by Max Hastings
A further 12 August NKVD intelligence brief to Stalin included a note on the prime minister’s political position: ‘Churchill departed for the USSR in an atmosphere of growing domestic political crisis. The intensification of fighting on the Soviet-German front has had a marked effect on British public opinion…Source believes Churchill will offer a number of concessions to the Soviet Union BERIA.’ Russian access to such insights should not be taken to mean that Stalin was always correctly informed. For instance, several times during the war NKVD agents reported to Moscow supposed parleys between the Western Allies and the Nazi leadership. On 12 May 1942 Beria passed to Stalin ‘a report from the London resident on German attempts to start separate negotiations with the English’: ‘We know from a reliable source that an official from the German embassy in Sweden has flown to England from Stockholm on board a civilian aircraft.’ Like other such claims, this one was fallacious, but it fuelled Soviet paranoia. NKVD information was entirely accurate, however, about Britain’s position on the Second Front. Moscow was told that the prime minister’s objections did not derive, as Stalin had supposed, from political hostility to the USSR, but instead from pragmatic military considerations.
Stalin had always displayed intense curiosity about Churchill, for a quarter of a century the arch-foe of Bolshevism. In June 1941 the Russian leader was surprised by the warmth with which Britain’s prime minister embraced him as a co-belligerent. In the intervening fourteen months, however, little had happened to gain Stalin’s confidence. Extravagant Western promises of aid had resulted in relatively meagre deliveries. The Times editorialist waxed lyrical on 6 January 1942 about the flow of British supplies to support the alliance with the Soviets:‘The first result of this collaboration has been the splendid performance of British and American tanks and aeroplanes on Russian battlefields.’ This was a wild exaggeration of reality, based upon sunshine briefings of the media and Parliament by the British government. Not only were targets for shipments of aircraft and tanks to Russia unfulfilled, but much of the material dispatched was being sunk in transit.
Convoy PQ16 was the target of 145 Luftwaffe sorties, and lost eleven of its thirty-five ships. In July, when twenty-six out of thirty-seven ships carrying American and British supplies were lost with PQ17, 3,850 trucks, 430 tanks and 250 fighters vanished to the bottom. Following this disaster the Royal Navy insisted on cancelling all further convoys for the duration of the Arctic summer and its interminable daylight. Churchill, pressed by Roosevelt, reinstated the September convoys, and began moving supplies through Persia, where the British and Russians now shared military control. But the only important reality, in Moscow’s eyes, was that aid consignments lagged far behind both Allied promises and Russian needs. Even more serious, the British had vetoed American plans for an early Second Front.
It was implausible that Stalin would display a sentimental enthusiasm for his British allies, any more than for any other human beings in his universe. He would never acknowledge that his nation’s predicament was the consequence of his own awesomely cynical indulgence of Hitler back in 1939. But Russia’s sense of outraged victimhood was none the less real for being spurious. The Soviets sought to bludgeon or shame the British and Americans into maintaining supply shipments, and landing an army in Europe at the earliest possible date. Russia was counting her dead in millions while the British cavorted in North Africa, paying a tiny fraction of the eastern blood sacrifice. In August 1942, Rostov-on-Don had fallen, Germany’s armies were deep in the Caucasus and almost at the gates of Stalingrad. Posterity knows that Hitler had made a fatal mistake, splitting his principal summer thrusts in pursuit of the strategically meaningless capture of Stalin’s name-city. The tide of the eastern war would turn decisively by the year’s end. But Russians at the time could not see beyond cataclysm. They knew only that their predicament was desperate. They could no more regard Churchill’s people as comrades-in-arms than might a man thrashing in a sea of sharks look in fellowship upon spectators cheering him on from a boat.
The prime minister wasted no time, at his first meeting with Stalin, before reporting the decision against a landing in Europe in 1942. He said that any such venture must be on a small scale, and thus assuredly doomed. It could do no service to Russia’s cause. The British and American governments were, however, preparing ‘a very great operation’ in 1943. He told Stalin of Torch, the North African invasion plan, observing that he hoped the secret would not find its way into the British press—a jibe at ambassador Maisky’s notorious indiscretions to journalists in London. He spoke much about the RAF’s bombing of Germany, describing the beginnings of a long campaign systematically to destroy Hitler’s cities with a ruthlessness he assumed the Soviet leader would applaud. ‘We sought no mercy,’ said the prime minister, ‘and we would show no mercy.’
