Russia at war 1941-1945

intensified bombing of Germany: "It evokes the most lively echo in the hearts of many millions in our country." On April 10, Churchill reported that 502 aircraft had attacked Frankfort, and promised to send films of bombed Germany "which might please your soldiers who had been in many Russian towns in ruins "; he also assured Stalin that the 375 Hurricanes and 285 Airocobras and Kittyhawks which were to have been delivered

by the Arctic route, were being sent as quickly as possible through the Mediterranean.

This strange blend of pleasantness and unpleasantness was followed by the Russian

breach with the London Poles, with Churchill frantically pleading with Stalin not to make the breach final. Sikorski was a good man, he argued, and anyone replacing him would be worse. He also declared that, according to Goebbels, the Russians were now setting up a new Polish Government—a story that Stalin hastened to deny as "a fabrication" (May 4).

On June 10, with the German offensive in the offing, Stalin grew furious with Churchill again. Writing to Roosevelt that day, he declared: "Now in May 1943 you and Churchill have decided to postpone the Anglo-American invasion of Western Europe till the spring of 1944. Now again we've got to go on fighting almost single-handed," and, on the 24th, in his letter to Churchill, he became really violent:

The Soviet Government could not have imagined that the British and US

Governments would revise the decision to invade Western Europe which they had

adopted earlier this year... We were not consulted. The preservation of our

confidence in the Allies is being subjected to a severe stress.

On June 27 Churchill angrily replied that Stalin's reproaches left him "unmoved", recalled that England had to fight Germany single-handed till June 1941, and that,

anyway "you may not even be heavily attacked by the Germans this summer. That would vindicate decisively what you once called the 'military correctness' of our Mediterranean strategy."

Only a week later, the Germans struck out at Kursk.

Stalin's anger and recrimination may partly be due to the nervousness he felt about the outcome of the battle; once this had been won, he no longer worried too much about the Second Front. His line now was that it would come when it came; that Russia, though

losing a terrible number of men, should be thankful for whatever the West contributed—

lend-lease, or the fall of Mussolini—and that she should meantime make preparation for a big Tripartite Conference. In view of the delays in the Second Front, Stalin was more determined than ever not to give way on a question like Poland. At the same time he felt that, on the German question, he might take certain purely unilateral precautions.

It was while the successful Russian offensive, following the rout of the Germans at

Kursk, was in full swing that Mussolini fell from power.

Until then, the Russian press had treated the Italian campaign with a deliberate show of disdain. The invasion of Sicily was being pointedly and invariably referred to as

"operations in the island of Sicily". But the fall of Mussolini, on the other hand, suddenly convinced the Russians that the Italian campaign, "miserable" though it was in purely military terms, could be extremely important politically. The effect on Germany and on her satellites of Mussolini's fall was not something that could be ignored.

On July 27 Red Star commented on Mussolini's fall in the following pungent piece containing some phrases directly borrowed from Churchill (like "the jackal"), handsomely putting the importance of Mussolini's fall side-by-side with the victorious Russian summer campaign:

... this jackal, in June 1940, stabbed bleeding France in the back... Italy was hopeless even in her fight against little Greece. The fighting in Africa did not bring Mussolini any laurels either... The British offensive smashed the Italo-German army... The

military situation of Fascist Italy became altogether hopeless when, like a fool, Mussolini threw himself into the adventure of conquering Russia, by Hitler's side...