Churchill's Triumph

by Michael Dobbs

  Today they had decided on a little sightseeing, and they had been driven west round the coast in a shiny black Packard, accompanied by a Russian naval officer with a prominent gold tooth who declared himself to be Boris and spoke excellent if stilted English. The day had thrown a blanket of grey across the countryside but the views from the coastal road were impressive and their spirits were lifted by two bottles of the sweet local champagne that, by the time they had arrived at Sebastopol more than two hours later, had been entirely demolished.

  “That was for our lunch,” Boris declared, in apparent despair, when he inspected the damage. “I will try to find more.”

  They giggled. They knew he had a case of the stuff in the boot.

  Sebastopol nestled at the head of a sweeping bay. As they approached it along a road that fell casually down through gentle pine forests, it seemed a most tranquil setting, yet its distant beauty was deceptive. As they drew nearer they could see the outline of wrecked ships, scattered across the harbor like fallen crows. They were entering a graveyard. They kept stumbling across all sorts of mechanical skeletons—charred tanks, broken artillery pieces, derailed railway carriages, even the remnants of planes. And as they drew into Sebastopol, they were unable to find a single building that remained intact. It was as though an earthquake had erupted beneath the town, yet the ruins did nothing to diminish Boris’s pride.

  “This,” he declared, “is a very beautiful church.” Indeed, it might once have been, but nothing had survived except for the gaunt outline of a tower.

  On all sides, they found themselves being stared at. Everyone seemed to view them with suspicion, not just the Soviet infantrymen and sailors and blue-capped security guards, but also the civilians, the women in shawls who dragged bundles tied in rags behind them, the old men bent over the shafts of makeshift handcarts, those who stood buying, selling, haggling, arguing over scraps of clothing or meager trays of food, or old books, worn-out tires, a radio, an ancient heirloom, patched trousers, vodka. Wherever they walked they met eyes filled with envy and loathing, and accusation, for a glance was enough to show that these girls knew nothing of their suffering. Anna tried to give a child a bar of chocolate, but Boris stepped between them and with a few sharp words hustled the little girl away. “That is not necessary,” he explained, with a forced smile when he turned to Anna. “The children of the Soviet Union have everything they require.”

  Sebastopol was a city of fallen walls and empty doorways, rusting gates that swung drunkenly on broken hinges and balconies that had lost whatever room they had once adorned. There was a bitter taste to the air that reminded Sarah of oversmoked herring. Whenever the breeze got up, small flakes of ash settled on her clothing.

  By the time they stopped in an open space amid the rubble, which Boris tried to persuade them was “a very beautiful square,” they were glad of the third bottle of champagne.

  After lunch they clambered back into the car, yet the day of discovery was not yet done. On the outskirts of the town they stopped beside a field. It was smothered in weeds. Nearby a cow was grazing, and in a distant corner they could see a copse of hurriedly nailed wooden crosses. An old woman was digging beside one, a handkerchief tied round her nose and mouth. And in the middle of the weed-strewn field was a rusting tank. Boris waved a hand to summon up its joys. “This,” he announced with a flourish, “is our main sports field. It is very beautiful. . . in the summer.”

  Even for Boris it was an altar too high. He pulled a penitential face and Kathleen began to giggle. The other girls joined in. Boris was deeply offended, so they tried to make it up to him by feigning interest and asking questions, yet when it got to asking about the breed of the grazing cow they knew they were running out of steam. They decided to inspect the rusting tank.

  “It is German,” Boris told them, “not at all beautiful.”

  As they came close they could see the scorchmarks of the shell that had killed it, still smeared dark amid the rust. It had been blown on to its side and the turret was open like a gaping mouth. They scrambled up to it, excited, curious, until inside they found things—foul, putrid things—that they could barely tell had once been human. Sarah pointed in horror. A collection of bones clung to the lip of the turret. One still wore a wedding ring.

  Then it was Boris’s turn to laugh.

  “Why. . . why. . . ?” Sarah began, drawing back. “Why have they not been buried?”

