1

Mission to Moscow

The welcoming party had reached the Central Airport in Moscow well ahead of the arrival of the guests. It was the late afternoon of October 18, 1943, and with the night temperatures hovering around freezing level, unusually cold even by Moscow standards. Viacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, a stocky man with a square jaw, a Mexican-style moustache, and glasses perched on his slightly pointed nose, was getting cold. So were his numerous deputies, the officers and soldiers of the honor guard, and the musicians of the brass band. Although the airport was less than five miles from the Kremlin, a fifteen-minute drive at most for a government motorcade, Molotov had not wanted to take any risks and came early. The guests he was to receive were US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden.¹

With time on their hands, Molotov and his party found shelter from the chilly weather in the airport building, the first terminal in the Soviet Union to become operational. The airport—popularly known as Khodynka after the Khodynka Field, where in May 1896 more than 1,300 people had been trampled to death by festive crowds celebrating the coronation of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II—was the cradle of Soviet aviation. In 1922, five years after the revolution and only one year after the end of the subsequent civil war, the victorious Bolsheviks had launched their first international flight, to Königsberg and Berlin, from Khodynka Field. Russia and Germany, the two international outcasts at the end of World War I, were looking to the future together, and the sky was anything but the limit to their cooperation. On the contrary, it offered opportunities to enhance their relations. Seventeen years later, in August 1939, Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow by the same route to sign the pact with Molotov that provided for a German-Soviet condominium in Europe, and launched World War II.²

Now, at the very airport where Ribbentrop had landed only four years earlier, Molotov awaited the arrival of new allies. The Soviet Union needed Cordell Hull and Anthony Eden to help defeat its erstwhile ally, Germany. Contrary to all assurances, Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and by December of that year his troops had advanced all the way to Moscow, a few dozen miles from the capital’s airport. But now the situation was not so dire. The Red Army had driven the Germans back from Moscow in December 1941, and in February 1943, with the help of American supplies pouring into the USSR under Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, defeated them at Stalingrad. The tide of war had turned in favor of the Soviets.

Yet the prospect of victory was still distant. In October 1943, the Red Army was still fighting the Germans in the middle of Ukraine and getting ready to attack Hitler’s Eastern Wall—the defensive line along the Dnieper. That river, as wide as 700 meters or 2,300 feet in places, was a formidable obstacle. Nikolai Gogol’s claim in his novel of Cossack life, Taras Bulba, “rare is the bird that flies to the middle of the Dnieper,” was no idle observation. The Battle of the Dnieper, which had begun in August 1943 and would continue into early winter, would cost the Red Army up to 350,000 officers and soldiers dead, with total casualties of almost 1.5 million. With victories like that, the Red Army could soon run out of men. The Soviet leaders needed American help.

Molotov had flown to London and Washington in May 1942, pushing for a joint British-American second front in Western Europe. Roosevelt promised to help, but the British were dragging their feet. The invasion began in July 1943, not in Western but in Southern Europe, with the Allies landing on the shores of Sicily—a British-endorsed plan meant to protect their Mediterranean route to India. By early September they were fighting on the Italian mainland. Molotov’s boss, Joseph Stalin, was by no means happy. The Germans could defend the Apennine Peninsula without withdrawing any divisions from the Eastern Front. As far as the Soviets were concerned, this was no second front. Only a landing in France would force Hitler to withdraw divisions from the East, and they wanted it as soon as possible. They also needed a continuing supply of Lend-Lease armaments, including the newest aircraft that only America knew how to produce and could supply. They hoped that Cordell Hull would help to deliver both.³

What Molotov and his party soon saw in the sky was a perfect embodiment of American power and technological superiority. Sometime after 4:00 p.m. three huge silver Douglas C-54 Skymasters, glistening in the last rays of the autumn sun, appeared above Khodynka Field and began to maneuver for landing.

