Russia at war 1941-1945

Colonel Beck, and was going to ruin a game the outcome of which was of the most vital importance to the cause of peace."

[ R. Coulondre, op. cit., p. 263. (Emphasis added.)]

Immediately after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia the British Government had

turned to the Soviet Union. On March 18 Halifax asked Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador, to call on him, and inquired what the Soviet attitude would be if Rumania became the object of an unprovoked aggression. The Soviet Government promptly replied by

proposing a meeting at Bucharest of the six Powers most directly involved. The British Government rejected this and proposed, instead, on March 21, the publication of a joint Anglo-Franco-Soviet-Polish declaration saying that they would enter into immediate

consultations about any joint action to be taken should the political independence of any European state be threatened. The Soviet Government, though disappointed by the

rejection of its own proposal, agreed to such a declaration, provided Poland was one of the signatories. But on April 1 Chamberlain informed Maisky that he had dropped the

idea.

On March 23, 1939, the Germans had occupied Memel. On that same day, Colonel Beck

replied to the British proposal for a Four-Power Declaration, and argued against it. These multilateral negotiations would be very complicated and take time, and there was no time to lose; he therefore suggested the conclusion of a bilateral Polish-British agreement, without prejudice, of course, to any wider subsequent negotiations. What game was Beck playing? Certainly he was becoming distrustful of Hitler, and wished to strengthen his position by securing a British guarantee. At the same time he had no desire to enter into any sort of "defensive front" with the Russians, as this, he argued, might incense the Germans.

In discussing the matter with Gafencu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, he put forward the view that Hitler would not attack Poland, so long as the latter had not become

involved with Russia; only a Polish-Russian alliance would produce a German invasion of Poland. "Despite the terrible threat hanging over his country, and despite the lesson of Czechoslovakia, Beck persisted in his more than dubious game of backing both horses."

[G. Gafencu, The Last Days of Europe (London, 1945), pp. 203-4.]

In the House of Commons on March 31 Chamberlain made his famous statement on

Poland. A fortnight later he announced that the guarantee to Poland had been extended to Rumania and Greece. As Coulondre says: "The British Government was now crashing ahead so fast that it even rushed past the station at which it should have stopped. It was enough to look at the map of Europe to see what a serious diplomatic situation it had created. Rumania and Poland practically form a continuous front from the Black Sea to the Baltic, a front separating Germany from the USSR. Germany cannot attack Russia

without going through Poland or Rumania, i.e. without bringing into play the Western guarantee, and without going to war against Britain and France. Thus, without having to commit himself, Stalin secured a Western guarantee in the East which he had sought in vain for ten years... It must now have been clear to Hitler that only by coming to an agreement with the USSR could he dodge that double front the day he decided to attack Poland."

[R. Coulondre, op. cit., pp. 263-4.]

"Would it not have been much wiser"—Coulondre asks—"to stick to the Four-Power Declaration, as proposed on March 21, and, if Beck still refused to sign, to go right ahead with that Anglo-French-Soviet alliance which Churchill was demanding with prophetic

foresight, and which the Russians were then prepared to sign? "

On April 1 the Soviet press prominently displayed Chamberlain's guarantee to Poland, but accompanied the story with an account of the House of Commons debate, in which

Arthur Greenwood asked whether the Soviet Union had been brought into it, to which

Chamberlain replied that discussions were in progress with numerous countries,

including the Soviet Union. Three days later, in connection with Beck's visit to London, the Soviet press reported further House of Commons discussions. It reported

Chamberlain as saying that the guarantee to Poland had marked a sharp change in British foreign policy. But already it focused all its attention on what was being said about the Soviet Union and the "trap" the Poles had laid:

Sir Archibald Sinclair said that the Soviet Union held the key to peace in Eastern Europe. British-Soviet cooperation was therefore of the utmost importance.