Stalin: A Biography

Clever though he was, Stalin was no diplomatic genius. Yet the Big Three had conflicting interests and he took advantage. Stalin had been given his inch and aimed to take a mile. Already the idea had formed in his mind that the USSR should conquer territory in the eastern half of Europe so as to have a buffer zone between itself and any Western aggressor. Stalin had a decent working partnership with the exhausted Roosevelt; and although he and Churchill did not trust each other, they felt they could go on dealing across the table. Many in Poland and elsewhere felt that this co-operation was taken to excessive lengths. The Polish government-in-exile warned about Stalin’s ambitions, but in vain. On 12 April, however, Roosevelt died. Stalin, a man scarcely prone to sentimental outbursts, sent a warm letter of condolence to Washington. It was not so much the death of a fellow member of the Big Three as the collapse of a working political relationship that he mourned. Personal diplomacy had obviated many snags which could have disrupted the tripartite military alliance since 1941. Stalin had enjoyed being taken seriously as a politician by Churchill and Roosevelt for the duration of hostilities, and their meetings had enhanced his self-esteem. Roosevelt’s successor, Vice-President Harry Truman, had a more right-wing reputation. Stalin anticipated rougher modes of deliberation on world affairs in the time ahead.

43. LAST CAMPAIGNS

At last in summer 1944 the Western Allies were ready to open the second front. Operation Overlord began on 6 June, when American, British, Canadian and other forces under the command of Dwight Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy in northern France. It was an amphibious operation of immense daring and cleverness. Having fooled the Wehrmacht about the precise spot, the Allied armies pushed the Germans into retreat. If Stalin had been beginning such an offensive in the East, he would have demanded that the Western Allies attack the Germans simultaneously. Yet he did not hurry his preparations any more than the Americans and the British had done in earlier years. The Eastern counterpart was to be Operation Bagration. The name was not chosen accidentally: Bagration was one of Alexander II’s most successful commanders in 1812; he was also a Georgian like the USSR’s Supreme Commander. Massive German forces remained in the east, 228 divisions as compared to the 58 facing Eisenhower and Montgomery. On 22 June, after months of preparation by Zhukov and Vasilevski, Operation Bagration was begun. It was exactly three years after the Germans had crashed over the River Bug in Operation Barbarossa. Deep, complex combinations of tanks and aircraft were deployed across the long front.¹ In East and West it was clear that the final battles of the war in Europe were imminent.

The Pripet marshes between Belorussia and Poland were the next fighting ground, and Stalin basked in the glory obtained by the success of his military professionals. On 22 July Rokossovski’s forces crossed the Bug. Stavka concentrated the Red Army’s advance in the direction of Warsaw and Lwów. Stalin had last been involved in battles over the territory in 1920, and this time he was in total charge of the Red Army’s activities. When Lwów fell on 27 July, the Wehrmacht pulled back across the River Vistula. Neither Hitler nor his generals had a serious strategy to reverse the fortunes of the Third Reich. German forces faced the prospect of war against formidable enemies on two massive fronts. The Western Allies were grinding their way towards the Ardennes, while the Red Army could see Warsaw through their binoculars.

The Wehrmacht stood across the Red Army’s advance not only in Poland but also in every country of eastern Europe. The obvious temptation, after the Red Army crossed the Bug, was to order the pursuit of the enemy to Warsaw. Against this was the calculation that Soviet forces had not yet completed the reconquest of the Baltic states and that a massive defence had been prepared by Hitler in Poland itself. There were reasons for Stavka to allow the Red Army to be rested and resupplied for the arduous crossing of the Vistula. Stalin also needed to be assured that any thrust at Warsaw would not expose his forces to a wheeling movement by the Germans from Romania. Although he had driven the Wehrmacht off Soviet territory, he recognised that a serious military campaign lay ahead.² A further problem was the weakness of Soviet intelligence in respect of the Polish situation. Stalin was largely to blame for this. By annihilating thousands of Polish communists in Moscow in the Great Terror, he had deprived himself of agents who could have been infiltrated behind the lines in 1944. And his murderous behaviour towards fleeing Poles in 1939–41 had added to the general suspicion of him in Poland.