Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
428 michael jabara carley
the British cabinet shifted to support a Soviet agreement, leaving Chamberlain iso-
lated. In Paris the French government pushed the British forward, but only half-
heartedly. At the end of July the would-be allies agreed to meet in Moscow to
conclude a military alliance. The Anglo-French military mission took its time getting
to Moscow. When it finally arrived, the British chief representative could not produce
written powers authorizing him to negotiate with the Soviet government, while the
French representative was scarcely better empowered. They can’t be serious, con-
cluded their Soviet interlocutors.
Hitler was serious. He wanted to break up the grand alliance before it formed.
His diplomats began to court their Soviet counterparts in April. At first Molotov
declined interest, and continued negotiations with the British and French. At the end
of July, however, Molotov blinked; or, more likely, Stalin did. Enticing German offers
had arrived in Moscow, which offered to improve relations at Polish expense. While
the Germans talked to the Soviets, the British talked to the Germans. Information
leaked out in the London press in July about discussions between German and British
officials for a general settlement of differences. In the House of Commons Chamberlain
had to admit it was true. In Moscow it looked like the British were fishing for an
agreement with Germany, even as they sent a military mission to Moscow.
Stalin had few scruples. He liked to refer to Russian epigrams about wolves in the
forest: if you live among wolves, you must behave like a wolf. If the British could
negotiate with the Germans, so could the Soviet Union. In early August Soviet–
German discussions got down to details. Poland was the principal medium of
exchange, but the Germans were also willing to divide up the Baltic states on condi-
tion that the Soviet government did not interfere in a German war against Poland.
In Moscow there was no love lost for the Polish government, which was anti-Russian
and anti-communist. If Poland had to be the price of agreement with Germany, it
was Poland’s fault. Molotov and his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
signed a non-aggression pact in the early hours of August 23. This agreement
abruptly ended Churchill’s hopes for a grand alliance.
The “Phoney War”
The French and British governments still sought a way out. Georges Bonnet, the
French foreign minister and notorious appeaser, advocated a last minute settlement
with Germany at Polish expense. From Bonnet’s point of view France was in no
position to wage war against Germany and would be defeated if it did. Earlier, he
had supported an alliance with the Soviet Union because he reckoned that if war
broke out, it would begin in the east. France and Britain could lie back until they
were stronger. This was not what Stalin had in mind.
In the early morning of September 1, 1939 the German army invaded Poland. On
September 2, Chamberlain spoke in the House of Commons about further negotia-
tions in Berlin, which led the House and his cabinet to threaten revolt. The House
would not tolerate further delay in confronting Nazi Germany. Britain thus declared
war the next morning, September 3, and France followed later in the day.
None of this mattered to Poland, which was crushed in a fortnight by the German
army. The Red Army then moved in from the east. Britain and France did little to
help the Poles, settling back into what became known as the drôle de guerre, or
grand strategy and summit diplomacy 429
“phoney war.” The British and French governments intended to pursue a long war
strategy, a guerre de longue durée: staying on the defensive, building up military
strength, blockading Germany, and then – when Germany weakened – going on the
offensive. The plan was good on paper. The British and French governments had
started to rearm in the mid-1930s, but too slowly. Until 1939 Chamberlain had
opposed all-out rearmament. After war began, the British centralized production, but
not France. French industrialists wanted business as usual and no government inter-
ference. Hence, while British production increased, French production stalled or lost
ground. Moreover, the blockade was less effective because the Soviet Union was
neutral, as Molotov never tired of saying, and this left the back door open in eastern
Europe. It looked like the long war strategy would not work. Germany was getting
stronger, but not Britain and France. Some French senior officers believed that a long
war would facilitate the spread of communism.
8
While reflections about war strategy went on in Paris and London, Stalin, who
thought he had played his hand well, made a grave mistake. He ordered an attack
on Finland at the end of November in what became known as the Winter War. Stalin
decided to take by force the security guarantees he could not obtain in negotiations
with the Finns. The Red Army lost heavily before Finnish defenses. What was worse,
the war unleashed an anti-communist tumult in France and Britain. Anti-communists
had never been enthusiastic about fighting Nazi Germany or allying with the Soviet
Union. Germany was the colossus, feared and admired at the same time. The Soviet
Union looked like a pushover. For most of the right and center-right, especially in
France, Germany was the wrong enemy, the Soviet Union, the real one. The French
and British governments developed plans to bomb the Caucasian oil fields. These
plans were “the product of a madhouse,” A. J. P. Taylor commented: “the only
charitable conclusion is to assume that the British and French governments had taken
leave of their senses.”
