2

Stalin’s Verdict

On first meeting Joseph Stalin at the closing banquet of the Moscow Conference on the evening of October 30, 1943, General Deane was surprised to see how short he was. He was also struck by the deep iron-gray color of the dictator’s hair, but mostly by the “kindly expression on his deeply wrinkled, sallow face.” Stalin was wearing a military uniform with the shoulder boards of a marshal of the Soviet Union, the military rank bestowed on him in March 1943 after the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad. He walked around the room greeting Soviet guests and members of the American and British delegations, of whom there were close to sixty, “always bent over, seldom looking one in the eye, and saying nothing whatever.”¹

That evening Deane not only shook hands with the marshal but also had a drink with him. At the banquet table, which the general found “beautiful beyond description,” a toasting contest began with Molotov, who raised his glass to British-American-Soviet friendship. Deane knew that this was just the beginning and braced himself for a night of heavy drinking. The US embassy personnel had told him and Harriman upon their arrival in Moscow that the only way to get the Soviets’ respect was to outdrink them. “It is hard to cheat on toast drinking,” Kathy Harriman, who attended quite a few banquets in Moscow, wrote Mary, “as you have to turn glass upside down at the end of it and the drops of liquor that fall out are, according to the Russian custom, drops of misfortune you wish on the person you are drinking with.”

Her father made his staffers happy and proud when a few days later, at a lavish reception thrown by Molotov to mark October Revolution Day, he outdrank not only his Soviet hosts but also his British counterpart, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. According to Kathy, Kerr “rose to his feet for a toast with some difficulty, put his hand out to steady himself on the table, missed it and fell flat on his face at Molotov’s feet, bringing a goodly number of plates and glasses clattering down on top of him.” Both Harrimans would have a terrible hangover the next day—the bottoms-up toasts were given with glasses full of vodka, not wine. But the previous evening they had made their countrymen proud. “All the Americans were very pleased,” wrote Kathy to her sister.²

Deane, having acquainted himself with bottoms-up toasts at the first conference banquet he attended, knew that sooner or later it would be his turn to propose a toast. As he remembered later, he wracked his “brain for something cute to say.” Rising to his feet, he announced that he was honored to be the head of the US military mission in Moscow, which he saw as a vanguard of millions of Americans who would join their Soviet allies in the war. The Soviets, who wanted only one thing from the conference—a pledge to open the second front—were delighted to hear those words from an American general. Deane then delivered a punch line, toasting to the day when the British and American advance guards would meet their Red Army counterparts on the streets of Berlin. Ironically, the meeting in Berlin prophesied by Deane would lead to the partitioning of the German capital a few years later, but at the time no one could see anything troublesome about all three powers joining forces there.

The toast was a great success. Everyone drank bottoms-up but then, to Deane’s surprise, remained standing. He realized why only when he was nudged by a neighbor and turned his head. Next to Deane stood Stalin himself, a glass in his hand. After listening to the toast, the Soviet dictator had left his seat and walked around the table, behind the guests, his diminutive figure obscured from Deane’s view. They drank bottoms-up together. Deane was drinking vodka and Stalin probably his usual red wine, which he often diluted with water. Getting his guests drunk and listening to what they had to say in a state of extreme intoxication was an old trick of Stalin’s, practiced more on members of his court than on foreign visitors.³

For Deane, the conference was ending on a high note. His toast at the banquet “stole the show,” according to Hull. He was also optimistic about making progress on the top priority of his Moscow agenda—getting permission to open American air bases on Soviet-held territory.

Serving in Washington at the Chiefs of Staff headquarters, Deane was well aware that American and British air operations in Europe were going very badly. As of the fall of 1943, the objective of grounding the Luftwaffe in preparation for the invasion of France in 1944 was as far from being achieved as ever. The Luftwaffe was alive and kicking, exacting an ever higher price on the British and American planes bombing German targets. The same applied to the German air-defense systems, which could not be suppressed.

In 1943 the Royal Air Force lost 2,700 heavy bombers, either shot down or damaged. Bombing raids on Berlin alone, which began in November 1943 and continued until March 1944, caused the loss of 1,128 British aircraft. American losses were also staggering. During the second week of October 1943, the month Deane arrived in Moscow, the Eighth Air Force, operating from Britain, lost 148 bombers. The loss rate of the bombing raid on October 14 stood at 20.7 percent, and the damage rate reached 47.4 percent. Raids deep into German territory unescorted by fighters were becoming prohibitively costly, and fighters such as the Mustang P-51 were unable to reach Eastern Europe because their gasoline tanks could not carry sufficient fuel.

