Russia at war 1941-1945

Mr Lloyd George asked why the British Government had not got Soviet support before entering into these colossal obligations. Britain should tell Poland that she could be helped only on certain conditions. In talking about the Soviet Union,

Chamberlain, Lloyd George said, was merely trying to appease the Opposition. If

Britain did not secure Soviet aid, her help to Poland would merely be a trap.

Mr Hugh Dalton hoped he would soon see some action about the Soviet Union, and not just vapid assurances.

The press reported that, according to a public opinion poll in Britain, eighty-four percent of the people now wanted close cooperation with the Soviet Union; but, it added, there was nothing to show that the Government was following suit. If the Labour and Liberal press were now saying that no resistance to German aggression could be effective

without the Soviet Union, The Times and the Daily Telegraph were still beating about the bush, assuring Germany that no "encirclement" was contemplated, and trying to draw fine distinctions between Polish independence and Polish territorial integrity. " The Times", Pravda wrote on April 10, "is trying to suggest that this is a return to collective security; but it is not, if only because the Poles are still talking about 'holding the balance'."

All the same, something seemed at last to be stirring in Britain, and there was already much talk of conscription—which was, indeed, to be introduced at the end of April. But for a fortnight after the announcement of the guarantee to Poland, no new proposals came to Moscow from the West—or vice versa. It was not till April 15 that the British Foreign Office came forward with a proposal to the Russians that they give Poland, Rumania and other European states a unilateral guarantee against German aggression—in case these countries desired such help. It was for these countries to decide what kind of help would be convenient to them. This was unacceptable to Moscow.

More constructive, from the Soviet point of view, was a simultaneous French proposal for a joint Soviet-French declaration based on mutual assistance to each other, as well as to Rumania and Poland. The Soviet Government apparently sensed Daladier's dislike of the guarantee to Poland which Chamberlain had forced on him and which made him

prefer the Russian alliance. So, "in order to coordinate the various British, French and Soviet proposals", the Soviet Government now came forward with the proposal for a straight Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance, to be signed for a period of five or ten years. This alliance would provide that they undertake to render each other every help, including military help, in the event of an aggression in Europe on any of the three signatories, and also to render similar help to all East-European countries bordering on the Soviet Union between the Baltic and the Black Sea.

"This offer", Coulondre wrote, "was almost undreamed of at the time." He thought this was a tremendous step in the right direction, and attributed it to the fact that Litvinov, the

"collective security man", with his obvious predeliction for the West, was still in charge of Soviet foreign policy. In actual fact such a proposal could not have been made simply on Litvinov's initiative. But the Chamberlain Government turned down the Soviet

proposal which—Coulondre argued—could have still saved the day had it been seized

with both hands.

Instead of accepting the Soviet proposal, the British Government started producing—in Coulondre's phrase—more and more sophisticated formulae, the purpose of which was to provide Soviet guarantees to countries that did not even want them. The British

Government made it indeed clear, in a Note addressed to the French Government, that the various objections raised by Poland made any agreement with the Soviet Union very

difficult.

[R. Coulondre, op. cit., p. 263.]

The "undreamed of offer" had been made by Russia—and had been rejected. A new approach was needed. It had now become necessary to give Soviet foreign policy not

only a more flexible and opportunist character, but also to give it the maximum authority.

And Molotov's position in the Party was second only to Stalin's. Just as in May 1941, with a German invasion threatening, Stalin was to take over the Premiership, so in May 1939, with Europe on the brink of war, Molotov took over the Foreign Commissariat.