9
The Fall of France
The French and British governments were saved from folly by the end of the Winter
War in March 1940 and Hitler’s offensive in the west in April. The drôle de guerre
was over. The Germans overran Norway, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium,
and, more spectacularly, France. The French army, which Churchill had considered
the backbone of western defense, collapsed. Many French soldiers fought to the last,
but the high command did not know what to do. The officer corps was largely anti-
semitic, anti-republican, and anti-communist. If Litvinov was Funkelstein to the
Nazis, the “Jew Blum” was Karfunkelstein to French antisemites. Only the Nazis
seem largely to have escaped the loathing of the French high command. The generals
did not anticipate a German offensive through the Ardennes forest, the center of the
French line, and when they finally realized what was happening, it was “Goodnight
France.” The high command worried more about a communist rising in Paris than
about how to make a fighting retreat.
10
There has been much scholarly debate about the fall of France. Did it collapse
because French society was rotten, “decadent,” and bitterly divided between admirers
of fascism and admirers of Soviet communism? Was the debacle the result of craven,
incompetent French politicians and generals? Or did a strong, confident France
430 michael jabara carley
embark upon a struggle against Nazi Germany, and tragically, accidentally falter
despite the best that its leaders and the French army could give?
Few historians would dispute that France was a “decadent,” troubled society until
Munich. Then, say revisionist historians, the French government got hold of itself,
recognized that war was inevitable, and began to prepare for it. Finances stabilized,
rearmament surged, morale improved. Other historians counter that the turn-around
was superficial, and that what appeared to be better morale was only resignation to
the certainty of another war. In fact, one recent account holds that French recovery
was anemic: war production did not meet targets and the treasury was running out
of gold. If so, the long war strategy was indeed failing. France was doomed, and even
a grand alliance might not have saved it.
11
Keep Buggering On
Whether it was doom, decadence, or damnable luck, France capitulated in June 1940
and a collaborationist government was set up at Vichy. Only a little known Brigadier
General, Charles de Gaulle, and a handful of followers continued the fight. They
were no immediate help to Britain, which was left alone to face the Nazi juggernaut.
The English Channel was all that saved Britain. Its main army, a meager 200,000
men, had been forced to evacuate from Dunkirk in May. The beaten French and the
victorious Germans thought it was only a matter of time before the British asked for
terms. Even some British cabinet ministers contemplated negotiations to end the war.
Only one man was able to staunch British wounds, allay doubts, and rally morale.
This was Churchill, who became prime minister in May 1940. He maneuvered
around the doubters in his cabinet and he adopted a policy which he called “KBO”:
keep buggering on. He did not know how he would get Britain out of the fix it was
in. His hope was that eventually the United States and the Soviet Union would enter
the war. He therefore assiduously courted Franklin Roosevelt and kept talking to Stalin
and Molotov. In the meantime Britain had to hold out. Hitler ordered preparations
for Operation Sea Lion, an invasion of Britain. He unleashed his air force in August,
in what became known as the Battle of Britain, to establish air superiority in order to
protect an invasion armada. The Battle of Britain was a near-run thing, but RAF pilots
inflicted such losses upon the enemy that Hitler called off Sea Lion.
Hitler took this setback prosaically, for he had begun to think about “settling
accounts” with the Soviet Union. Stalin, who was surprised by the French debacle
and worried about Soviet security, annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia and
Bukovina in Romania. Hitler did not like to see the Soviet Union moving so close
to Romanian oil fields. He started shifting divisions from France to the Soviet frontier.
Soviet diplomatic and intelligence sources reported the build-up. During the summer
of 1940 Hitler instructed his high command to start planning for an invasion of the
Soviet Union: the Red Army was getting stronger and he feared that Stalin could
come into the war on the British side. He wanted to crush the Red Army now, then
turn back on Britain to compel its surrender. The risk of a long two-front war seemed
minimal. The Wehrmacht was invincible. The Red Army had looked inept in defeating
the insignificant Finns and would be destroyed before winter.