The Soviets wanted the Skymaster as part of Lend-Lease, but the Americans were hesitant to deliver one of their newest planes—it was only in its second year of operation. Washington needed C-54s for the Pacific war and the forthcoming invasion of Europe. The four-engine Skymasters were 93 feet in length, with a wingspan of 117 feet. They could cover a distance of up to 4,000 miles at an altitude of 22,000 feet, with a cruising speed of 190 miles per hour. With a crew of four, the plane could take up to fifty soldiers on board. Originally designed as a passenger plane and later converted to military purposes, the plane could be reconverted and indeed served as flying headquarters for American leaders and military commanders. In January 1943 President Roosevelt used the presidential C-54, popularly known as the “Sacred Cow” because it was so heavily guarded, to fly to Casablanca for a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain. To Stalin’s deep satisfaction, the two Western allies decided to wage war until the complete defeat or “unconditional surrender” of Germany.⁴

Secretary Hull and his party needed all the comfort that the VIP version of the Skymaster could offer on their long trip to Moscow. Having taken off from Washington on October 7, they had first to fly to Puerto Rico and then embark on a sea voyage to Casablanca. There they boarded planes that had crossed the Atlantic without their human cargo and flew to Algiers, then to Cairo, then Teheran, and finally to Moscow. Hull, who had turned seventy-two shortly before the trip, was in visibly poor health and anything but a happy traveler. The doctors, fearing that at an altitude above 8,000 feet he would suffer a heart attack, sent a Navy doctor to administer oxygen to Hull as required. The secretary of state was determined to reach Moscow.

The second most important person on Hull’s team was the newly minted US ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman. The tall, lanky New Yorker was about to mark his fifty-second birthday but looked much younger. His open face, with its large, manly features and broad smile, made him popular with women and helped secure his reputation as a successful dealmaker. Like many members of Roosevelt’s administration during the war, Harriman had been a businessman. With the help of his friend and the president’s right-hand man, Harry Hopkins, Harriman joined the Roosevelt administration in the spring of 1941. Roosevelt needed someone with business experience to administer his Lend-Lease program with Britain. Harriman traveled to London to become the president’s special representative in Europe, with responsibility for running a billion-dollar program to provide American supplies to Britain and keep it afloat in the war with Germany. In September 1941 he flew from London to Moscow to negotiate with Stalin an extension of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, and in October 1943 Roosevelt appointed Harriman US ambassador in Moscow.

Roosevelt wanted Harriman to go to Moscow to reassure Stalin about American goodwill, establish closer military cooperation in the run-up to the second front, and, last but not least, negotiate with him on the future of Eastern Europe, especially Soviet plans for territorial acquisitions at the expense of the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania on the basis of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Roosevelt wanted the Soviets to restrain their ambitions in exchange for future cooperation with the United States and Britain. He was prepared to offer Stalin the right to negotiate as an equal with the Western powers, give assurances of Soviet access to Baltic ports through international agreements, and provide financial and technical assistance in rebuilding the war-torn Soviet Union.⁵

Before leaving Washington, first for London and then for Moscow, Harriman received Roosevelt’s assurances that he would be privy to all aspects of American-Soviet relations, including military cooperation. Not only was Harriman’s wish granted but also he got to choose the military mission’s head. General George Marshall, the US Army chief of staff, agreed to send to Moscow one of the two people suggested by Harriman, the forty-seven-year-old secretary of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Major General John Russell Deane, who was highly capable and respected in Washington. General Deane, known to his friends as Russ, was now on the same flight to Moscow as Harriman and Hull. “I was eager, hopeful, confident, and happy,” wrote Deane later about the feelings he had on the flight. Like Harriman, Deane believed that he could get along with the Soviets. After all, getting along with the Americans was in their interest as well. He was happy to leave behind his secretarial duties in Washington and take charge of his own command. He also welcomed the opportunity to work with Harriman, whom he respected and admired.⁶

