Russia at war 1941-1945

wrote: "The Western Powers were seeking for a psychological effect (they did not hide this fact). They wished to create a solidarity between the West and the East which would prevent Hitler from starting his war. This plan was perfectly justified ... and any delay in its realisation seemed intolerable. The Soviet view was equally tenable: Moscow did not want to engage itself lightly. If despite agreement in principle, war broke out, the greatest German effort might be made against the USSR."

[The trouble is that, as Stalin was to say to Churchill in 1942, he (Stalin) knew perfectly well that such a "psychological effect" was totally insufficient to restrain Hitler.]

Anyway, the Strang-Molotov talks were leading nowhere, and, on July 23 Molotov

finally proposed that France and Britain send a military mission to Moscow.

The manner and motions of this mission were to show before long how "intolerable" Mr Chamberlain thought "any delay". What he still wanted "without delay" was a

"psychological effect"; on the other hand a military convention—to the Russians "the only real test of Western sincerity"—was precisely what he was not in a hurry to sign.

But were the Russians wholehearted about an alliance with Britain and France? On June 29 Zhdanov published in Pravda a sharply critical article on the Western Powers, almost suggesting that an alliance with the "Munichites" would be a doubtful asset. References to the Siegfried Line also appeared in the Soviet press from time to time, suggesting that France's striking power against Germany might be insufficient. And among the Soviet

hierarchy there might well have been the lingering thought that, so soon after the Army Purges, the Red Army had better not take on a powerful enemy like Nazi Germany,

unless some definite military convention could be reached with Biritain and France. Short of this, it might (as Stalin had already suggested on March 10) be preferable to remain

"neutral". But how?

Nor did it escape the Russians' notice that since Munich, and indeed to the very moment the war broke out, there were important people in power or near the levers of power in Britain and elsewhere who in their frantic efforts to appease Hitler, were prepared to go to almost any lengths.

[The list of appeasers—Mr Hudson, Sir Horace Wilson, Lord Kemsley, etc.—which

emerges from the Dirksen archives, that is the papers of the German Ambassador in

London until the outbreak of the war, captured by the Russians and published

subsequently, Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny. T.II Arkhiv Dirksena (1938-39), (Moscow, 1948), even allowing for a good deal of selective editing, certainly bears out what every experienced and sober observer of the political scene must have known or strongly suspected at the time.]

In all circumstances the Russians had to prepare themselves for an imminent Nazi thrust eastwards against Poland and the not unlikely event that such an offensive might

encompass the Baltic States and possibly Rumania, that is, a front extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Even if the German offensive stopped in the face of the Russian winter, the Russians must have feared a German invasion in the spring of 1940 with the West taking a ringside seat behind the Maginot Line, unless of course definite guarantees of co-ordinated military action were mutually provided.

On August 4, Pravda reported from London that Britain and France had agreed to send a military mission to Moscow. This report was accompanied by an account of the House of Commons debate, in the course of which Eden welcomed the decision. He thought that

this would "resolve distrust", and hoped that these talks would soon lead to an agreement.

He proposed, however, that, in addition to admirals and generals, the British Government should send "a representative political leader" to Moscow, "so that all the talks could be concluded within a week". There was no time to lose, Eden said, since Poland was now being threatened, as Czechoslovakia had been, and it was essential to create a peace front with the utmost speed, so as to discourage aggression. To these warnings Chamberlain turned a deaf ear.

But for several days after that very little more was said in the Soviet press about this military mission. For over a week a carefree holiday mood seems to have reigned in

Moscow. On August 1, indeed, a monumental Agricultural Exhibition opened in the

capital, with Molotov presiding over the opening ceremony. Stalin was represented by a colossal statue at the entrance of the Exhibition. Although, only a fortnight before, the Soviet press had reported a highly critical speech by Khrushchev on the state of stock-breeding in the Ukraine—a speech in which he castigated the half-heartedness of so