THE entry of Russia into the war was welcome but not immediately helpful to us. The German armies were so strong that it seemed that for many months they could maintain the invasion threat against England while at the same time plunging into Russia. Almost all responsible military opinion held that the Russian armies would soon be defeated and largely destroyed. The fact that the Soviet Air Force was allowed by its Government to be surprised on its landing grounds and that the Russian military preparations were far from being complete gave them a bad start. Frightful injuries were sustained by the Russian armies. In spite of heroic resistance, competent despotic war direction, total disregard of human life, and the opening of a ruthless guerrilla warfare in the rear of the German advance, a general retirement took place on the whole twelve-hundred-mile Russian front south of Leningrad for about four or five hundred miles. The strength of the Soviet Government, the fortitude of the Russian people, their immeasurable reserves of manpower, the vast size of their country, the rigours of the Russian winter, were the factors which ultimately ruined Hitler’s armies. But none of these made themselves apparent in 1941. President Roosevelt was considered very bold when he proclaimed in September that the Russian front would hold and that Moscow would not be taken. The glorious strength and patriotism of the Russian people vindicated this opinion.
Even in August 1942, after my visit to Moscow and the conferences there, General Brooke, who had accompanied me, adhered to the opinion that the Caucasus Mountains would be traversed and the basin of the Caspian dominated by German forces, and we prepared accordingly on the largest possible scale for a defensive campaign in Syria and Persia. Throughout I took a more sanguine view than my military advisers of the Russian powers of resistance. I rested with confidence upon Stalin’s assurance, given to me at Moscow, that he would hold the line of the Caucasus and that the Germans would not reach the Caspian in any strength. But we were vouchsafed so little information about Soviet resources and intentions that all opinions either way were hardly more than guesses.
It is true that the Russian entry into the war diverted the German air attack from Great Britain and diminished the threat of invasion. It gave us important relief in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, it imposed upon us most heavy sacrifices and drains. At last we were beginning to be well equipped. At last our munitions factories were pouring out their supplies of every kind. Our armies in Egypt and Libya were in heavy action and clamouring for the latest weapons, above all tanks and aeroplanes. The British armies at home were eagerly awaiting the longpromised modern equipment which in all its ever-widening complications was flowing at last towards them. At this moment we were compelled to make very large diversions of our weapons and vital supplies of all kinds, including rubber and oil. On us fell the burden of organising the convoys of British and still more of United States supplies and carrying them to Murmansk and Archangel through all the dangers and rigours of the Arctic passage. All the American supplies were a deduction from what had in fact been, or was to be, successfully ferried across the Atlantic for ourselves. In order to make this immense diversion and to forgo the growing flood of American aid without crippling our campaign in the Western Desert, we had to cramp all preparations which prudence urged for the defence of the Malay peninsula and our Eastern Empire and possessions against the evergrowing menace of Japan.
Without in the slightest degree challenging the conclusion which history will affirm that the Russian resistance broke the power of the German armies and inflicted mortal injury upon the life-energies of the German nation, it is right to make it clear that for more than a year after Russia was involved in the war she presented herself to our minds as a burden and not as a help. None the less we rejoiced to have this mighty nation in the battle with us, and we all felt that even if the Soviet armies were driven back to the Ural Mountains Russia would still exert an immense and, if she persevered in the war, an ultimately decisive force.
Up to the moment when the Soviet Government was set upon by Hitler they seemed to care for no one but themselves. Afterwards this mood naturally became more marked. Hitherto they had watched with stony composure the destruction of the front in France in 1940, and our vain efforts in 1941 to create a front in the Balkans. They had given important economic aid to Nazi Germany and had helped them in many minor ways. Now, having been deceived and taken by surprise, they were themselves under the flaming German sword. Their first impulse and lasting policy was to demand all possible succour from Great Britain and her Empire, the possible partition of which between Stalin and Hitler had for the last eight months beguiled Soviet minds from the progress of German concentration in the East. They did not hesitate to appeal in urgent and strident terms to harassed and struggling Britain to send them the munitions of which her armies were so short. They urged the United States to divert to them the largest quantities of the supplies on which we were counting, and, above all, even in the summer of 1941 they clamoured for British landings in Europe, regardless of risk and cost, to establish a second front. The British Communists, who had hitherto done their worst, which was not much, in our factories, and had denounced “the capitalist and imperialist war”, turned about again overnight and began to scrawl the slogan “Second Front Now” upon the walls and hoardings.