Hitler delayed before making a final decision. He invited Molotov to Berlin in
November 1940. Hitler wanted to bring the Balkans under German control, and he
grand strategy and summit diplomacy 431
offered to let the Soviet Union challenge Britain in central Asia and India. For Stalin,
this was a fool’s bargain. He had no intention of getting into a war with Britain, and
wanted to secure Soviet interests in the Balkans. Molotov and German foreign min-
ister von Ribbentrop negotiated in an underground shelter while British bombers hit
Berlin. Ribbentrop told Molotov that Britain was beaten. Listening to the bombs
exploding, Molotov said he did not think so. The meetings produced no deals. In
December 1940 Hitler gave orders for an invasion of the Soviet Union in the spring
of 1941: “Operation Barbarossa.”
12
In April 1941 Churchill warned Stalin that Hitler intended to invade the Soviet
Union. Stalin was aware of the danger, having received countless intelligence reports
on the German military build-up, but he did not think that Germany would attack
before subduing Britain. The Red Army was in the middle of refitting and in no
position to challenge the Wehrmacht. Interviewed long after events, Molotov remem-
bered that the Soviet Union was not ready for war in 1941, and that even a few more
months of peace mattered: What else could we do but stall?
13
Ironically, this was the
same argument used by the French and British governments to explain their appease-
ment of Hitler. “Revisionist” historians justify Anglo-French appeasement on the
grounds that France and Britain did not have the guns or gold to fight Nazi Germany,
but many of the same historians would not explain with the same sympathy the Soviet
policy of appeasement.
War in the East
Appeasement ended badly for the Soviet Union, just as it had for Britain and France.
Hitler sent his forces forward on June 22, 1941: more than 3 million German soldiers
in 150 divisions on a front reaching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Churchill had
quipped on the eve of the invasion that “if Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least
make a favorable reference to the Devil!” He broke out cigars when news confirmed
the actual German attack. Within 24 hours Churchill was on the BBC offering British
support to the Soviet Union and welcoming it into that alliance which had failed to
materialize in 1939. Churchill reminded his listeners that if Russia were defeated
before winter, Hitler would turn back against Britain before the United States could
bring its weight to bear. “The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger
of the United States.”
14
FDR had heard Churchill’s arguments before. In March 1941 the US Congress
approved Lend-Lease for Britain. Supplies began to flow freely for the British war
effort. When Roosevelt heard of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he was less
effusive, more cautious than Churchill, though he too said the United States would
support Soviet resistance because it diverted Hitler’s attention away from Britain.
Few gave the Red Army a chance against the Wehrmacht. After all, what army had
been able to defeat the Germans? The British knew from cruel experience in France,
Greece, Crete, and north Africa how tough they were. American and British intelli-
gence services did not think the Red Army would hold out for more than a few
weeks. In July the American military attaché in Moscow, a true blue anti-communist,
burned his files, anticipating the imminent arrival of the Germans in the Russian
capital.
15
Nevertheless, an Anglo-Soviet agreement of mutual assistance was signed
on July 12. Soviet resistance of whatever duration had to be encouraged. Stalin,
432 michael jabara carley
heretofore the cruel dictator, now became an ally, “Uncle Joe” (or “UJ” for short).
On July 18, Stalin asked for the first time that a second front be established in north-
ern France. In September, he asked again: we need a second front to draw off 30–40
German divisions; otherwise, we could be defeated or be so weakened as to be unable
to help our allies.
As the summer unfolded and although the Soviet Union suffered frightful losses,
resistance stiffened. “I am dying,” an unknown Red Army soldier scrawled on a for-
tress wall, “but I am not surrendering!” At Smolensk the Red Army delayed the Nazi
advance for more than a month, giving Moscow time to prepare its defenses. At
Leningrad the city was surrounded, but held out. “Our cause is right,” said one
Soviet placard: “The enemy will be crushed. Victory will be ours!”