  “What?” Boris exclaimed, flashing his tooth. “But there are so many of them. It will take us years to get rid of them all.”

  For him it was a statement of pride. And when they realized this, they asked to be taken home.

  ***

  The men dined together at the American residence in Livadia that evening: the three aging leaders, the unimpressive Stettinius, the overdressed Eden, the inscrutable Molotov. Averell Harriman, Churchill’s old family friend who was now the American ambassador in Moscow, also joined them and, with a couple of other Russians and the interpreters, they made thirteen in all. In hindsight, it seemed an unfortunate number.

  Roosevelt played host, and the dinner lacked the abundance that, in their turn, Churchill and Stalin would later serve. The fare was straightforward, caviar, sturgeon, beef, washed down with vodka and several kinds of wine. The President was so impressed with the local Crimean champagne that he joked he would like to go into business with Stalin after the war as an importer. “We split everything fifty-fifty, eh, Marshal?” he enquired.

  Stalin merely chuckled, while Churchill wondered why he’d been left out of this little deal. It was, of course, an over-sensitive reaction on his part, but it had been one of those evenings when he felt as if he’d been rubbed all over with sandpaper. Now, already tender, he was about to get a damned good kicking.

  Stalin raised his glass. “To the German officers we shall liquidate.”

  “To the forty-nine thousand,” Roosevelt responded, and drank.

  It was a schoolboy cruelty, a taunt, that made Churchill blanch in anger.

  Fifteen months earlier, in Tehran, the three leaders had engaged in a monumental row. It had been an evening during which Stalin had drunk his fill and constantly needled Churchill, finishing by declaring that at the end of the war fifty thousand German officers should be put in front of a firing squad and shot. “That’ll be fifty thousand less the next time.”

  The suggestion had horrified Churchill, who had also drunk his fill. He shot to his feet. “We British will never tolerate mass executions,” he had thundered. “We shall have justice, not butchery!”

  Through clouds of cigar and cigarette smoke, Stalin’s eyes had twinkled in merriment. “What do you think, Mr. President?” he asked, drawing the other man in.

  “Well,” Roosevelt had responded, “let’s compromise, shall we? Perhaps only forty-nine thousand.” And he had laughed. If his remark had been designed to soothe the situation, it was peculiarly ill-crafted. Churchill wouldn’t tolerate being patronized and had stormed out of the room. He had returned only after Stalin had run after him to assure him it was nothing but a harmless joke.

  Yet now the joke had returned, and Churchill knew he was the butt of it. They were testing him, trying to flush him out, but this time, Churchill refused to fly. Perhaps, at long last, he was beginning to learn the art of patience, or more likely he was simply getting old. In fact, no doubt about it. They were all of them old men—Churchill was seventy, Stalin only four years younger. Roosevelt had passed his sixty-third birthday en route to Yalta, which made him the youngest, but he seemed old before his time. And he also seemed in a great hurry.

  They knew the world was watching them, that history would judge, but none felt this more than the American. He had so much to pass on as his testament—he’d been elected president of the United States four times, no other man alive or dead could share that, but somehow, with his time running out, it was only the future that seemed o
f importance to him. The justification of his entire lifetime’s work had come down to what might happen over a few days in a desecrated royal palace many thousands of miles from his home.

  Churchill pushed away his plate and studied his friend. The chandelier that hung from the high ceiling was filled with lightbulbs of every haphazard shape and size, and they cast long shadows across the American’s grey face. He had recovered a little from his afternoon’s apathy and was performing once again, yet Churchill realized it was just that, a performance, something that was turned on and off and that he no longer fully controlled. The eyes still danced defiance but the hand trembled—he could see that in the meniscus of the wine—and the mind sometimes wandered, had trouble fixing on any one spot, always roaming the distant horizon in search of something that insisted on remaining elusive. They had all been worn down by the years of endless war, all three of them. The stiffness in Stalin’s left arm had grown worse and he now often kept his hand in his pocket, while Churchill himself had suffered heart attacks and pneumonia, and there had been moments when his doctor had feared for his life, yet poor Franklin had suffered most, withering not only in body but also, perhaps, in judgment.