If Harriman saw it as his main task in Moscow to negotiate a postwar settlement in Europe, Deane’s prime objective was the coordination of the Soviet-American effort to defeat Germany. The second front—the invasion of France—was still months away, but here was an opportunity to begin immediate cooperation with the Soviets. Before their departure for Moscow, both Harriman and Deane were approached by General Henry “Hap” Arnold, the commander of the US Air Force, then engaged with the British Royal Air Force in joint bombing raids on Germany and its European allies. American pilots would bomb Germany from British bases and then return to Britain. Arnold wanted Harriman and Deane to convince the Soviets to allow the US Air Force to establish bases on Soviet-held territory. Bombers could then fly much farther behind the German lines, taking off from Britain and landing in the Soviet Union, then flying back a few days later with a new supply of bombs, not only to destroy German industrial targets in Eastern Europe but also to soften up their defenses on the Eastern Front.

It sounded like a win-win proposal. “Harriman and I,” recalled Deane, “were delighted with Arnold’s attitude and went to Russia feeling certain that sheer logic would enable us to carry out his wishes.” They believed that bases on the Soviet side of the Eastern Front would prepare the ground for similar bases in the Far East, where the American commanders were counting not only on Soviet participation but also on the acquisition of air bases to launch bombing raids on the Japanese mainland. Deane, who was not an airman himself but, as secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had had many dealings with Arnold and the US Air Force in Europe, was eager to make the air base proposal his top priority in Moscow. On the way from the United States to the Middle East and then to the Soviet Union, he made a stopover in London to visit the headquarters of the US Eighth Air Force, which was raiding German targets in Europe. He met with commanding officers there and collected materials on the results of the strategic bombing of Europe, as well as a list of targets in Eastern Europe that the American pilots could not reach unless they were granted landing rights in the Soviet Union. With his task cut out for him, Deane looked forward to the start of his Moscow mission.⁷

The Skymaster flight from Teheran to Moscow was nothing if not a demonstration of the desire of American and Soviet airmen to work together. In Teheran the Soviets added their own radio operator and navigator to the American crew to ensure that the plane would not get lost in Soviet airspace or be mistaken for an enemy aircraft. But if the desire to work together was there, the opportunity to do so was limited indeed. Ambassador’s Harriman’s daughter, Kathleen, who accompanied him on the flight, wrote to her sister, Mary: “Shortly after we got going, I got a formal note from Hull’s pilot … that the pleasure of my company was requested up front.” When Kathleen walked to the cockpit of the Skymaster, she noticed the American pilots arguing with their Soviet counterparts. The Soviets insisted on flying at a high altitude, while the Americans refused, as the doctors had prohibited Hull from flying above 8,000 feet. The problem, as Kathleen wrote later to Mary, was that “no one spoke any known language in common.” Neither did Kathleen, but the American pilots still put her between themselves and their Soviet counterparts. The presence of a young woman calmed both sides.

Kathleen Harriman, or Kathy, as she was known to her friends and family, had joined her father in London in May 1941, working first for the International News Service and then for Newsweek. At twenty-six, an equestrian enthusiast, Kathy was tall and sporty. Her broad smile and outgoing personality made her popular with men. Unlike the ailing Secretary Hull, she was looking forward to her Moscow adventure. In her time in Moscow she would learn Russian and become a hostess at the American embassy, smoothing over quite a few conflicts between Soviet and American diplomats and military officers, who tended to behave with greater reserve in female company. She had already discovered that talent on the flight to Moscow. “By the time we neared Stalingrad all tension and difficulty ceased & in sign language the Battle of Stalingrad was fought out for us,” wrote Kathy to her sister. “By the time we reached Moscow we were all fast friends.”⁸

To the disbelief of the American pilots, the Soviet navigator was bringing the Skymaster to its destination by following rivers, railroads, and highways. They flew over the Kremlin before making their landing at the Moscow Central Airport. “From the window of my plane,” wrote John Deane later, “I could see the domes of the Kremlin blackened with war paint, the sparkling waters of the Moscow River, Red Square, St. Basil’s Church, and the glistening bayonets of a guard of honor waiting in the field below to salute for the Soviet Union our great Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.” After circling the airport and locating the landing strip, the Skymaster made its final approach. The long trip from Washington to Moscow was finally over.⁹

Viacheslav Molotov, his deputies and entourage, whom Deane found “blue with cold that had penetrated to the marrow,” greeted the American delegation, clearly happy that their freezing wait had come to an end.