The substance of this first encounter, which lasted three hours and forty minutes, was made even less palatable by poor interpreting. All foreign visitors to the Kremlin were at first disconcerted that Stalin never looked into their eyes. Instead, this infinitely devious warlord, clad in a lilac tunic and cotton trousers tucked into long boots, gazed blankly at the wall or the floor as he listened and as he spoke. There were no immediate Soviet tantrums, though Stalin made plain his displeasure at the Second Front decision. ‘A man who is not prepared to take risks,’ he mocked, ‘cannot win a war.’ Given his prior knowledge of Churchill’s ‘revelation’, at this meeting he was making sport of the prime minister. But he did so with his usual supreme diplomatic skill, maintaining his visitors’ suspense about what their host really knew or thought. When they parted and Churchill returned to his villa, he signalled Attlee in London: ‘He knows the worst, and we parted in an atmosphere of goodwill.’ Harriman cabled Roosevelt: ‘The prime minister was at his best and could not have handled the discussion with greater brilliance.’ Next day, the 13th, Churchill conferred with Molotov about detailed aspects of Allied plans, and aid to Russia.
That afternoon Brooke, Wavell and Tedder arrived, in a Liberator delayed by technical trouble. They were in time to attend the prime minister’s second meeting with Stalin, and were shocked by their glacial reception. The Soviet leader began by handing Churchill a formal protest about the delay to the Second Front: ‘It is easy to understand that the refusal of the Government of Great Britain to create a second front in 1942 inflicts a mortal blow to the whole of Soviet public opinion…complicates the situation of the Red Army at the front and compromises the plans of the Soviet command.’ What Churchill called ‘a most unpleasant discussion’ ensued. He was resolute in making plain that the Allied decision was irrevocable, and thus that ‘reproaches were vain’. Stalin taunted him with the destruction of PQ17: ‘This is the first time in history the British Navy has ever turned tail and fled from the battle. You British are afraid of fighting. You should not think the Germans are supermen. You will have to fight sooner or later. You cannot win a war without fighting.’
Harriman slipped a note to Churchill: ‘Don’t take this too seriously—this is the way he behaved last year.’ The prime minister then addressed Stalin with unfeigned passion about Britain’s past defiance and future resolution, his stream of rhetoric flowing far ahead of the interpreters. Stalin laughed: ‘Your words are not important, what is vital is the spirit.’ Churchill accused Stalin of displaying a lack of comradeship. Britain, he reminded the Georgian, had been obliged to fight alone for a year. In the early hours of 14 August the two delegations parted as frigidly as they had met. ‘I am downhearted and dispirited,’ Churchill told his British colleagues. ‘I have come a long way and made a great effort. Stalin lay back puffing at his pipe, with his eyes half closed, emitting streams of insults. He said the Russians were losing 10,000 men a day. He said that if the British Army had been fighting the Germans as much as the Red Army had, it would not be so frightened of them.’
After a few hours’ sleep, the British communed among themselves. Churchill was smarting from the drubbing he had received.
All his latent animosity to the Soviets bubbled forth, revived by abuse from a leader who eighteen months earlier had been content to collude in Hitler’s rape of Europe. He was also dismayed by an incoming signal from London, detailing heavy losses to the epic Pedestal convoy to Malta. Cabling Attlee to report the Russians’ intransigence, he said that he made ‘great allowances for the stresses through which they are passing’.
That night the British attended a banquet, accompanied by the usual orgy of toasts. Hosts and guests feasted in a fashion grotesque in a society on the brink of mass starvation. But what was one more grotesquerie, amid the perpetual black pageant of the Kremlin? Stalin shuffled among the tables, as was his habit, clinking glasses and making jokes, leaving Churchill often lonely and perforce silent in his own place. When the Soviet warlord sat down once more, the prime minister said: ‘You know, I was not friendly to you after the last war. Have you forgiven me?’ His host responded: ‘All that is in the past. It is not for me to forgive. It is for God to forgive.’ This literal translation obscures the proverbial meaning of the Russian phrase, probably missed by Churchill: ‘I will never forgive.’ The British delegation found it bizarre that Stalin, of all people, so often invoked the Deity, a habit he acquired as a young seminarian. He said of Torch: ‘May God prosper this undertaking.’ The most notable success of the evening was a speech by Wavell in Russian.