16
The war became a great national cause. Even teenagers participated, fighting with
Soviet partisans behind Nazi lines or working in munitions factories. “Mother Russia
calls you” was a slogan on recruitment posters. This meant something, and most
Russians responded. German military intelligence had expected to face 200 Red Army
divisions; by August 1941 it had identified 360. In November the Germans thought
Red Army reserves were exhausted.
17
In December the Wehrmacht offensive was
stopped at the outskirts of Moscow, where a monument now marks the point of
furthest advance near Sheremet’evo airport. On December 5 the Red Army launched
a counter-offensive that threw back the Nazi armies in places more than 300
kilometers. During the first six months of war, 2.5 million soldiers were killed in
action and 3.4 million taken prisoner. Uncounted millions of civilians died or disap-
peared. For Hitler, the Slavs were “sub-humans,” untermenschen, to be exterminated
or enslaved. German death squads, SS Einsatzgruppen, shot Bolsheviks, Jews, gypsies,
or anyone who looked at them the wrong way. Occupied territories were to be
stripped of foodstuffs and the local people left to starve. This is “total war,” Hitler
declared. If Hitler wants total war, Stalin replied, he will have it. The Red Army
began to exact a price. For the first time the Wehrmacht suffered a strategic defeat.
The aura of Nazi invincibility was broken; now Hitler and his armies began to get
as good as they gave.
18
“We’re all in it now”
Two days after the beginning of the Moscow counter-offensive, on December 7, the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 11 Germany and Italy declared war
on the United States, a gesture which the American Congress immediately recipro-
cated. “We’re all in it now,” FDR told Churchill over the phone. “So we had won
after all,” Churchill later recalled in his history of World War II: “I went to bed and
slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”
19
KBO gave way to proactive Anglo-American strategic planning. In August 1941,
even before the American entry into the war, Churchill and Roosevelt had met at
Placentia Bay off Newfoundland to discuss war strategy. They agreed that the United
States would give immediate aid to the Soviet Union and that jointly they would
send an Anglo-American mission to Moscow to determine Soviet supply needs. But
the United States did not plan to enter the war, unless attacked. Roosevelt told
Churchill that “he would wage war, but not declare it.” A few months later, in
October 1941, the US Congress approved Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union.
grand strategy and summit diplomacy 433
A Europe first strategy was settled policy by the end of 1941. The Soviet Union
had to be kept fighting, though Stalin was unhappy with the help he was getting
from his American and British allies. While millions of men clashed in the Soviet
Union, a mere handful of British divisions confronted small German and Italian forces
in north Africa. Churchill did not like Stalin reminding him of what the Red Army
needed. From Churchill’s point of view, the Soviet Union had left Britain in the lurch
in 1939; from UJ’s point of view, Churchill sounded like the pot calling the kettle
black. Even after the Soviet victory at Moscow, there were doubters, often unrepen-
tant anti-communists, in London and Washington. In 1942 one of these asked
Roosevelt what was the value of the Soviet contribution to the war. “The Russians,”
FDR replied, “are killing more Germans and destroying more German matériel than
all other 25 United Nations put together.”
20
What were the Allies doing in return?
Stalin often asked, especially during the summer of 1942, when German forces
launched a two-pronged offensive on the Caucasus oil fields and on Stalingrad.
Where is the Second Front?
Worried about Stalin’s nagging questions, Churchill went to Moscow in August 1942
to say that there could be no second front that year. Stalin received the news badly,
rounding on Churchill. The British, he said, were too afraid of fighting the Germans.
“You will have to fight sooner or later,” Stalin remarked. “You cannot win a war
without fighting.” Stalin complained that the British and Americans were not sending
enough supplies. Churchill took umbrage, perhaps because he knew Stalin had a
point. There were 280 Axis divisions in the Soviet Union, composed of Romanian,
Finnish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Italian formations, as well as German. They totaled
3.65 million men. Many of these divisions were advancing toward Stalingrad and
into the Caucasus toward Batum and Baku. Arrayed against them were 5.7 million
Red Army soldiers. Stalin told Churchill that the situation was dangerous. “We are
losing ten thousand men a day.”
21
Discussion turned to appeasement and the failed Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations
in 1939. Churchill reminded Stalin that he had favored an alliance between Britain,
the United States, and the Soviet Union before Munich. Churchill forgot to mention
France, though in 1942 that was easy to do. Stalin indicated that he had always hoped
for cooperation, but that under Chamberlain, an alliance was impossible. Stalin
referred to the abortive military negotiations in Moscow in August 1939. These talks
were a ruse to pressure Hitler into coming to terms with France and Britain.
