secretary felt that he had succeeded in shelving the territorial issue, at least for the time being.

  Their next meeting proved that he was wrong. “Stalin began to show his claws,” he noted. Seemingly oblivious to Eden’s previous explanations, the Soviet leader bluntly asked for British recognition of his country’s 1941 borders—in other words, those that it had established under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

  It was back to square one, and, in what Eden described as a “frigid” atmosphere, he had once again to explain that he couldn’t endorse anything of the sort. He pointed out that Churchill had declared earlier that Britain wouldn’t recognize changes in the borders produced by the war—and that this was at a time when Germany was advancing and any recognition of such borders would have hurt Russia.

  “If you say that you might as well say tomorrow that you do not recognize the Ukraine as forming a part of the U.S.S.R.,” Stalin curtly interjected.

  “That is a complete misunderstanding of the position,” Eden replied. “It is only changes from the prewar frontiers that we do not recognize.”

  Stalin wouldn’t let the subject go, insisting that the British refusal would leave his country a supplicant. “It makes it look as if I should have to come cap in hand,” he said.

  This was the petulant Stalin, who turned indignant any time his demands, no matter how far-reaching, weren’t immediately accepted. He would push and push, seeing how much he could get away with. It was a preview of the Stalin that the British and American leaders would see again and again as the war progressed. But the Soviet leader knew when to ease up, especially when he sensed that his aggressive tactics could backfire. He also instinctively understood that after a round of bullying, he would score extra points by suddenly appearing to be more reasonable.

  Which was exactly how events played out with Eden. The foreign secretary realized that he, too, had to put on a display of pique if he wanted Stalin to ease up. Driving back to his hotel after the acrimonious session, he decided he could speak freely in the car. He figured this was the one place where his conversations were unlikely to be monitored. He told his British colleagues that once they were back in his hotel suite, he would vent his frustration loudly for the benefit of the listening devices there. Pacing back and forth in his sitting room, he did exactly that, decrying Soviet behavior and saying that it would have been better if he hadn’t come to Moscow. “My conclusion was that, with the best will in the world, it was impossible to work with these people even as partners against a common foe,” he recalled. “The others joined in the chorus.”

  A few hours later, Eden received the first indication that his Soviet hosts were trying to undo that impression. Earlier he had asked to visit the front, since he was eager to get a more direct feel for the military situation, but his request had been ignored. Now, however, Maisky was on the phone with the news that he would be allowed to travel to just-liberated Klin the next day. Driving with Maisky, he saw burned-out villages, German and Russian tanks that had been destroyed in the fighting, and both German and Russian
dead strewn across and alongside the road. “The corpses were already frozen still, often in the most strange and incomprehensible poses: some with arms flung apart, some on all fours, some standing up to their waist in the snow,” Maisky recalled.

  Eden was moved to pity by the sight of six young German prisoners, “little more than boys,” as he put it, who had been captured the previous day and were shivering from both cold and fear. “They were miserably clad in thin overcoats with only a poor cardigan and no gloves,” he noted. “God knows what their fate will be, but I can guess: Hitler’s victims.”

  During the ride back to Moscow, Eden reinforced the message that he had tried to convey by speaking to the microphones in his hotel suite. He told Maisky that if, as it appeared, his trip ended in failure because of the Soviet side’s insistence on pushing treaty terms that he couldn’t accept, only the Germans would be pleased.

  Convinced that the two sides wouldn’t be able to work out an agreement, Eden went to his final meeting with Stalin on December 20, taking along the draft of a short communiqué. To his surprise, though, the Soviet leader was far more accommodating than he had been earlier. While he still called for recognition of the borders he wanted, he said he now understood that the British side had to consult with the United States first and that any treaties could wait. In the meantime, relations between their two countries would continue to improve, he added. He also offered a communiqué that, as Eden put, “was longer and more forthcoming than mine.” The foreign secretary recalled that he felt a sense of relief, which was precisely what Stalin wanted him to feel.

  To cap things off, Stalin invited Eden and his party to the Kremlin for dinner. The guest of honor noted that the meal was “almost embarrassingly sumptuous.” He recorded that there was borscht, sturgeon, “the unhappy little white suckling pig,” a variety of meats, and, of course, wine, champagne, and vodka. Marshal Timoshenko, he added, “appeared to have been imbibing before we had met.” Seemingly embarrassed that Eden had noticed, Stalin asked him, “Do your generals ever get drunk?” Eden replied that they rarely got the chance to do so.

  According to Maisky, Eden suffered his own awkward moment. At one point, he asked Stalin about a large bottle of a yellowish liquid that was sitting on the table. It was pepper brandy, but Stalin smiled and told him, “This is our Russian whisky.” When Eden said he’d like to try it, the Soviet leader poured him a large glass. Taking a big sip, he turned red and choked, “his eyes nearly bursting from their orbits,” Maisky recalled. Stalin then announced, “Only a strong people can take such a drink. Hitler is beginning to feel this.”

  Eden didn’t mention this incident in his memoirs. He preferred to stress that his mission had ended “on a friendly note.” But the lavish banquet left him with “a feeling of unreality, which was not due to the hunger, even misery, in our midst, or to the German armies, so near that their gunfire was almost within sound.” What really bothered him was something deeper. “Within these gilded rooms the atmosphere was unhealthy, because where one man rules all others fear,” he observed.