We did not allow these somewhat sorry and ignominious facts to disturb our thought, and fixed our gaze upon the heroic sacrifices of the Russian people under the calamities which their Government had brought upon them, and their passionate defence of their native soil. This, while the struggle lasted, made amends for all.
The Russians never understood in the smallest degree the nature of the amphibious operation necessary to disembark and maintain a great army upon a well-defended hostile coast. Even the Americans were at this time largely unaware of the difficulties. Not only sea but air superiority at the invasion point was indispensable. Moreover, there was a third vital factor. A vast armada of specially constructed landingcraft, above all tank landing-craft in numerous varieties, was the foundation of any successful heavily opposed landing. For the creation of this armada, as has been and will be seen, I had long done my best. It could not be ready even on a minor scale before the summer of 1943, and its power, as is now widely recognised, could not be developed on a sufficient scale till 1944. At the period we have now reached, in the summer of 1941, we had no mastery of the enemy air over Europe, except in the Pas de Calais, where the strongest German fortifications existed. The landing-craft were only a-building. We had not even got an army in Britain as large, as well trained, as well equipped as the one we should have to meet on French soil. Yet Niagaras of folly and misstatement still pour out on this question of the Second Front. There was certainly no hope of convincing the Soviet Government at this or any other time. Stalin even suggested to me on one occasion later on that if the British were afraid he would be willing to send round three or four Russian Army Corps to do the job. It was not in my power, through lack of shipping and other physical facts, to take him at his word.
There was no response from the Soviet Government to my broadcast to Russia and the world on the day of the German attack, except that parts of it were printed in Pravda and other Russian Government organs, and that we were asked to receive a Russian Military Mission. The silence on the top level was oppressive, and I thought it my duty to break the ice. I quite understood that they might feel shy, considering all that had passed since the outbreak of the war between the Soviets and the Western Allies, and remembering what had happened twenty years before between me and the Bolshevik Revolutionary Government. On July 7 I therefore addressed myself to Stalin, and expressed our intention to bring all aid in our power to the Russian people. On the 10th I tried again. Official communications passed between the two Foreign Offices, but it was not until the 19th that I received the first direct communication from Stalin.
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After thanking me for my two telegrams, he said:
Perhaps it is not out of place to mention that the position of the Soviet forces at the front remains tense.… It seems to me therefore that the military situation of the Soviet Union, as well as of Great Britain, would be considerably improved if there could be established a front against Hitler in the West—Northern France, and in the North—the Arctic.
A front in Northern France could not only divert Hitler’s forces from the East, but at the same time would make it impossible for Hitler to invade Great Britain. The establishment of the front just mentioned would be popular with the British Army, as well as with the whole population of Southern England.
I fully realise the difficulties involved in the establishment of such a front. I believe however that in spite of the difficulties it should be formed, not only in the interests of our common cause, but also in the interests of Great Britain herself. This is the most propitious moment for the establishment of such a front, because now Hitler’s forces are diverted to the East and he has not yet had the chance to consolidate the position occupied by him in the East.
It is still easier to establish a front in the North. Here, on the part of Great Britain, would be necessary only naval and air operations, without the landing of troops or artillery. The Soviet military, naval, and air forces would take part in such an operation. We would welcome it if Great Britain could transfer to this theatre of war something like one light division or more of the Norwegian volunteers, who could be used in Northern Norway to organise rebellion against the Germans.