22
Churchill informed Stalin of plans for “Torch,” the Anglo-American invasion of
north Africa, which was the best the western Allies could do in 1942. Five British
and seven American divisions would confront smaller German, Italian, and Vichy
French forces. For Stalin, this was a sideshow, but he grudgingly accepted Churchill’s
argument that a landing in northern France in 1942 was impractical. The Soviet
Union would have to hold out almost alone against the Axis. It did.
The Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive against German forces at
Stalingrad. On November 23, 1942 the jaws of a great pincer movement closed
around the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. Hitler ordered his men to stand fast
and tried to relieve them, but to no avail. What was left of the Sixth Army surrendered
on February 2, 1943. Twenty-two divisions and 330,000 German soldiers were
434 michael jabara carley
wiped from Hitler’s order of battle, in addition to heavy Romanian and Italian losses.
It was a turning point in the war. Other Soviet offensive operations compelled
German forces in the Caucasus to withdraw. They only just escaped encirclement.
While these events took place in the east, Axis forces in north Africa were defeated.
In June 1943 Sicily was invaded, but German losses were slight: a few thousand
killed, 5,500 captured. The rest of the German force was evacuated. Another side-
show, Stalin would have thought. His irritation showed during 1943 even though
the tide of battle was turning to the Red Army. In June Churchill and Roosevelt
decided that a second front in France would have to be put off for another year.
“Your decision,” Stalin cabled his allies, had been made without Soviet participation
and will cause “exceptional difficulties for the Soviet Union.” This was a heads-up
to Churchill and Roosevelt on the eve of the great tank battle at Kursk. If Stalingrad
turned the tide of battle against the Wehrmacht, the Red Army victory at Kursk sealed
its fate. In the Kursk salient toward the southern end of the long eastern front, the
Soviet high command concentrated 1,336,000 men, nearly 3,500 tanks, 19,000
guns, and 2,900 aircraft. They faced 900,000 German soldiers organized in 50 divi-
sions with 2,700 tanks and 10,000 guns. On July 5 the Germans attacked the north-
ern and southern waists of the Kursk salient. In a massive tank battle, the Germans
were defeated, losing heavily in men and armor. There could be no doubt now about
the ultimate outcome of the war. The Red Army launched a counter-offensive that
reached the eastern banks of the Dnepr in early October. On November 6, 1943
Kiev was liberated.
Teheran
Alliance politics reflected battlefield realities. After Kursk, Roosevelt and Churchill
had to pay more attention to Stalin’s complaints about the absence of a second front,
unless they were prepared to see the Red Army liberate all of Europe. The three
leaders met in Teheran in late November 1943. Churchill tried to persuade Roosevelt
and Stalin to support continued Allied operations in Italy. Churchill thought about
getting into the Balkans before the Red Army and protecting British imperial interests
in the Mediterranean. All to no avail, the balance of power had changed. The Big
Three were now the Big Two-and-a-Half, according to one joker. Britain was the
junior partner. If we help the Red Army, Roosevelt reasoned, we help ourselves. In
1943 massive Lend-Lease supplies arrived in the Soviet Union.
23
In Teheran when Stalin insisted on Overlord, the code name given to the eventual
Normandy invasion, Roosevelt backed him. For Stalin, the operations in Italy were
another sideshow. The shortest way to the heart of Germany was through northern
France, and so he pressed hard for a definite decision to invade France in the spring
of 1944. Churchill still held out for the Mediterranean theater, but in the end he
had to yield. Overlord was on.
Other issues were discussed at Teheran. These included the postwar status of
Poland, unconditional German surrender, postwar European frontiers, and Soviet
entry into the war against Japan. The mood at Teheran was good natured after busi-
ness was settled. Winston drank to the health of the proletarian masses and Stalin to
the Conservative Party.
24
Both leaders were laying it on. Teheran was the high point
of Allied cooperation.
grand strategy and summit diplomacy 435
War, War, Not Jaw, Jaw
The war continued. Allied bombing of Germany intensified. The Allied advance up
the Italian peninsula was slow and bloody, as Stalin had thought it would be. Instead
of Allied forces tying down greater numbers of Germans, it was the other way round.