Hap Arnold believed that he had a solution to the Luftwaffe problem, which was shuttle bombing. Bombers would take off from air bases in Britain and Italy, fly over German-held territory and, instead of turning back before they could reach German airplane factories and airfields in eastern Germany and Eastern Europe, would land on bases behind the Soviet lines. In addition to reaching otherwise unattainable targets, the bombers would help to disperse the Luftwaffe airplanes, which would now have to fight on two fronts. The Soviets, who had no long-range aviation to speak of and did not harass the Germans beyond the area of their ground operations, would benefit as well, since American bombers could hit targets suggested by the Soviet command. This is why Arnold had insisted on making shuttle-bombing operations one of Deane’s key priorities in Moscow.⁴

Deane was happy to oblige, but as the Moscow conference began he soon realized that the only question the Soviets wanted to discuss was that of the second front. They sought confirmation of earlier Allied pledges, first made by Roosevelt to Molotov in June 1942, to land in Europe as soon as possibe. Deane and Lieutenant General Sir Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s chief military adviser, did their best to convince the Soviets that the second front would indeed be opened in 1944. Deane made use of the positive response to his presentation to broach the subject he cared most about—establishing US air bases on Soviet-held territory. He was prepared to open his own “second front” right away.⁵

As Deane recalled later, the request, which he made on the very first day of the conference, “hit the Soviet representatives as a bolt from the blue.” In responding, Molotov played for time. He agreed to consider the proposal, which included two additional requests from General Arnold: to establish better exchange of weather information between the US and Soviet air forces and to improve air communication between the two countries. Molotov promised to get back to Deane and his colleagues in due course. Deane recalled the exchange as his first lesson in dealing with Soviet officials: “no subordinate official in Russia may make a decision on matters in which foreigners are involved without consulting higher authority, and usually this higher authority is Stalin himself.”⁶

It took the Soviet foreign commissar two days before he could tell the conference participants that he was in favor of the proposal. In reality, he feared the building of Western bases on Soviet territory. Apprehension of foreign presence could be traced back in Russian culture to the early seventeenth century, when Polish and Ukrainian Cossack detachments took Moscow and pillaged a good part of Muscovy, but there were more recent precedents as well. The Soviet leaders’ thinking was rooted in the experience of the revolution and civil war, when foreign troops, including British, French, and American expeditionary forces, had landed in Murmansk on the Barents Sea, Odesa on the Black Sea, Baku in the center of the Caspian oil fields, and Vladivostok in the Far East in 1918 to support anti-Bolshevik forces. They would not withdraw until 1920. To add insult to injury, the American intervention had happened on the watch of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1913–1920), while the British effort had been spearheaded by none other than Winston Churchill, minister for munitions (1917–1919) and secretary of state for war (1919–1921).

“I knew them all, capitalists, but Churchill was the strongest, the smartest among them. Of course he was 100 percent imperialist,” remembered Molotov, who had organized Bolsheviks in Ukraine in 1918–1920 against their numerous enemies there, including the French expeditionary corps in Odesa. Continuing his recollections of Churchill’s imperial behavior, Molotov told a sympathetic interviewer in the 1970s: “He said: ‘Let us establish our airfield at Murmansk, for you are in a difficult situation.’ ‘Yes,’ we said, ‘it’s a hard time for us, so send these forces to the front. We’ll guard Murmansk ourselves.’ He backed down after that.” Molotov recalled the American offer to open air bases in the Far East as nothing short of a land grab by Roosevelt: “He wanted to occupy certain parts of the Soviet Union instead of fighting. Afterwards it would not have been easy to get them out of there.”⁷

Now, in October 1943, Stalin and Molotov had to decide what to do with the new American request for air bases. The Red Army was beginning to cross the Dnieper, making the Soviet position more secure than ever before. But the Soviet leaders wanted several things from the Western allies, and they presented their wish list as the conference moved along: the opening of the second front; Turkey entering the war against Germany to draw German divisions away from the Soviet front; and Sweden allowing Soviet air bases on its territory. They decided to keep the issue of Allied air bases in play, using them as a bargaining chip to get what they really wanted from the Americans.

On October 21, 1943, two days after Dean’s proposal, Molotov told the American delegation that the Soviet government “approved in principle” the request to establish US air bases in the Soviet Union, along with the proposals to improve the exchange of weather information and air traffic. Secretary Hull thanked Molotov and, considering the matter settled, left Deane to discuss the details with his counterparts in the Red Army general staff. “I, of course, was elated—less than a week in the Soviet Union and three major objectives achieved,” recalled Deane. “Wouldn’t the Chiefs of Staff be proud of me!”⁸

On October 26, in response to Deane’s request, Washington cabled him specifics with regard to the bases. “Our requirements are estimated at approximately ten bases, so located as to provide best shuttle for heavy bombers striking appropriate targets from Uncle King [UK] and Italy, as well as being properly located to strike appropriate targets before returning to Uncle King and Italy.” The chiefs of staff wanted the Soviets to supply gas, ammunition, bombs, and housing in order to keep the number of US (code-named “Uncle Sugar”) personnel at the bases to a minimum. It was a long and detailed telegram. The chiefs of staff meant business and assumed that they were already in the game.⁹

