Russia at war 1941-1945

He twisted his wrist about in the air. He also thought their whole ideology completely cockeyed—an incredible medley of Hegel, Marx and Stalin—what kind of political

philosophy was that? He thought that in a completely ruined Europe, there would be a wave of something more extreme than communism, as understood here; and "they must be terrified of Trotskyism! "

Something wasn't quite clicking. As a Russian colonel whom I met at the great reception given at the French Embassy said: "You know, we can't really take the French terribly seriously. Toulon and Kronstadt and l'alliance Franco-Russe with Marseillaise and God Save the Tsar don't mean a damned thing to the present generation of Russians!"

All the same, that Embassy reception was really something. There was an enormous

tricolour flag outside, floodlit in the blizzard, and the Embassy teemed with dozens of celebrities—Ulanova and Lepeshinskaya and Ehrenburg and Prokofiev amongst them.

The gallant French airmen of the Normandie Squadron, who had been decorated by de

Gaulle that morning, were also there. With surprising graciousness, de Gaulle was doing the round of the guests. When he came to me I mentioned his visit to Stalingrad. "Ah, Stalingrad!" he said, "c'est tout de même un peuple formidable, un très grand peuple."

"Ah, oui, les Russes. .." "Mais non," said de Gaulle with a touch of impatience. "Je ne parle pas des Russes, je parle des Allemands. Tout de même, avoir poussé jusque là!"

["Ah, Stalingrad! All the same, they are a pretty tremendous people, a very great people."

"Ah yes, the Russians... " " No, I'm not talking about the Russians; I mean the Germans.

Fancy having pushed all that far!"]

In later years, when de Gaulle started on his "Paris-Bonn Axis" and publicly embraced Adenauer, I often remembered that remark. Was he, in 1944, still full of professional admiration for an Army that had smashed the French Army in five weeks? Or was this

astonishing remark a reaction to the condescension with which Stalin had spoken to him, only a few days before, of the French Army, most of which had been taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940? Or did de Gaulle perhaps want to remind the Russians that they, too, had been on the run, and that thanks to their geography, they had been able to run much farther even than the French had run in 1940?

At the Kremlin banquet on the last night Stalin behaved with a mixture of truculence, bonhomie and buffoonery ("il avait l'air de se foutre un peu de nous," one of the French guests later remarked), and it was not till after de Gaulle had made an angry and

spectacular exit that the Russians finally decided to sign the Franco-Soviet Pact without the Polish "counterpart", except for a very minor face-saver. The Russians only signed the Pact in these conditions because they thought it might still come in useful at some later date, and would also help the French Communists. But, throughout the de Gaulle visit, they made no secret of their low opinion of France's contribution to the allied war effort, and the idea of basing the future security of Europe and of the Soviet Union in the first place on a Franco-Russian alliance struck them as unrealistic.

Stalin did not raise a finger to get de Gaulle invited to Yalta two months later. In December 1944 what mattered to Stalin were Britain and the USA, with their armies and air forces and economic resources.

It is more than improbable that Stalin would have agreed to the Rhine frontier

independently of them even if de Gtaulle had agreed to recognise the Lublin Committee.

The only deal that Stalin had proposed was the signing of the Franco-Soviet Pact (even at the risk of annoying Churchill) in exchange for a French recognition of Lublin.

But to de Gaulle this Pact was still important as part of that "independent" French policy

—the "Between-East-and-West" policy —that he and Bidault tried (unsuccessfully) to pursue for two years after the war.

Chapter XIII ALTERNATIVE POLICIES AND IDEOLOGIES

TOWARDS THE END OF THE WAR

The last three months of 1944 were marked by a variety of Russian military campaigns in preparation for the final onslaught on Nazi Germany between January and May 1945. In the north the Red Army overran the Baltic Republics, where they met with a somewhat

mixed reception from the population. There were Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian

formations in the Red Army, and much was also made in the Soviet press of a

Communist-inspired partisan movement in both Latvia and Lithuania; but while, in the larger cities like Tallinn and Riga, the working-class welcomed the Red Army with

apparent enthusiasm, the peasantry were lukewarm. The middle-class, and the many