Russia at war 1941-1945

elements, ex-bourgeois, or ex-kulaks. How many of these were willing collaborators, and how many had simply been bullied into accepting such jobs, and whether they deserved to be shot once the Russians returned (or even whether they actually were always shot) are questions on which very little light is thrown by either Russian or German authors. It is certain however, that many such Russian "collaborators" were playing a double game, and that some Soviet "underground" members were actually encouraged to join the German-appointed local-government agencies. As in all other Resistance movements, so in Russia, the Resistance had its "own" men and women "colonising" such German-appointed bodies, picking up information, and maintaining contact with partisans or other pro-Soviet elements.

Chapter II THE ANGLO-SOVIET ALLIANCE

The background to the Anglo-Soviet Alliance of May 1942 is too well known to need

detailed discussion here. In December 1941 Mr Eden had gone to Moscow, and Stalin

and Molotov had asked for a recognition of the Soviet frontiers as they stood at the time of the German invasion. This meant a recognition of the new frontiers with Finland and Rumania and the incorporation of the Baltic States in the Soviet Union, as well as that of the territory which Churchill still persisted in calling "Eastern Poland". But while Churchill was prepared to give way on these questions, including that of the Baltic States, he met with opposition from Washington, where such an incorporation was regarded as

being contrary to the principles of the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Government, no doubt with some mental reservations, had subscribed to "the general principles and aims" of the Atlantic Charter. Privately, the Russians often said that if they had some "mental reservations", Churchill had many more still. Ultimately, on May 23, during Molotov's visit to London, Eden proposed to substitute for a territorial agreement a general and public Treaty of Alliance for twenty years, omitting all references to frontiers, and a treaty on this basis was signed on May 26.

As for the question of the Second Front, this had first been raised by Stalin in a letter to Churchill in the summer of 1941 and the Russians had continued to press it on both the British and the Americans.

American proposals made in the spring of 1942, particularly General Marshall's proposal

"that we should attempt to seize Brest and Cherbourg ... during the early autumn of 1942"

were not to Churchill's liking at all, even though he "did not reject the idea from the outset."

[ Churchill, op. cit., vol. 4, pp. 288-9.]

Both in 1941 and during part of 1942 Churchill took the view that Russia was an

"expendable" ally, and was at times highly pessimistic about her chances of survival.

Thus, as we have seen, he took a much more dismal view of the Beaverbrook Mission to Moscow at the end of September 1941 than seemed warranted by Beaverbrook's own

attitude. To Beaverbrook the Soviet Union was an ally of immense value, and he was

anxious to back it at almost any price. Even after the Russians had repelled the first German onslaught on Moscow, Churchill thought that Russia's early defeat was not at all unlikely, and he felt with some bitterness—and perhaps a touch of malice—that they had

"brought it upon themselves". In a letter to Sir Stafford Cripps, now evacuated to Kuibyshev, of October 28, 1941, he wrote:

I fully sympathise with you in your difficult position, and also with Russia in her agony. They certainly have no right to reproach us. They brought their own fate

upon themselves when ... they let Hitler loose on Poland. They cut themselves off from an effective Second Front when they let the French Army be destroyed... If we had been invaded and destroyed in July or August 1940... they would have remained utterly indifferent.

[Churchill, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 420.]

For one thing, Churchill was keenly aware that, at that stage, Britain would have to bear the brunt of any Second Front operation. So he preferred other ideas—a landing in

French North Africa, or "Jupiter"—the liberation of Northern Norway, which would

"represent direct aid to Russia", and he regarded 1943 as the earliest date for landings in France.