Thus the Russian pressure for the establishment of a Second Front was initiated at the very beginning of our correspondence, and this theme was to recur throughout our subsequent relations with monotonous disregard, except in the Far North, for physical facts. This, my first telegram from Stalin, contained the only sign of compunction I ever perceived in the Soviet attitude. In this he volunteered a defence of the Soviet change of side and of his agreement with Hitler before the outbreak of the war, and dwelt, as I have already done, on the Russians’ strategic need to hold a German deployment as far as possible to the west in Poland in order to gain time for the fullest development of Russian far-drawn military strength. I have never underrated this argument, and could well afford to reply in comprehending terms upon it.
From the first moment I did my utmost to help with munitions and supplies, both by consenting to severe diversions from the United States and by direct British sacrifices. Early in September the equivalent of two Hurricane squadrons were dispatched in H.M.S. Argus to Murmansk, to assist in the defence of the naval base and co-operate with Russian forces in that area. By September 11 the squadrons were in action, and they fought valiantly for three months. I was well aware that in the early days of our alliance there was little we could do, and I tried to fill the void by civilities, and to build up by frequent personal telegrams the same kind of happy relations which I had developed with the President. In this long Moscow series I received many rebuffs and only rarely a kind word. In many cases the telegrams were left unanswered altogether or for many days.
The Soviet Government had the impression that they were conferring a great favour on us by fighting in their own country for their own lives. The more they fought the heavier our debt became. This was not a balanced view. Two or three times in this long correspondence I had to protest in blunt language, but especially against the ill-usage of our sailors, who carried at so much peril the supplies to Murmansk and Archangel. Almost invariably however I bore hectoring and reproaches with “a patient shrug; for sufferance is the badge” of all who have to deal with the Kremlin. Moreover, I made constant allowances for the pressures under which Stalin and his dauntless Russian nation lay.
It will not be possible in this account to do more than place before the reader the salient features of the new colossal struggle of armies and populations which now began. In the first month the Germans bit and tore their way three hundred miles into Russia, but at the end of July there arose a fundamental clash of opinion between Hitler and Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief. Brauchitsch held that Timoshenko’s Army Group, which lay in front of Moscow, constituted the main Russian strength and must first be defeated. This was orthodox doctrine. Thereafter, Brauchitsch contended, Moscow, the main military, political, and industrial nerve centre of all Russia, should be taken. Hitler forcefully disagreed. He wished to gain territory and destroy Russian armies on the broadest front. In the north he demanded the capture of Leningrad, and in the south of the industrial Donetz Basin, the Crimea, and the entry to Russia’s Caucasian oil supplies. Meanwhile Moscow could wait.
After vehement discussion Hitler overruled his Army chiefs. The Northern Army Group, reinforced from the centre, was ordered to press operations against Leningrad. The Central Army Group was relegated to the defensive. They were directed to send a Panzer group southwards to take in flank the Russians who were being pursued across the Dnieper by Rundstedt. In this action the Germans prospered. By early September a vast pocket of Russian forces was forming around Kiev, and over half a million men were killed or captured in the desperate fighting which lasted all that month. In the north no such success could be claimed. Leningrad was encircled but not taken. Hitler’s decision had not been right. He now turned his mind and willpower back to the centre. The besiegers of Leningrad were ordered to detach mobile forces and part of their supporting air force to reinforce a renewed drive on Moscow. The Panzer group which had been sent south to von Rundstedt came back again to join in the assault. At the end of September the stage was reset for the formerly discarded central thrust, while the southern armies drove on eastward to the lower Don, whence the Caucasus would lie open to them.
