Russia at war 1941-1945

A more intricate question was what to tell Stalin. The President and I no longer felt we needed his aid to conquer Japan... In our opinion they (the Soviet troops in the Far East) were not likely to be needed, and Stalin's bargaining power, which he had used with such effect upon the Americans at Yalta, was therefore gone.

And then came Churchill's singularly tortuous mental compromise:

Still, he had been a magnificent ally in the war against Hitler, and we both

(Churchill and Truman) felt that he must be informed of the great New Fact which

now dominated the scene, but not with any particulars.

[Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 552-4.]

In the end the procedure chosen was this: Nothing was going to be put in writing. Instead, Truman said:

"I think I had best just tell him after one of our meetings that we have an entirely novel form of bomb, something quite out of the ordinary, which we think will have a decisive effect upon the Japanese will to continue the war."

Churchill agreed with this "procedure".

[Ibid., p. 554.]

And this is how it was done.

On July 24, after our plenary meeting had ended... I saw the President go up to

Stalin, and the two conversed alone, with only their interpreters. I was perhaps five yards away, and I watched with the closest attention their momentous talk. I knew what the President was going to do. What was vital to measure was its effect on

Stalin. I can see it all as if it were yesterday. He seemed to be delighted. A new bomb! Of extraordinary power!... What a bit of luck!... I was sure that he had no idea of the significance of what he was being told... If he had had the slightest idea...

his reactions would have been obvious... Nothing would have been easier than for

him to say:

"... May I send my experts to see your experts tomorrow morning?" But his face remained gay and genial...

"How did it go?" I asked (Truman). "He never asked a question," he replied.

[Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 579-80. The suggestion that the Russians already knew all about the bomb from their own intelligence is not borne out by their behaviour after Potsdam.]

I must add here a very important historical point which dots the i's in Churchill's account to an extraordinary degree.

When, in 1946, I privately asked Molotov whether the Soviet Government had been

informed at Potsdam that an atom bomb would be dropped on Japan, he looked startled, thought for a moment, and then said: "It's a tricky subject, and the real answer to your question is both Yes and No. We were told of a 'superbomb', of a bomb 'the like of which had never been seen'; but the word atom was not used."

I often wondered afterwards whether Molotov's answer was strictly true, and I believe it was; had Truman really told Stalin that the new weapon was not just a "super-bomb", but an atom bomb, it is almost inconceivable that Stalin could have registered the news as calmly and cheerfully as Churchill said he did, and done nothing at all about it.

Certainly, there was nothing in the behaviour of either Stalin or any other Russians at Potsdam after they had been told about the new weapon to suggest that anything quite unusual had happened. Their plans about Japan were not changed one whit. The negotiations with the Chinese were resumed in Moscow after Stalin's and Molotov's