So slipshod were Whitehall’s arrangements for the talks that Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax wasn’t even given written authority to negotiate—a serious breach of diplomatic courtesy—though he had been instructed to be discourteous anyway; British foreign policy documents reveal that he had been told to be vague and “go very slowly.” As a final slight to the Russians, the British, who were handling transportation for the Allied teams, rejected the suggestion that they fly to Moscow, which would have taken a day. They boarded the nine-thousand-ton passenger-cargo ship City of Exeter, an ancient vessel whose top speed, Molotov’s deputy foreign commissar found, was thirteen knots. They left England on August 5 and did not reach Leningrad until very late on August 9; they arrived in Moscow August 11. The Queen Mary would have brought them to New York in less time. And in this August, like that other August a quarter-century earlier, every hour counted. The triple alliance now had Hitler’s undivided attention; he knew how formidable it would be and had ordered Ribbentrop to break it up. Joachim von Ribbentrop may have been only a wine salesman, but he had been a very good salesman, and he knew Molotov would be an eager customer. The only obstruction was Stalin. That was enough to discourage any diplomat except one who would have to return to the Führer empty-handed. The German’s main hope lay in the possibility that the Anglo-French officers would bungle their assignment.78
That is precisely what they—or, more accurately, their governments—did. The military talks in Moscow got off to a wobbly start. Marshal Voroshilov was offended by the failure of Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax to produce credentials signed by Chamberlain. Soviets put a premium on form; they interpreted the lapse as a sign that Britain did not regard the occasion as grave. General Doumenc, on the other hand, was on excellent terms with the Russians from the start. His Ordre de Service, signed by Daladier, was flawless; he had impressed the Red Army’s leaders by his knowledge of Russian military traditions; he sympathized with their painful memories of Allied hostility to the Bolshevik cause in their struggle of 1918–1920 and was tactfully silent about Stalin’s purges of the Red Army. In his determination to impress the Russians in their talks, he had, as one of his subordinates put it, “stretched the truth a little.” The Maginot Line, he said, now extended “from the Swiss frontier to the sea.” As any newspaper correspondent could have told the Soviets—and as their own intelligence service doubtless had—it was less than half that long. In Doumenc’s defense, it should be noted that the French delegation, like Britain’s, had been instructed by its senior officers to gloss over military weaknesses. The British were poorer liars. Their army spokesman blithely declared that Britain could field sixteen divisions “in the early stages of the war.” The French were “astounded,” one of their delegates later wrote; this was “three or four times” greater than Ironside’s figure in the most recent Anglo-French staff talks. Voroshilov, suspicious, pressed the issue, asking, “How many divisions will you have if war breaks out soon?” The embarrassing answer was that England’s standing army at present consisted of “five regular divisions and one mechanized division.” At that moment, one French officer later wrote, “the Soviet delegation understood better than it had the immense weakness of the British Empire.”79
The Russians’ crucial question was asked by Voroshilov late in the afternoon of Sunday, August 13. The Soviet Union, he pointed out, had no common frontier with the Reich. What, he inquired, did the French and British General Staffs think the Red Army could do if Poland or Rumania were attacked, since the Soviet troops could not take action without entering “the territory of other states?” There was silence. Doumenc and Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax replied that they would answer in the morning. That bought them a reprieve, but next day the marshal’s questions were more specific: Would Soviet forces be allowed to move against the Wehrmacht through Poland’s Wilno Gap and Polish Galicia? He said flatly: “We ask for straightforward answers to these questions. In my opinion, without an exact, unequivocal answer, it is useless to continue these military conversations.” It was up to the Allies to secure permission for the passage of Russian troops, he said, because they, not the Soviet Union, had guaranteed Poland and Rumania. For the next two days the military talks got nowhere, as Allied diplomats sought to win the cooperation of the Poles. By the seventeenth Voroshilov had run out of patience. He demanded that the meetings adjourn until a definite reply from Warsaw had been received. The negotiators agreed to reassemble on Monday, August 21.80