But by now there was another side to the tale. Despite their fearful losses Russian resistance remained tough and unbending. Their soldiers fought to the death, and their armies gained in experience and skill. Partisans rose up behind the German fronts and harassed the communications in a merciless warfare. The captured Russian railway system was proving inadequate; the roads were breaking up under the heavy traffic, and movement off the roads after rain was often impossible. Transport vehicles were showing many signs of wear. Barely two months remained before the dreaded Russian winter. Could Moscow be taken in that time? And if it were, would that be enough? Here then was the fateful question. Though Hitler was still elated by the victory at Kiev, the German generals might well feel that their early misgivings were justified. There had been four weeks of delay on what had now become the decisive front. The task of “annihilating the forces of the enemy in White Russia” which had been given to the Central Army Group was still not done.
But as the autumn drew on and the supreme crisis on the Russian front impended the Soviet demands upon us became more insistent.
Lord Beaverbrook returned from the United States having stimulated the already powerful forces making for a stupendous increase in production. He now became the champion in the War Cabinet of Aid to Russia. In this he rendered valuable service. When we remember the pressures that lay upon us to prepare the battle in the Libyan desert, and the deep anxieties about Japan which brooded over all our affairs in Malaya and the Far East, and that everything sent to Russia was subtracted from British vital needs, it was necessary that the Russian claims should be so vehemently championed at the summit of our war thought. I tried to keep the main proportion evenly presented in my own mind, and shared my stresses with my colleagues. We endured the unpleasant process of exposing our own vital security and projects to failure for the sake of our new ally—surly, snarly, grasping, and so lately indifferent to our survival.
I felt that when Beaverbrook and Averell Harriman got back from Washington and we could survey all the prospects of munitions and supplies they should go to Moscow and offer all we could spare and dare. Prolonged and painful discussions took place. The Service departments felt it was like flaying off pieces of their skin. However, we gathered together the utmost in our power, and consented to very large American diversions of all we longed for ourselves in order to make an effective contribution to the resistance of the Soviets. I brought the proposal to send Lord Beaverbrook to Moscow before my colleagues on August 28. The Cabinet were very willing that he should present the case to Stalin, and the President felt himself well represented by Harriman.
As a preliminary to this mission I outlined the position in general terms in a letter to Stalin, and on the evening of September 4 M. Maisky called to see me to deliver his reply. This was the first personal message since July. After thanking us for offering him another two hundred fighter aircraft, he came down to brass tacks.
“… The relative stabilisation at the front which we succeeded in achieving about three weeks ago”, he cabled, “has broken down during the last week, owing to transfer to Eastern front of thirty to thirty-four fresh German infantry divisions and of an enormous quantity of tanks and aircraft, as well as a large increase in activities of the twenty Finnish and twenty-six Roumanian divisions. Germans consider danger in the West a bluff, and are transferring all their forces to the East with impunity, being convinced that no second front exists in the West, and that none will exist. Germans consider it quite possible to smash their enemies singly: first Russia, then the English.
“As a result we have lost more than one-half of the Ukraine, and in addition the enemy is at the gates of Leningrad.…
“I think there is only one means of egress from this situation—to establish in the present year a second front somewhere in the Balkans or France, capable of drawing away from the Eastern Front 30 to 40 divisions, and at the same time of ensuring to the Soviet Union 30,000 tons of aluminium by the beginning of October next and a monthly minimum of aid amounting to 400 aircraft and 500 tanks (of small or medium size).…”
The Soviet Ambassador, who was accompanied by Mr. Eden, stayed and talked with me for an hour and a half. He emphasised in bitter terms how for the last eleven weeks Russia had been bearing the brunt of the German onslaught virtually alone. The Russian armies were now enduring a weight of attack never equalled before. He said that he did not wish to use dramatic language, but this might be a turning-point in history. If Soviet Russia were defeated how could we win the war? M. Maisky emphasised the extreme gravity of the crisis on the Russian front in poignant terms which commanded my sympathy. But when presently I sensed an underlying air of menace in his appeal I was angered. I said to the Ambassador, whom I had known for many years, “Remember that only four months ago we in this Island did not know whether you were not coming in against us on the German side. Indeed, we thought it quite likely that you would. Even then we felt sure we should win in the end. We never thought our survival was dependent on your action either way. Whatever happens, and whatever you do, you of all people have no right to make reproaches to us.” As I warmed to the topic the Ambassador exclaimed, “More calm, please, my dear Mr. Churchill,” but thereafter his tone perceptibly changed.