Even the Soviets were impressed by the quantities of alcohol consumed by both their own leader and Churchill. One guest, unfamiliar with the prime minister’s usual diction, wrote afterwards: ‘His speech was slurred as though his mouth was full of porridge.’ The Russians decided that Churchill must be perpetrating some shocking indiscretion when they saw Brooke tugging insistently at his sleeve in a fashion no man would have dared do to Stalin. After the prime minister left the dining room, Stalin noticed that Alexander Golovanov, who commanded the Soviet air force’s long-range bombers, was staring at him in some alarm. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the Soviet leader, with unaccustomed docility. ‘I am not going to drink Russia away.’ He lapsed into silence for a few moments, then said: ‘When great affairs of state are at stake, alcohol tastes like water and one’s head is always clear.’ Golovanov noted with respect that Stalin walked from the room steadily and unhurriedly.
Churchill left the banquet in sullen mood, deploring alike the food, his hosts’ manners and the uncongenial setting. Next morning, a meeting between Brooke, Wavell and Stalin’s senior officers proved abortive when the Russians flatly refused to disclose any details of their operations in the Caucasus, saying that they were authorised to discuss only the Second Front. The sole Soviet weapons system that inspired British enthusiasm was the Katyusha multiple rocketlauncher, of which the visitors requested technical details. These were never forthcoming.
On Saturday, Churchill and his colleagues entered the big Kremlin conference room overlooking the Moskva river with considerable apprehension. The prime minister told Stalin that he had considered it his duty to inform him personally of the Second Front decision. Exchanges between the two sides were more fluent, because Churchill had now enlisted the services of Major Birse, a bilingual member of Britain’s Military Aid Mission. Stalin suddenly seemed more emollient. ‘Obviously there are differences between us,’ he said, ‘but…the fact that the meeting has taken place, that personal contact has been established…is very valuable.’ After more than an hour of talks, as they rose from the table Stalin suddenly, and apparently spontaneously, invited Churchill for drinks in his private apartment. There they adjourned for a further six hours of informal conversation, during which the prime minister believed that a better rapport was established. Stalin suggested a British landing in north Norway, a proposal which Churchill could endorse with unfeigned enthusiasm. The Russian said that it would be helpful for Britain to dispatch trucks rather than tanks to the Red Army, though this request reflected ignorance of British military-vehicle weaknesses. A sucking pig was brought in, which Stalin addressed avidly, and his guests sampled politely. A draft communiqué was agreed. At 2.30 a.m. Churchill parted from his host, with protestations of goodwill on both sides.
Back at his villa forty-five minutes later, the prime minister found that the Polish General Wladyslaw Anders had been awaiting him for many hours. ‘Ah! My poor Anders,’ said Churchill. ‘I have been detained by M. Stalin and now I must fly off. But you come along to Cairo and we shall have a talk there.’ Then he lay wearily down on a sofa, closed his eyes, and described to his party what had been said in Stalin’s apartment. At 5.30 a.m. the British party took off for Cairo in four Liberators.
Churchill left Russia satisfied that his visit had achieved as much as was possible, in bleak circumstances. He had displayed the highest gifts of statesmanship, placing a brave face upon bad tidings, never flinching when his host flourished the knout. Ian Jacob wrote: ‘No one but the Prime Minister could have got so far with Stalin, in the sense that we understand friendship. The thing that impressed me most about Stalin was his complete self-possession and detachment. He was absolutely master of the situation at all times…He had a gentle voice, which he never raised, and his eyes were shrewd and crafty.’
Harriman was full of admiration for Churchill’s patience in the face of Russian insults, for his restraint in withholding the obvious rejoinder to Stalin’s mockery—that the Soviet Union had forged a devil’s bargain with Nazi Germany in 1939. Yet the prime minister had scarcely enjoyed the Moscow experience. Jacob wrote: ‘Churchill was decidedly upset by the lack of comradeship that he had encountered. There was none of the normal human side to the visit—no informal lunches, no means of doing what he most liked, which was to survey at length the war situation in conversation, and to explore the mind of his interlocutor.’ Churchill nonetheless deluded himself that he had established a personal connection with Russia’s leader. No man could achieve that, least of all a British aristocrat famously hostile to all that the Soviet Union stood for. Brooke wrote: ‘He appealed to sentiments in Stalin which I do not think exist there.’