The British and French ambassadors in Warsaw approached Beck on August 18. He told them that Soviet troops were of “no military value.” The chief of the Polish General Staff agreed; he could see “no benefit to be gained by Red Army troops operating in Poland.” Two days later the Polish foreign minister formally rejected the Anglo-French requests. Moreover, he added, he didn’t want to hear any more about it: “I do not admit that there can be any kind of discussion whatever concerning the use of part of our territory by foreign troops.” If Poland agreed, he said, “this would lead to an immediate declaration of war on the part of Germany.” Hitler frightened him, but Stalin terrified him.81
The provocative question is why Paris and London did not put Beck to the ultimate test. Under these extraordinary circumstances they were entitled to declare that unless Poland agreed to let the Red Army help, Britain and France no longer felt bound to go to war in defense of Poland. Actually this dilemma had been anticipated in April when, four days after Chamberlain announced England’s unilateral guarantee of Poland, Churchill and Lloyd George, speaking in the House, had both urged that the Soviet Union be encouraged to join an entente of countries threatened by Nazi aggression. Lloyd George, and then Churchill, had demanded that Chamberlain’s guarantee be provisional, valid only if the Poles agreed to accept help from the U.S.S.R. Lloyd George had predicted:
If we are going in without the help of Russia, we are walking into a trap… I cannot understand why, before committing ourselves to this tremendous enterprise, we did not secure beforehand the adhesion of Russia… If Russia has not been brought into this matter because of certain feelings the Poles have that they do not want the Russians there, it is for us to declare the conditions, and unless the Poles are prepared to accept the only conditions with which we can successfully help them, the responsibility must be theirs.82
The option was still there. The Anglo-Polish mutual security pact had not yet been signed. Britain’s foreign secretary could have taken the simple step of making Beck’s acceptance of Russian aid a condition of signature. Bonnet actually proposed this stratagem. Halifax sent Bonnet’s proposal across Downing Street; Chamberlain frostily replied that he declined to be party to such a “maneuver.” “Maneuver,” like “creatures,” was one of his pet pejoratives, but in this context it was meaningless. The prime minister had to have had another motive. The likeliest, though he did not cite it, was his visceral dislike of the Soviet Union.
Daladier, more tenacious and dismayed by the loss of a powerful ally on Germany’s other front, was slow to accept diplomatic defeat. After a final appeal to Warsaw, which was brusquely rejected, the premier cabled Doumenc on the morning of August 21, instructing him to sign a military convention with Russia under the best terms possible, with the sole provision that it must be approved by the cabinet. The French premier also wired his ambassador in Moscow, authorizing him to tell Molotov that France approved “in principle” the right of Russian soldiers to cross Poland if Hitler attacked. But these telegrams did not arrive in the Soviet capital until late in the evening, and by then the drama was over.
Pressed to accept Soviet help in the event of trouble, the Poles were also being urged to yield on the Danzig issue, to placate the Führer and alleviate the mounting tension in Europe. In the final British negotiations over Danzig, a key figure, and at times the key figure, was Churchill’s mirror image—the Nazis’ favorite diplomat, Sir Nevile Henderson, His Majesty’s ambassador to the Third Reich. Henderson defended the anti-Semitic pogroms of Danzig Nazis, opposed any
link between London and Warsaw, thought the Poles should “talk a little less” about their courage and think “a little more” about the “realities” of their position on the eastern fringe of Grossdeutschland. He criticized his own country, telling Cadogan that England had led Poland “far up the garden path” by her pledges. Britain, he thought, should cede Danzig to Hitler. His great fear was that Beck, Koc, and their fellow colonels might arouse the German’s temper. Danzig, he told Halifax in late July, ought to be declared a “German Free City,” forcing Poles living there to leave. Until then, he predicted, “there will be no real peace” in eastern Europe.83