The discussion went over the ground already covered in the interchange of telegrams. The Ambassador pleaded for an immediate landing on the coast of France or the Low Countries. I explained the military reasons which rendered this impossible, and that it could be no relief to Russia. I said that I had spent five hours that day examining with our experts the means for greatly increasing the capacity of the Trans-Persian railway. I spoke of the Beaverbrook-Harriman Mission and of our resolve to give all the supplies we could spare or carry. Finally Mr. Eden and I told him that we should be ready for our part to make it plain to the Finns that we would declare war upon them if they advanced into Russia beyond their 1918 frontiers. M. Maisky could not of course abandon his appeal for an immediate second front, and it was useless to argue further.
I at once consulted the Cabinet upon the issues raised in this conversation and in Stalin’s message, and that evening sent a reply, of which the following paragraphs are pertinent:
“Although”, I wrote, “we should shrink from no exertion, there is in fact no possibility of any British action in the West, except air action, which would draw the German forces from the East before the winter sets in. There is no chance whatever of a second front being formed in the Balkans without the help of Turkey. I will, if your Excellency desires, give all the reasons which have led our Chiefs of Staff to these conclusions. They have already been discussed with your Ambassador in conference today with the Foreign Secretary and the Chiefs of Staff. Action, however well-meant, leading only to costly fiascos would be no help to anyone but Hitler.…
“We are ready to make joint plans with you now. Whether British armies will be strong enough to invade the mainland of Europe during 1942 must depend on unforeseeable events. It may be possible however to assist you in the extreme North when there is more darkness. We are hoping to raise our armies in the Middle East to a strength of three-quarters of a million before the end of the present year, and thereafter to a million by the summer of 1942. Once the German-Italian forces in Libya have been destroyed all these forces will be available to come into line on your southern flank, and it is hoped to encourage Turkey to maintain at the least a faithful neutrality. Meanwhile we shall continue to batter Germany from the air with increasing severity and to keep the seas open and ourselves alive.…”
I thought the whole matter so important that I sent simultaneously the following telegram to the President while the impression was fresh in my mind:
“The Soviet Ambassador … used language of vague import about the gravity of the occasion and the turning-point character which would attach to our reply. Although nothing in his language warranted the assumption, we could not exclude the impression that they might be thinking of separate terms.… I feel that the moment may be decisive. We can but do our best.”
On September 15 I received another telegram from Stalin:
“I have no doubt that the British Government desires to see the Soviet Union victorious and is looking for ways and means to attain this end. If, as they think, the establishment of a second front in the West is at present impossible, perhaps another method could be found to render the Soviet Union an active military help?
“It seems to me that Great Britain could without risk land in Archangel twenty-five to thirty divisions, or transport them across Iran [Persia] to the southern regions of the U.S.S.R. In this way there could be established military collaboration between the Soviet and British troops on the territory of the U.S.S.R. A similar situation existed during the last war in France. The arrangement mentioned would constitute a great help. It would be a serious blow against the Hitler aggression.…”
It is almost incredible that the head of the Russian Government with all the advice of their military experts could have committed himself to such absurdities. It seemed hopeless to argue with a man thinking in terms of utter unreality, and I sent the best answer I could.
Meanwhile the Beaverbrook-Harriman talks in London were completed, and on September 22 the Anglo-American Supply Mission set off in the cruiser London from Scapa Flow through the Arctic Sea to Archangel, and thence by air to Moscow. Much depended on them. Their reception was bleak and discussions not at all friendly. It might almost have been thought that the plight in which the Soviets now found themselves was our fault. The Soviet generals and officials gave no information of any kind to their British and American colleagues. They did not even inform them of the basis on which Russian needs of our precious war materials had been estimated. The Mission was given no formal entertainment until almost the last night, when they were invited to dinner at the Kremlin. It must not be thought that such an occasion among men preoccupied with the gravest affairs may not be helpful to the progress of business. On the contrary, many of the private interchanges which occur bring about that atmosphere where agreements can be reached. But there was little of this mood now, and it might almost have been we who had come to ask for favours.