In contrast, on the eastern front the Red Army advanced hundreds of kilometers
toward Germany. By the end of 1943, the Red Army was a mighty force, directed
by skilled commanders. Their success was based on combined operations of massed
armor, artillery, and air power employed in rolling offensives carried out rapidly over
broad fronts and covered by deception and concealment. The Soviet method was
similar to that of Marshal Ferdinand Foch in the summer of 1918, but whereas Foch
was happy with an advance of 15–20 kilometers a day on a much shorter front, the
Red Army might advance 100 kilometers a day. Speed and space were the differences
making possible vast encirclements and flanking movements in deep operations.
Soviet tanks and Studebaker trucks carried the Red Army forward.
25
And to think
that before the war almost no one in the west thought the Red Army could fight.
At the end of 1943, 3.2 million Axis troops in 177 divisions faced a Red Army of
6.4 million soldiers organized in 35 tank and mechanized corps and more than 480
division-sized forces. German commanders had no illusions about their prospects.
Between December 1943 and May 1944 the Red Army launched two great offen-
sives, the first in the north, which freed besieged Leningrad. In the south Soviet gains
were spectacular, liberating all the Ukraine and Crimea and pushing up against the
borders of Romania. The much greater sacrifices of the Red Army caused bitterness
and skepticism in Moscow about the likelihood of a cross-Channel invasion. Second-
front jokes were common: “What is an old believer?” was a question. “A person who
still believes in a second front,” came the reply. Another went: “They say that the
second front will not open because Churchill is waiting until the last button has been
sewn on the last greatcoat of the last English soldier.”
26
On June 6, 1944 American, British, and Canadian forces landed in Normandy.
To resist the Allied invasion the German army had 58 divisions in the west of which
only 15 were in the area of the initial fighting. In the east there were 228 Axis divi-
sions to hold back the Red Army.
27
As Stalin promised at Teheran, the Red Army
launched a massive June offensive. On June 23 the main assault began in the center
of the German line. It collapsed at once. In June and July the Soviet offensive pushed
back the Wehrmacht as much as 900 kilometers; this brought the Red Army to the
outskirts of Warsaw. In the south beginning in August the advance carried into
Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary. In the west the second front also began
to move. On July 25, as the Red Army approached Warsaw, the American army broke
out of Normandy and advanced toward Paris.
Moscow and Yalta
Nazi Germany was doomed. Politics now became preeminent and began to weaken
the grand alliance. Old anti-communist fears and prejudices reappeared. For Churchill,
it was fear of the spread of communism into central Europe. For Stalin, it was fear
of western intrigues. This was a war unlike others, Stalin said: “Whoever occupies a
territory also imposes on it his own social system . . . It cannot be otherwise.” The
436 michael jabara carley
Soviet Union did not feel secure in the interwar period; it would now create its own
security through force of arms. The Allies needed to meet again to discuss the postwar
world. Churchill went alone to Moscow in October 1944 to feel out Stalin’s position.
At their meeting in the Kremlin on October 9 Churchill handed Stalin a piece of
paper on which he had written the names of five east European countries, parceling
them out according to percentages in favor of the Soviet Union or Britain or sharing
influence equally. Greece was to fall under British influence and Romania and Bulgaria
under Soviet influence. Hungary and Yugoslavia were blessed with a 50–50 percent-
age arrangement. Stalin put a blue tick on the paper and handed it back to Churchill
without saying a word.
28
Peacemaking would not be so easy. Roosevelt did not put his blue tick on
Churchill’s paper. There had to be more negotiations. Another Allied conference
took place at Yalta in February 1945. All the difficult issues were addressed. Poland
was a bone of contention. Its eastern frontier was set on the so-called Curzon line,
which ran more or less along the ethnographic frontier. Ukrainian and Byelorussian
territories seized by Poland during the Russo-Polish war in 1919–20 reverted to the
Soviet Union. As a quid pro quo Poland would absorb large areas of East Prussia and
eastern Germany. Who was to govern Poland was also a matter of disagreement.