Churchill’s faith in the power of his personality to alter outcomes was occasionally justified in his dealings with Roosevelt, but never with Stalin. The Russians dispensed a modicum of amiability and fellowship in the last stage of the prime minister’s Moscow visit, because unremitting hostility might threaten the Anglo-American supply line. In August 1942, as at every subsequent summit, Stalin had two notable advantages. First, the Western Allies would never press their own wishes beyond a certain point, because they feared that failure to indulge the Soviet warlord might provoke him to seek a separate peace with Hitler. If Stalin needed Anglo-American supplies, the Western Allies needed the Red Army more. Second, while visitors were obliged to improvise scripts as they went along, struggling to keep pace with apparent shifts of Soviet mood, Stalin’s performance was precisely orchestrated from start to finish. He possessed almost complete knowledge of Allied military intentions, or lack of them, before Churchill landed in Moscow or delivered his budget of news at the Kremlin—and likewise at later 1943-45 meetings. Russia’s leader was able to adjust every nicety of courtesy and insult accordingly. It is unlikely that Stalin made many, if any, genuinely spontaneous remarks or gestures while Churchill was in Moscow. He merely lifted or lowered British spirits as seemed expedient, with the assurance of an orchestral conductor.
The Russians missed no opportunity to work wedges between the British and Americans. One night when Churchill went to bed, Stalin urged Harriman to stay and talk. The diplomat pleaded exhaustion. When Harriman did find himself alone with the Russian leader, he was caressed with comparisons between US and British prowess: ‘Stalin told me the British Navy had lost its initiative. There was no good reason to stop the convoys. The British armies didn’t fight either—Singapore etc. The US Navy fought with more courage and so did the Army at Bataan. The British air force was good, he admitted. He showed little respect for the British military effort but much hope in that of the US.’ Stalin’s
words were not wasted. When Harriman reported to Roosevelt back in Washington, he thought the president gratified by Churchill’s discomfiture.
It is an outstanding curiosity of the Second World War that two such brilliant men as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt allowed themselves to suppose that the mere fact of discovering a common enemy in Hitler could suffice to make possible a real relationship, as distinct from an arrangement of convenience on specifics, between Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Stalin and his acolytes never for a moment forgot that their social and political objectives were inimical to those of their capitalist allies. British politicians, generals and diplomats were, however, foolish enough to hope that they might achieve some comradeship with the Soviets, without forswearing their visceral loathing for them. Few senior Americans were as hostile to the Russians as were the British, partly because they were so confident of US power, and correspondingly less fearful of Soviet ambitions. But the Americans too—with such notable exceptions as Harriman—harboured delusions about their ability to make friends with the Russians, or at least to exploit US might to bend the Soviet government to their will, which rational assessment of rival national purposes should have dispelled.
It is striking that Churchill’s visit to Moscow failed to inspire any quickening of aid to Russia. Following the disaster to PQ17 in July, the British dispatched no further supplies to Archangel for two months, declining to risk another convoy in the relentless daylight of Arctic high summer. On and after 20 September, twenty-seven of PQ18’s forty ships arrived safely. Thereafter, for four months the Royal Navy was too preoccupied with supporting the Torch landings to dispatch any Arctic convoys at all. At horrific risk, thirteen merchant ships sailed independently and unescorted to the Kola Inlet. Just five arrived. By January 1943 only two further convoys, thirty merchantmen in all, had reached Russia safely. Thereafter, as Allied resources grew and German strength in north Norway was weakened by diversions of Luftwaffe aircraft to other theatres, the picture changed dramatically. Massive consignments of vehicles, stores and equipment, most of American manufacture, were successfully shipped, half of them through Vladivostok. Such assistance made a critical contribution to the Red Army’s advance to victory in 1944-45. But Stalin and his people were entitled to consider that they saved themselves until 1943 with only marginal foreign aid.