One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.
In the end a friendly agreement was reached. A protocol was signed setting out the supplies which Great Britain and the United States could make available to Russia within the period October 1941 to June 1942. This involved much derangement of our military plans, already hampered by the tormenting shortage of munitions. All fell upon us, because we not only gave our own production, but had to forgo most important munitions which the Americans would otherwise have sent to us. Neither the Americans nor ourselves made any promise about the transportation of these supplies across the difficult and perilous ocean and Arctic routes. In view of the insulting reproaches which Stalin uttered when we suggested that the convoys should not sail till the ice had receded, it should be noted that all we guaranteed was that the supplies would “be made available at British and United States centres of production”. The preamble of the protocol ended with the words, “Great Britain and the United States will give aid to the transportation of these materials to the Soviet Union, and will help with the delivery”.
“The effect of this agreement”, Lord Beaverbrook telegraphed to me, “has been an immense strengthening of the morale of Moscow. The maintenance of this morale will depend on delivery.…
“I do not regard the military situation here as safe for the winter months. I do think that morale might make it safe.”
Although General Ismay was fully empowered and qualified to discuss and explain the military situation in all its variants to the Soviet leaders, Beaverbrook and Harriman decided not to complicate their task by issues on which there could be no agreement. This aspect was not therefore dealt with in Moscow. Informally the Russians continued to demand the immediate establishment of the Second Front, and seemed quite impervious to any arguments showing its impossibility. Their agony is their excuse. Our Ambassador had to bear the brunt.
It was already late autumn. On October 2 the Central Army Group of von Bock renewed its advance on Moscow, with its two armies moving direct on the capital from the south-west and a Panzer group swinging wide on either flank. Orel on October 8 and a week later Kalinin on the Moscow-Leningrad road were taken. With his flanks thus endangered and under strong pressure from the central German advance, Marshal Timoshenko withdrew his forces to a line forty miles west of Moscow, where he again stood to fight. The Russian position at this moment was grave in the extreme. The Soviet Government, the Diplomatic Corps, and all industry that could be removed were evacuated from the city over five hundred miles farther east to Kuibyshev. On October 19 Stalin proclaimed a state of siege in the capital and issued an Order of the Day: “Moscow will be defended to the last.” His commands were faithfully obeyed. Although Guderian’s armoured group from Orel advanced as far as Tula, although Moscow was now three parts surrounded and there was some air bombardment, the end of October brought a marked stiffening in Russian resistance and a definite check to the German advance.
My wife felt very deeply that our inability to give Russia any military help disturbed and distressed the nation increasingly as the months went by and the German armies surged across the steppes. I told her that a Second Front was out of the question and that all that could be done for a long time would be the sending of supplies of all kinds on a large scale. Mr. Eden and I encouraged her to explore the possibility of obtaining funds by voluntary subscription for medical aid. This had already been begun by the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John, and my wife was invited by the Joint Organisation to head the appeal for “Aid to Russia”. At the end of October, under their auspices, she issued her first appeal. A generous response was at once forthcoming. For the next four years she devoted herself to this task with enthusiasm and responsibility. In all nearly eight million pounds were collected by the contributions of rich and poor alike. Many wealthy people made munificent donations, but the bulk of the money came from the weekly subscriptions of the mass of the nation. Thus through the powerful organisation of the Red Cross and St. John and in spite of heavy losses in Arctic convoys medical and surgical supplies and all kinds of comforts and special appliances found their way in unbroken flow through the icy and deadly seas to the valiant Russian armies and people.
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