  He also realized that while he had managed to avoid making any of the commitments that Stalin was pushing for, his visit represented only the first act of a drama that would continue. The Soviet leader wasn’t about to give up on his territorial ambitions, he pointed out in his cable to Churchill, “and we must expect continued badgering on this issue.”

  During that winter of 1941 to 1942 when the Germans were stopped and then pushed back from the outskirts of Moscow, Churchill largely put aside his earlier irritation with the frequently arrogant tone of Stalin’s demands, as relayed by Maisky, and didn’t want to allow any further Soviet badgering to sour the Anglo-Soviet relationship. It was a change that didn’t escape the notice of Berlin. “Stalin’s bust has been unveiled in the London Stock Exchange. That’s where it belongs,” Goebbels noted bitterly in his diary on January 28, 1942. “The collaboration between Bolshevism and super-capitalism is thereby publicly symbolized. England has sunk low. She is facing difficult times. She can thank Churchill.”

  In a later entry, Goebbels mentioned that he knew there was speculation in London that the Soviet Union might still make a separate peace with Nazi Germany. “Such fear, however, is unwarranted,” he wrote on March 6. “The Soviet Union will and must be knocked out, no matter how long that may take. The situation is ripe for putting an end to Bolshevism in all Europe, and considering our position, we can’t give up that aim.”

  In fact, Churchill is unlikely to have been seriously worried about a new separate Soviet-German peace agreement at that point. If there ever was such a possibility—and there’s no hard evidence to support that notion—it was during the early days of the German invasion, when the Soviet Union appeared on the verge of collapse. But after the Germans fell short in their push to Moscow, Stalin had no incentive to contemplate such a course. Like Hitler, he was committed not just to victory but also to the destruction of the opposing system.

  Like Hitler, too, he made overoptimistic predictions. Stalin sent a message to Churchill on March 14 declaring his confidence that “the combined efforts of our troops, occasional setbacks notwithstanding, will culminate in crushing the common enemy, and that the year 1942 will see a decisive turn on the anti-Hitler front.” When Maisky handed Churchill the telegram, the prime minister didn’t hide his skepticism. “I don’t see how 1942 can become a decisive year,” he said.

  During his talks with Eden in December, Stalin had seemed more realistic. While he made the far-fetched claim that Soviet troops might be able to join Britain and the United States in the fight against Japan in the spring, he then added the huge caveat that it would be better if Japan attacked his country rather than vice versa. “War would be unpopular with our people if the Soviet government were to take the first step,” he said.

  This was a highly disingenuous statement, implying that Stalin was a democratic leader who acted only when he could count on public opinion to back him. It also overlooked the fact that the Japanese were unlikely to oblige since, as Eden pointed out, they’d prefer “a policy of dealing with their opponents one by one.” The foreign secretary understood the import of Stalin’s message: just as the Western powers wouldn’t accede to the Soviet leader’s demands for launching a second front anytime soon, Moscow wouldn’t be ready to help with Japan for the foreseeable future.

  Churchill and Roosevelt were in full agreement on a different issue: the urgent need to step up the flow of Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union, which would strengthen its forces during the coming battles. Although Roosevelt kept pushing for faster production and delivery schedules, the early results were disappointing, since this was a hugely ambitious project. Eventually, it would provide the Soviet Union with 409,500 vehicles, mostly Studebaker trucks, which would keep its army mobile, and 1,900 locomotives, along with 43 percent of all Soviet tires, 56 percent of the rails for the railway network and about one-third of its explosives. In addition, the United States supplied huge amounts of food, copper, aluminum and high-octane airplane fuel. As insistent as Stalin was in demanding these supplies, he consistently refused to acknowledge the scale of that foreign assistance effort to his own people. He wanted them to believe that any military successes were purely the result of his inspired leadership and the Red Army’s prowess.

  Roosevelt and Churchill were willing to overlook these slights, since they were united in the view that such aid was vital. But they took a different tack when it came to the territorial claims Stalin had put forward during Eden’s visit to Moscow. Despite his predisposition to trust the Soviet leader, Roosevelt initially appeared more resolute in resisting those demands. In reality, however, the rift revealed the weaknesses of both leaders when it came to handling someone as wily as Stalin.

  Upon his return to London, Eden had urged Churchill, with the support of several other top officials, to consider a compromise that would entail acceding to Soviet demands on the Baltic states while refusing to give ground
on Poland. In March, the prime minister had come around to that position. “The increasing gravity of the war has led me to feel that the principles of the Atlantic Charter ought not to be constructed so as to deny Russia the frontiers she occupied when Germany attacked her,” he told Roosevelt, requesting his support for his government’s plans to accept those demands. That would mean accepting the creeping Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, which was the result of the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 23, 1939.

  Roosevelt refused to back this willful mangling of the charter’s principles. Under Secretary of State Welles pointed out that the British willingness to cave in on the Baltic states was “not only indefensible from every moral standpoint, but likewise extraordinarily stupid” since it would only lead to more demands, including the annexation of Polish territory. Eden caustically noted, “Soviet policy is amoral; United States policy is exaggeratedly moral, at least where non-American interests are concerned.”

  But this was far from the complete story. If Churchill’s approach exhibited the cynical calculation that would ultimately doom any efforts to contain Stalin’s ambitions at the end of the war, Roosevelt would prove to be both naïve and inconsistent. He genuinely wished to avoid secret protocols and other written commitments on territorial issues that he wanted resolved later, which, not insignificantly, helped him maintain good relations with Polish officials and his good standing with Polish-American voters. At the same time, though, he sent very different signals in private and maintained his faith in Stalin’s good intentions.