Clifford Norton, Britain’s chargé in Warsaw, strenuously attacked Henderson in his dispatches. He thought it unlikely that “the present moment is a good one” for negotiations between Germany and the Poles. Before any talks began, he wrote, Poland’s strength, and the justice of her cause, should be “visible and apparent not only to its partners, but also to its opponents.” Actually, he doubted the value of negotiations under any circumstances: “Even if Danzig were removed from the front of the stage… there is little basis for hopes that such a settlement would introduce the millennium.” When Henderson criticized this as “rather hypothetical,” Norton replied that the Führer and his Nazi hierarchy were “imbued with the desire to dominate all Eastern Europe.” That being true, he wrote, “no difficulties… should be allowed to shake the firmness of the Anglo-Polish alliance.”84
Reading British foreign policy documents of that summer—Henderson’s dispatches, the memoranda of Halifax, the prime minister’s papers—it is startling to recall that Britain had made a commitment to Poland, not Germany. Norton reminded the foreign secretary of that. In consequence, Halifax tried to bypass him, and in Downing Street he was dubbed “pro-Polish.” It was meant as a slur. His Majesty’s Government was determined to prevent the Poles from embarrassing Britain by dragging her into war. Henderson thought that was their intention. Their objective, he cabled home, was to “humiliate” the Third Reich.85
Clearly humiliation was to be the lot of some powers. Governments were taking positions from which retreat without loss of face was impossible. Britain was committed to Poland; if the European balance of power shifted dramatically, and the Polish position became untenable, England would be in the soup. If that thought crossed Henderson’s mind, he made no record of it. Probably it didn’t; as a diehard appeaser, he refused to admit the possibility of a showdown, even to himself. If matters reached an impasse, the disciples of appeasement reasoned, they would negotiate a new settlement and their armies would stand down.
The Wehrmacht wasn’t going to stand down. The Führer had made that clear at Zossen. Germany was going to march into Poland, and the dying would begin, whatever the diplomats did. The Reich’s hopes for victory, however, relied heavily on its chief diplomat. Ribbentrop was doing both his best and his worst to achieve a pact with the Soviet Union, though he had had problems with his führer. Hitler loathed Slavs almost as much as he hated Jews, and while he had known a triple alliance would present the gravest of threats to him and his Reich, he had vacillated through May and June.
In late May the Führer had instructed the Wilhelmstrasse “to establish more tolerable relations between Germany and the Soviet Union,” and said he wanted Count von der Schulenburg, his ambassador in Moscow, to convey this to Molotov “as soon as possible.” Four days later he canceled this and said he preferred a “modified approach.” Trade talks had begun, but in June Hitler suddenly repudiated them. On July 18 they were resumed after the Soviets had said they were prepared to extend and intensify economic relations between the two countries. Hitler’s munitions buildup was suffering from a lack of raw materials; he told Schulenburg to sign a trade agreement at the earliest possible moment and “den Faden wiederaufnehmen” (“again take up the thread”) of political discussions with the foreign commissar. Suddenly, Russians and Germans began talking about power plays in Poland and the Baltic states—grabbing territories by joint aggression—coups elected leaders in democracies would not dare hatch, knowing that a free press and an aroused public would force them to withdraw.86
Englishmen were proud of their customs and traditions, some of which bordered on the eccentric. To Churchill’s exasperation, Britain’s ruling class continued “to take its weekends in the country,” as he put it, while “Hitler takes his countries in the weekends.” This was no small matter. It meant that crucial decisions could not be made because those with the authority to make them were beyond the reach of telephones. Suggestions that country weekends be shortened, or that provisions be made for emergencies, were met with icy stares. Britain’s leaders detested being pushed; one of their chief complaints about Americans was that they always seemed to be in a hurry. Haste was somehow regarded as un-British. The ruling class was not called the leisured class for nothing.87
The timetable of events, as July melted into August, suggests the price England paid for Edwardian manners when trying to outwit and outmanipulate a twentieth-century Attila. On July 31, the day Chamberlain told Parliament that an Allied military mission would be sent to Moscow, the Reich’s ambassador to Russia received an “urgent and secret” telegram from the Wilhelmstrasse, instructing him to see Molotov immediately. Three days later, before the Anglo-French mission sailed for Leningrad, the Russo-German talks became more specific. Ribbentrop, carrying out his Blitzwerbung, had told Schulenburg to present “more concrete terms… in view of the political situation and in the interests of speed.” The Führer was no longer irresolute.88