Molotov and Hull inspected the guard of honor. The band played the Soviet anthem, the Internationale, the hymn of the European socialist movement. Its lyrics promised nothing good to the capitalist world: “We will destroy this world of violence / Down to the foundations, and then / We will build our new world,” went the Russian translation of the song. The band went on to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Its words, “In God is our trust,” occasioned no diplomatic embarrassment, as neither anthem was sung. Deane found the performance of the American anthem “excellent though slightly unfamiliar.”¹⁰

Also waiting on the tarmac to greet the Americans was the British delegation to the Moscow talks, led by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. It was a solemn occasion. After Molotov went to the microphone to welcome the Allies, Hull and Eden responded with brief greetings of their own. Hull said that it gave him “special satisfaction to visit Moscow, the capital of the country united with my own in common cause.” Later that day Hull, Eden, and Molotov, accompanied by their respective delegations, met in Molotov’s Kremlin office to define that cause and how best to attain it. They agreed to issue a short communiqué listing the names of the US and British officials who had arrived in Moscow and the Soviet officials who met them at the airport, though no purpose of the visit was announced to the media.¹¹

There was good reason not only for secrecy, given wartime conditions, but also for restraint in commenting publicly on possible outcomes of the visit. The leading Allied diplomats came to Moscow to take part in the first ministerial conference on the postwar world order. The participants in the Moscow Conference, as the meeting later came to be known, had high ambitions, but there was no telling whether the visions of the future presented by the three allies would coincide. Over the course of twelve days, from October 19 to October 30, the three foreign ministers would discuss the creation of the United Nations Organization and the launch of a European Advisory Commission to deal with liberated countries and territories in Europe. They would debate the eradication of fascism in Italy, the restoration of Austrian independence, and the prosecution of those guilty of war crimes. It was the start of a long process of looking for common ground in the organization of the postwar world. Difficulties lay ahead, but the hopes were flying high.¹²

Soviet-American cooperation was entering a new era, and Harriman and Deane believed that it would be a bright one. Meeting with Molotov on October 21, Harriman told the Soviet foreign commissar that he had come “as a friend.” He expressed his hope that one day the two of them would take a flight in Harriman’s high-speed plane. Having become exceptionally close to Churchill during his days in London, Harriman was now trying to make friends in Moscow and in particular to establish personal relations with Molotov. Inviting friends in government to enjoy his family’s fortune—Harriman’s father had been a railroad tycoon and he was a millionaire many times over—by attending dinners, riding horses, and driving in fast cars and planes had worked in both business and politics in the West. Harriman was trying the same approach in Moscow, offering friendship and expecting friendship in return.¹³

Before long both Averell and Kathy Harriman were developing an emotional attachment to the country and its people. “Now I’m just beginning to realize that the good old Russian communiqués that deal in impersonal heroics and the huge number of dead, missing and wounded mean something very personal here in the way of friends and family,” wrote Kathy to Mary on November 5. “When you get down to it, despite the teachings that the State comes first, the Russian still is a human being and funny enough, the government treats him as such—and so the reason for periodic fireworks when a new victory is announced and the dressing up of the bombed buildings.”¹⁴

The American team had arrived in Moscow full of enthusiasm and determined to advance Soviet-American relations to a new stage, including not only summit meetings between the leaders of the Grand Alliance but also direct military cooperation between American and Soviet forces. General Deane, whose job was to establish such cooperation, was as eager to succeed as anyone else. He believed that he could achieve his goal by breaking through the façade of the communist state to the shared humanity behind it.