  Suddenly, as Churchill pondered, Roosevelt was staring back at him, defying him. So what if I’m sick, so what if I might die? Perhaps it’s because I’m so near my own end that I can see more clearly, know more precisely, what I want. And I, at least, don’t glorify war, don’t rejoice in the bloodshed. Forty-nine thousand Germans? It was only a goddamned joke, Winston! Raise your eyes, lift your soul, before God lifts it from you. We can do what no men have ever done—build a world freed from the tyranny of all war, where we no longer have to endure the horrors that… well, to put no finer point on it, the horrors that you wanton Europeans have thrust upon this world twice in a single generation. Time for the New World to sort out the Old, Winston, whether Europe likes it or not.

  And, in this palace of memories, Churchill decided to take up the challenge. To try to bring down the president from his lofty mountain and make him face up to the dangers of getting stuck in the Russian mud.

  “So, apart from our concerns with Germany, Marshal Stalin, what of the other nations? The small ones. What shall we do with them?”

  “Small nations? Why, they will be what they have always been . . . small nations,” grunted Stalin, “And in their proper place,” he added.

  “And what place is that, pray?”

  “Behind us. Beneath us. Or do you imagine that nonsense nations like Albania should be treated as equals, dictating to the Great Powers?”

  “Not dictating, certainly, but . . . participating?”

  “What? How big would the bloody table be?” Stalin said roughly, spreading his arms wide.

  And already the conference was in trouble, for the deeply religious Roosevelt had made the establishment of a United Nations organization the main focus of his ambitions. Churchill smiled inwardly, delighted in the manner of a child who has jumped into a huge puddle and splashed mud over those around him.

  Stalin soon splashed back. “Don’t tell me that the British Empire has suddenly come to believe in equality,” the Russian growled.

  Churchill’s blue eyes sprang straight back at him. “It is not a matter of equality but more of dignity. There are only three Great Powers. No one doubts our preeminence. We are like eagles, soaring above the world. It is a matter of affording respect to those who cannot fly so high.”

  “Since when did natives in Nigeria get a vote?” Stalin muttered, into the bottom of his glass.

  Churchill waved a spoon in rebuke. “The eagle suffers little birds to sing and is not careful what they mean thereby.”

  But Churchill’s words lost their poetry and perhaps much of their meaning in translation. One of Stalin’s men, Vyshinsky, looked up: “Hell, the louder they chirp, the more likely they’ll end up as buzzard bait.”

  Whether or not the offense was intended, it was most certainly taken, particularly by one of the younger Americans, who pushed away his plate in disgust. “Power isn’t an end in itself. It’s not an excuse for excess. I think the American people would expect us to exercise restraint in dealing with the rights of others.”

  “Then the American people should learn to do as their leaders tell them, or what’s the point in leadership?” came back the reply that, even through the sieve of interpretation, lost none of its sting.

  “I’d like to see you come to Chicago and tell them that.”

  “Book me a ticket.”

  Throughout it all, Roosevelt had said nothing, but his face spoke of his mounting distress. When at last his words came, they were intended to smooth the ruffled feathers. “You would get a warm welcome, sir,” he began in his educated New England drawl to Vyshinsky, “and so would you, Marshal Stalin. You know, all over America, we call you Uncle Joe.”

  “What?”

  “We think of you fondly.”

  “You call me what?”

  “Uncle Joe.”

  And without warning, Stalin had jumped to his feet, sending his chair toppling. It took only a moment for all the other Russians to follow suit. There was much banging of cutlery.

  “How much longer do I have to stay here?” Stalin stared pointedly at his watch.

  “The Marshal is very busy,” one of his aides exclaimed excitedly. “A war to run.”

  “He doesn’t like to be called names,” said another.

  Stalin was now staring at the ceiling and breathing heavily, as though struggling to control his temper. “How much longer do I have to stay here?” he repeated.