Encouraged by the response from Molotov, Deane meant business too. “I scarcely left the telephone for days, and each time I did I inquired at once upon my return if any [Soviet] General Staff officers had called me to arrange the details of shuttle bombing,” he recalled. No one called Deane or looked for him. It was then that Deane realized, as he later wrote, that “approval in principle” by the Soviets meant “exactly nothing.” He decided to take matters into his own hands and insisted on recording his request, and Molotov’s approval of it “in principle,” in the final protocol of the conference. Molotov refused, stating that the proposal had not been discussed at the conference and thus did not belong in the protocol. Deane insisted on including discussion of the bases in the protocol. That did not help. The Soviets refused to cooperate.¹⁰

The breakthrough finally came on November 29, 1943 in Teheran, when Roosevelt raised the question of air bases in the meeting with Stalin and the dictator promised to look into the matter. On December 26, Molotov gave Harriman a memorandum stating, that the Soviet government did not object to the American proposal to establish US air bases, and, further, that the command of the Soviet Air Force would be instructed to start preliminary consultations with the American representatives. Harriman and Deane were cautiously optimistic. “While these agreements only scratch the surface of the projects we have before the Soviet government and while they are still in the conversation state, I feel that they are an indication of the change in the attitude and will open the door to further acts of collaboration,” cabled Deane to the Chiefs of Staff on December 27.¹¹

Although the door was opening, the hinges were rusty. In Washington, General Arnold was losing hope that he would ever see his bombers land on Soviet soil. On January 29, a month after Harriman’s meeting with Molotov, he forwarded a telegram to John Deane from General Carl Andrew Spaatz, the commander of the Eighth Air Force and the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF), who was stationed in England. The telegram, addressed to Arnold, raised the question of shuttle-bombing operations, suggesting that they begin with 120 bombers. More importantly, Spaatz wrote that shuttle bombing could start without establishing US air bases (a clear departure from the earlier American position), as US personnel could be dispatched to existing Soviet bases with the task of assisting Soviet technicians. It appeared that Arnold, who had forwarded the telegram to Deane, still wanted landing rights in the USSR but was no longer insisting on bases.¹²

The telegram spurred Harriman into action. On January 30 he requested a meeting with Stalin to consider Roosevelt’s request for air bases. It was then that something clicked in the Kremlin’s secretive machine, and Harriman was invited to Stalin’s office to discuss the air bases that Arnold no longer hoped to obtain. The meeting took place at 6:00 p.m. on February 2 in the presence of Molotov. According to the US memorandum of conversation, Harriman started with a reference to Roosevelt’s request and went on to make the case for shuttle bombing, which would allow the Allies to “penetrate more deeply into Germany.” After listening to Harriman, Stalin finally gave his personal approval to the project. He told the ambassador that the Soviet government “favored” the proposal, a clear improvement on Molotov’s “approved in principle” and “do not object” formulas. Stalin suggested that operations begin with 150 to 200 planes. He offered two airfields where reconnaissance planes could land and suggested that the Soviets would provide three air bases for bombers in the northern sector of the Eastern Front, and three more in the southern.¹³

Harriman and Deane could hardly believe what had happened. With Spaatz and Arnold already giving up hope of obtaining Soviet bases, Stalin unexpectedly made a U-turn and gave his full support to the operation. “I shall never forget our elation the night that Harriman, after his meeting with Stalin, dropped by to give me the good news,” remembered Deane later. He cabled the chiefs of staff. “Marshal Stalin tonight informed the ambassador that he agreed to the shuttle bombing project,” began his telegram, which went on to discuss details of the next step of the operation, including the acquisition of Soviet entry visas for officers to be sent immediately from London to Moscow. The news created a sensation in Washington. General Arnold forwarded congratulations to Deane from George C. Marshall—the Chief of Staff of the US Army—himself. “Very apparent it is that congratulations are in order for the equanimitous and capable manner in which you have handled negotiations,” read the cable. Harriman also received congratulations from the White House.¹⁴

No one could say what or who had made Stalin finally concede on the issue of the bases and overcome fears of outside intervention. Was he finally convinced that the Americans were serious about opening the second front, or did he hope to ensure it by offering them what they wanted? For the Americans in Moscow, it no longer mattered. “Who said the Russians were not co-operative? Who said we couldn’t work together?” wrote Deane, recalling the jubilant atmosphere of those days in the US Ambassador’s residence in Moscow called Spaso House. “All that was needed was the frank approach, understanding, and persistence, so well exemplified in Averell and me.” Deane’s optimism seemed finally vindicated. The Americans and Soviets would work together, not just coordinating their battles on different fronts but also jointly planning and executing operations to “cause the German to feel the allied blows more,” as Stalin told Harriman at their meeting. The future looked bright again.¹⁵