Russia at war 1941-1945

Ukraine was possible only in the closest union with Russia. The Soviet people who finally completed the union of all Ukrainian lands into one mighty state [Meaning the incorporation of parts of the Western Ukraine formerly ruled by Austria-Hungary and, after World War I, by Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia.],under the Red Banner of the Soviets, particularly value Bogdan Khmelnitsky's immortal deed.

On October 14, Malinovsky captured Zaporozhie, and, on the 23rd, Tolbukhin captured

Melitopol. The Crimea was now about to be cut off from the mainland. The actual

penetration of the Russians into the Crimea did not, however, succeed, and had to be postponed till the spring of '44. A particularly brilliant stroke was Malinovsky's surprise attack on Dniepropetrovsk, on the lower Dnieper, which was captured on October 25.

The German "Dnieper Line" was cracking from top to bottom.

Chapter XIV THE SPIRIT OF TEHERAN

It is unnecessary to go once again over the ground of the Foreign Ministers' Conference in Moscow in October 1943, or of the Teheran Conference a month later, both of which have been described in some detail by Churchill, in the Hopkins Papers, in General John Deane's Strange Alliance, and elsewhere. What we are chiefly concerned with here are the Soviet reactions to these two momentous events, which are, of course, major

landmarks in Soviet-Western relations during the war.

It may seem surprising that the war in Russia had gone on for over two years, and that it was not till the end of 1943 that these first two full-dress meetings among the Big Three leaders should have taken place. In 1941, it is true, Hopkins, Beaverbrook, Harri-man and Eden had all visited Moscow; in May 1942 Molotov had travelled to Washington and

London, and Churchill had come to Moscow on his dismal visit in August 1942, in the

course of which he had not found Stalin or the other Soviet leaders in a particularly happy or receptive mood. Stalingrad was, just then, on the eve of its grimmest ordeal, and the Germans were well inside the Caucasus.

In October 1943, the Russians were winning one victory after another, day after day. If, before Kursk—which in July 1943 had started an uninterrupted succession of Russian

victories—the Russians were worried and on edge, and were clamouring for vigorous

action in the west, which would draw some forty or fifty German divisions from the

Soviet Front—in October 1943, the Soviet Government, and indeed Soviet opinion, were taking things much more calmly. The Russians were losing thousands of men every day, but the Second Front was no longer, to them, a matter of life or death. It now began to be taken for granted that the war would be won anyway—and that the Western Allies were

quite prepared to fight the war to a victorious finish, but with a maximum loss of life to the Russians, and a minimum loss of life to themselves. This was now accepted with a kind of bitter resignation.

Even so, the Allies had their uses; they were supplying substantial quantities of lend-lease equipment to Russia; and, as Stalin said to Eden in October 1943, he did not ignore the fact that the threat of a Second Front in Northern France had, in the summer of 1943, pinned down some twenty-five German divisions in the west, beside the ten or twelve

German divisions that were tied up in Italy. For the time being Stalin was reasonably satisfied; though he had not stopped worrying about "Overlord"—the cross-Channel landing in Northern France—again perhaps being unduly delayed. It was the common

belief in Moscow (a belief fed by American indiscretions) that Churchill was still anxious to extend operations in the Mediterranean, but was continuing to surround "Overlord"

with all kinds of conditions and reservations.

This was the Number One question which, in the Russian view, needed clearing up at the Foreign Ministers' Conference that met in Moscow on October 19, 1943.

There had, as already said, been very few top-level Government contacts between the

Russians and the Anglo-Americans, and the Moscow Conference was the first Big-Three

meeting of its kind. It came at a good moment, after three months of uninterrupted

Russian victories.

That this Conference took place in Moscow, and not elsewhere, was because Stalin, too busy with his own war, would not go abroad, and would not even let Molotov go—for

instance, to Casablanca. It was not merely a technical matter; Stalin's line was that the Soviet Union was bearing the brunt of this war, and that it was for the "others" to travel to Moscow. Even if Cordell Hull was an old man and a sick man, it couldn't be helped.