  “Oh, at least half an hour, I’d say,” Churchill replied, in a tone that some thought flippant as he chased a portion of cream cake round his plate. Everyone else seemed to have lost their appetite.

  Harriman took up the running. “It’s like we call our own country Uncle Sam,” he explained. “No offense intended, Marshal, I assure you. And, I hope, none taken. Please allow me to apologize if there has been any misunderstanding.”

  “We were not calling you names,” the President declared in anguish. “It’s . . . a compliment. A token of affection.” He glanced in desperation at Stalin’s interpreter.

  The interpreter was gabbling, trying frantically to get the words out before any further outburst made his job and, possibly, his life redundant. Stalin stiffened as he listened, tugging at the tails of his tunic. Only when the final words of apology were offered did he glance at Roosevelt and, with a curt nod, indicate his acceptance.

  A white-coated servant stepped forward. He had been standing behind the Russian leader all evening, yet despite being young and evidently fit he had done nothing to help the other servants beyond whispering occasional instructions in their ear. Now he bent to retrieve Stalin’s fallen chair. As he did so, his crisp white coat rode up to reveal the barrel of what Churchill identified as a Mauser. Harriman saw it, too, and shook his head in sorrow.

  Suddenly it was Churchill’s turn to stand. “While the Marshal is on his feet,” he began, “I propose that we join him in a toast.” He raised his glass.

  They all followed, glad of the opportunity to relieve the tension.

  Churchill held his glass high. “To the King!”

  The faces of the Russians, already glowing in concern, now turned to masks of panic. Stettinius scowled, too. Eyes bored into Churchill. Stalin lowered his glass, his lip curled back in a silent curse.

  “And to the proletarian masses,” the Englishman added softly.

  Slowly the stiffness left Stalin’s hand, and at last he drank.

  “And may the masses be patient with me,” Churchill concluded, as he sat down. “You see, gentlemen, I must remind you that I am the only leader here who can at any time be removed from office by the people.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Stalin contradicted him, as he took his own seat. In fact, he
used a term of some crudity, but none of the interpreters felt inclined to co-operate. “The proletariat can do for us all. Just like they did for our own king.” More crudity. The interpreters squirmed, Stalin chuckled, revealing dark tobacco-stained teeth, and the other Russians joined in.

  “If you will allow me, Marshal Stalin, I think I shall stick to elections, which, for all the terror they inspire, at least have one great advantage over your own methods.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They allow you to come back from the dead. As I have proven several times.”

  Stalin thumped his hand upon the table. “Waste of time! Better stick to our method.” A sly smile escaped from beneath the thick moustache. “After all, it removes the uncertainty.”

  Now they were all laughing, except Churchill.

  ***

  Stalin stayed the half-hour, and more. It seemed that he was determined to take the most out of the evening, which itself took more out of Roosevelt. Eventually, it was the president himself who, with a tired wave of his hand, indicated that the moment had come for his guests to go. “I need my beauty sleep, the Marshal has his war to fight and, doubtless, the prime minister has another speech to prepare.”

  It seemed yet another remark aimed at Churchill that had been cut with an unnecessarily sharp edge, but the Englishman didn’t respond. Instead he waited until Stalin had left and his own time had come to bid farewell. He bent low, his lips close to the President’s ear, his lisp grown heavier with the hour. “My dear Franklin, we must stand firm. Together we might deal with this man—see how he backs off when we stand square to him.” Not that Roosevelt had stood square to him. . . “You saw how I tested him, time and again. He makes a pretense at anger, stamps his foot, but he stays. Yet we have nothing in common with the Russian. He even had the temerity to turn your dinner-table into an exhibition of arms. There is no music in this man, no sense of justice or any fear of God. And that nonsense about Uncle Joe—he’s known as much for years, yet only now does he try to find malice in it.” Churchill gripped the other man’s arm, felt the bone beneath the sleeve. “He’s trying to soften us up, Franklin, make us malleable. But we must not allow him to divide us. We must be as constant in pursuing the objects of peace as we have been in pursuing the ends of war.”