Russia at war 1941-1945

For the Summit Meeting with Roosevelt and Churchill, Stalin was willing to stretch a point and go to Teheran, close to the Soviet border, but he would not go to Habanniya or Basra, let alone Cairo. It was not only that Stalin as Commander-in-Chief could not

absent himself for more than a few days; nor was it primarily a question of security; it was above all, a question of prestige: "We aren't going hat-in-hand to the West; let the West come to us." It made in the Soviet Union just the kind of impression Stalin meant it to make.

As long as the Western Allies were not doing any very serious fighting anyway, and had made it amply clear that no "real" Second Front was to be expected in the near future, and since the Red Army still seemed to have a very long way ahead of it, there was, to the Russians, no urgent need for a Big-Three Conference.

But by October 1943 the situation had changed. There was room for joint military

planning; within a few months, the Red Army might well be across the Soviet borders, and the defeat of Germany was becoming, more and moire, a tangible reality. The big

question now was how long the war was to last. Since the month before Kursk, when the Russians officially stated that the Soviet Union could not win the war single-handed, there had been a certain departure from this position.

The statement was still true, but no longer in such absolute terms.

Paradoxically, one opinion expressed to me in a moment of indiscretion at the time of the Moscow Conference by Alexander Korneichuk, who was then one of the Foreign Vice-Commissars, was: "Things are going so well on our front that it might even be better not to have the Second Front till next spring. If there were a Second Front right now, the Germans might allow Germany to be occupied by the Anglo-Americans. It would make

us look pretty silly. Better to go on bombing them for another winter; and also let their army freeze another winter in Russia; then get the Red Army right up to Germany, and then start the Second Front." Quite obviously a man like Korneichuk was anxious that the Russians should occupy Poland before the collapse of Germany or a de facto surrender to the West.

The Moscow Conference went on for no less than twelve days, and was marked by an

extraordinary round of sumptuous lunches, ballet shows, embassy receptions and a super-banquet at the Kremlin described in lurid detail by General Deane, the head of the newly-appointed US Military Mission to the Soviet Union. There had never been anything like it in wartime Moscow, now deep in the Russian rear.

Eden had several meetings with Stalin and found him, on the whole, in good humour,

though still ironical about the Western war effort—apart from the bombing of Germany, which pleased him greatly. "Hit the svolochi hard, the harder the better!" he said, thumping the table with his fist. His chief concern was the date of "Overlord"—and in this he was glad to receive full support from the Americans. The Americans, for their part, were anxious to obtain a promise of Russian participation in the war against Japan.

Both questions were discussed at the Moscow Conference, though no clear decisions

were to be taken until Teheran.

Stalin, for his part, was satisfied with the Americans' support of "Overlord". As General Deane wrote a little later, at the time of Teheran: "[Most of] the Americans at the Conference met Stalin for the first time. They were all considerably and favourably

impressed by him, perhaps because he advocated the American point of view in our

difference with the British. Regardless of this, one could not help but recognise qualities of greatness in the man... " To which, on a technical plane, he added:

Stalin is a master of detail... and has an amazing knowledge of such matters as

characteristics of weapons, the structural features of aircraft, and Soviet methods in even minor tactics.

[ John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance (London, 1947), pp. 47 and 152.]

In a sense, the Moscow Conference was a rehearsal for Teheran; but it also achieved

some "positive" results of its own—the setting up of a European Advisory Commission, a Commission for Italy (which would include British, American, French, Greek and

Yugoslav representatives, while Vyshinsky was going to represent the Soviet Union);

there had been "sincere and exhaustive discussions" on the measures to be taken to hasten the end of the war against Germany and her satellites, and on the setting up of "close military co-operation between the three Powers in future"; it was also agreed that the