He had scheduled his invasion of Poland for late August; the Wehrmacht had to overwhelm Poland before the October rains made the unpaved roads impassable for his panzers. He had to outbid the Allies in Moscow quickly, and price was no object. On August 12, toward the end of a meeting with the Italian foreign minister, Hitler said he had just received “a telegram from Moscow. The Russians have agreed to a German political negotiator being sent to Moscow.”89
This may have been a trick to impress Ciano—no such cable was found among the German documents captured in 1945—but other documents leave no doubt that on that same day Molotov agreed to discuss issues Schulenburg had raised, including Poland. The foreign commissar stressed the Soviet view that such talks must “proceed by degrees.” When word of this was relayed to the Reich Chancellery, Hitler replied that protracted talks were out of the question. He didn’t explain his reason—that German troops would march in less than three weeks. And the triple alliance was a harrowing possibility: that same afternoon in Moscow, Anglo-French military conversations with the Russians had begun.90
Hitler, in his summer headquarters on the Obersalzberg, made his great move on Monday, August 14. He told his court: “The great drama is now approaching its climax!” He was confident that neither Britain nor France would sacrifice a single soldier for Poland. The Quai d’Orsay was deferring to London, he said, and England “has no leaders of real caliber. The men I got to know at Munich are not the kind to start a new world war.” Still, he knew how edgy his generals were about a two-front war, and so, on his instructions, Ribbentrop sent Schulenburg a “most urgent” cable directing him to “read it to Molotov.”91
In his telegram to the Kremlin, Ribbentrop said the Reich was prepared to send him to Moscow to settle all outstanding problems “from the Baltic to the Black Sea.” At the same time, he played to Stalin’s paranoia. Britain and France, he said, were “trying to drive Russia into war with Germany”—Stalin, he knew, had used those very words in a speech to the Communist Party Congress. Tuesday evening Molotov greeted Ambassador Schulenburg warmly and asked whether the Nazis would join him in a joint “guarantee” of the Baltic states and—this was completely unexpected—a nonaggression treaty between the Soviet Union and the Reich. Hitler was ecstatic; Stalin was offering to play the role of spectator while the Wehrmacht took Poland. Wednesday Ribbentrop cabled the Führer’s reply: “Germany is prepared to conclude a nonaggression pact with t
he Soviet Union… and to guarantee the Baltic States jointly.” His foreign minister was ready, bags packed, to travel to Moscow “by airplane,” bearing “full powers from the Führer… to sign the appropriate treaties.”92
Stalin knew what he was giving Hitler. He also knew what he would get—all that Russia had lost at Versailles and more: vast tracts of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, and what Ribbentrop’s August 14 telegram had described as “Southeastern questions,” i.e., the Balkans. The Western democracies couldn’t match that. If the Russians signed the triple alliance Nazi panzers might rip through Poland and, without stopping, into the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, when Schulenburg passed along Ribbentrop’s request that he be received on Friday, August 18, the foreign commissar, after consulting with the general secretary, replied this was too soon: the meeting would require “thorough preparation.” But his manner was encouraging. He told the German envoy that he was “highly gratified” by the prospect of a visit by the foreign minister of the Reich; it stood, he said, “in marked contrast to England, which, in the person of Strang, has sent only an official of second-class rank to Moscow.” Meantime, he was directing his military negotiators to ask the Allies, in effect, what Russia would get out of an alliance with Britain and France.93
The tyrant in Moscow continued to play with the tyrant in the Berghof. The Führer’s eyes were on the calender and on the clock. If the war was to start as planned, OKW orders had to be cut quickly: two huge army groups had to deploy on Poland’s waters while fleets of U-boats sailed for British waters. Stalin and Molotov, sensing the Führer’s anxiety, decided to let him hang. On the night of Friday, August 18, Schulenburg was sent another urgent cable from the Obersalzberg; he must insist that Molotov see Ribbentrop immediately, must refuse to take no for an answer, and must repeat that the German foreign minister had been authorized by the Führer “to settle fully and conclusively the total complex of problems.” Ribbentrop was, for example, prepared “to sign a special protocol regulating the interests of both parties,” including “the settlement of spheres of interest in the Baltic area.”94
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