Russia at war 1941-1945

For some months past, the Kremlin had been receiving specific and grave warnings. As early as February, after his visit to Ankara, Sir Stafford Gripps had told the Soviet Foreign Commissariat that the Germans were preparing to invade the Balkans and that

they were also planning an attack on the Soviet Union "in the near future". About the same time, similar information had been given by Sumner Welles to Konstantin

Oumansky, the Soviet Ambassador in Washington. And then, in April, there was

Churchill's famous message to Stalin.

In the post-war History these warnings are treated somewhat ungraciously—they were

"not disinterested warnings", the suggestion being that the British and Americans were merely trying to drag the Russians into the war and turn them into "England's soldiers".

Instead, the History claims that Soviet Intelligence in Poland, Czechoslovakia and even Germany had kept the government fully informed on what was going on.

Be that as it may, it seems certain that Molotov and Stalin were both fully aware of the danger of a German attack but still hoped that they could put off the evil hour—at least till the autumn, when the Germans would not attack; and then by 1942, Russia would be better prepared for war.

Russia's Friendship Pact with Yugoslavia had not deterred Hitler; it had turned out a lamentable fiasco. True, there had been a number of subtle little "anti-German"

demonstrations before that—a few pinpricks in the press, as we have seen, and a few

other little demonstrations, such as the award of a Stalin Prize in March 1941 to

Eisenstein's ferociously anti-German film, Alexander Nevsky, as well as to some other strongly-nationalist and implicitly "anti-invader" works like Alexei Tolstoy's novel, Peter I, Shaporin's oratorio, The Field of Kulikovo, and Sergeiev-Tsensky's novel on the Siege of Sebastopol. Behind the scenes at the end of March, Manuilsky, Vice-President of the Comintern, had even declared that, in his opinion, "a war with Nazi Germany could now scarcely be avoided". The story got round Moscow. Better still, in March a number of Russian officers of Timoshenko's entourage had invited the British Military Attaché to a party. The conversation had been guarded and non-committal until the atmosphere had

warmed up— no doubt helped by the vodka—and, in the end, some of the officers went

so far as to drink to "the victory over our common enemy".

In the course of the evening they had made no secret of their deep concern about the general situation, especially in the Balkans.

[Having heard about this, I asked Cripps in Moscow in July 1941 whether it was true.

"Yes, that is, roughly, what happened. It was certainly something of a pointer. It was all the more significant since I, as Ambassador, continued to be as good as boycotted by both Stalin and Molotov." The story was also later confirmed to me by Colonel E. R.

Greer, the British Military Attaché, though he was uncertain about the exact date of the incident.]

Officially, no doubt, both Stalin and Molotov had to go on pretending that they were not frightened. After the signing of the Soviet-Yugoslav Pact Gabrilovic, Yugoslav

Ambassador in Moscow (as he later told me himself), asked Stalin: "What will happen if the Germans turn on you?" To which Stalin replied: "All right, let them come!"

On April 13—the day Belgrade fell—the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact was

signed. It was a doubtful insurance, but still an insurance that the Russians took in view of the growing German menace. Everybody in Moscow was startled by Stalin's

extraordinary display of cordiality to Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who had come from Berlin to Moscow to sign the Pact. He took the unprecedented step of seeing Matsuoka off himself at the railway station. He embraced him and said: "We are Asiatics, too, and we've got to stick together! " To have secured Japanese neutrality in these conditions, and the promise by Japan not to attack Russia regardless of any commitments she had signed "with third parties" was, in Stalin's eyes, no mean achievement. As long as Japan stuck to her word, it meant the avoidance of a two-front war, if Germany attacked.

On that station platform Stalin was in an unusually exuberant mood, even shaking the hands of railwaymen and travellers as he walked down the platform arm-in-arm with

Matsuoka.

True, he also threw his arm round the neck of Colonel von Krebs, the German Military Attaché, who had also come to see Matsuoka off, saying "We are going to remain friends, won't we?" But what mattered most to Stalin that day was his pact with Japan. Stalin had no great illusions about the Germans. Significantly, at the end of April, he telephoned Ilya Ehrenburg saying that his anti-Nazi novel, The Fall of Paris, could now be published. (Ehrenburg concluded from this call that, in Stalin's view, war with Germany was now inevitable.)