Would it be the London Poles, the successors of interwar Poland, hostile to the Soviet
Union, or the Lublin Poles, recognized by Stalin? At Yalta, Stalin made clear that
Poland was an issue that would have to be settled his way.
Then there was the issue of postwar Germany. Was it to be dismembered, “pasto-
ralized” to render it forever harmless; or was it to be rehabilitated according to
Anglo-American standards? And would liberated France be recognized as an equal
ally and given a zone of occupation in defeated Germany? De Gaulle now headed
the French government, and he wanted to be involved in the postwar administration
of Germany. Reparations were another bone of contention. Stalin insisted on $20
billion, of which half would go to the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was more flexible
than Churchill with respect to Stalin’s demands, no doubt because Stalin confirmed
that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan after German surrender.
Roosevelt was also thinking ahead to the postwar world, to the need to set up a new
international organization, the United Nations, and for that he wanted Stalin’s coop-
eration. For Roosevelt, there were still strong American interests in working with the
Soviet Union. Not so for Churchill, who worried about an unstoppable Red Army
advance into western Europe and who talked about arming a million German POWs
to stem the tide. And the war was not yet over.
Potsdam and the End of the Grand Alliance
Unfortunately, Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. FDR was succeeded by Harry S.
Truman, an ordinary politician from the American midwest, who had outspoken
anti-communist ideas. If the Russians did not want to cooperate, he told advisors
shortly after he became president, “they can go to hell.” Later, Molotov advised
Stalin that the Americans were “trying to bid up.” “Let them,” Stalin replied,
laughing.
29
Roosevelt died two days before the start of the final Red Army advance into Berlin.
For the Soviet Union, the seizure of Berlin was retributive justice. German frontiers
grand strategy and summit diplomacy 437
were posted with placards: “Here is the lair of the fascist beast.” German resistance
was fierce but vain. On April 30 Hitler committed suicide and on the same day Red
Army soldiers hoisted a Red flag over the Reichstag. On May 9 Soviet authorities
accepted the German surrender. Henceforth, that day would be a major Soviet and
then Russian holiday. Veterans would pin on their rows of jingling medals and join
other younger citizens – literally the beneficiaries of these old soldiers’ prodigious
efforts – to celebrate Victory Day in the streets of Moscow and other cities.
The cost of victory was high: 10 million Red Army soldiers were killed or missing,
18 million were wounded or sick. No one knows how many civilians perished – esti-
mates range between 12 and 40 million. These losses are so colossal that one wonders
whether the term “Holocaust” should not be applied to the Soviet victims of Nazism.
The memory of Soviet sacrifice was inconvenient during the Cold War, but surely it
is not now. Few families escaped without loss, and many hundreds of thousands
disappeared without a survivor to mourn them. Even for many Russians living in the
twenty-first century the Great Patriotic War was about life or death. Revisionist his-
torians may wish to consider whether their dispassionate World War II narratives
would be recognizable to people who actually lived through those years.
The Red Army exacted a high price in return, inflicting 80 percent of all casualties
on the Wehrmacht. Even after the Normandy invasion the Red Army held down
two-thirds of German forces.
30
By June 1944 it was a matter of time before the Red
Army crushed Nazi Germany. Stalin was in a strong position to secure what he
regarded as Russian national interests.
The last meeting of the Allied wartime leaders took place in Potsdam in July–
August 1945. Stalin and Truman were there, but Churchill would leave in mid-
conference, having suffered electoral defeat at home. The Yalta issues remained
unresolved. What were to be the new boundaries of Poland? Who would govern in
Warsaw? How were reparations to be determined and exacted? Truman mentioned
with feigned nonchalance that the United States had tested “a new weapon of unusual
destructive force,” that is, an atomic bomb, soon to be dropped on Japan.
Potsdam marked the beginning of the end of the grand alliance. As long as
Nazi Germany was a threat, the alliance remained secure. As victory approached,
the alliance disintegrated. With the German threat eliminated, ideology returned to
the fore. The realists, who had tempered their anti-communism, no longer had to
do so. Churchill was a good example: he reverted to die-hard positions and was
relieved that the United States had the atomic bomb with which to threaten the
Soviet Union. Stalin noticed: “Churchill did not trust us, and in consequence we
could not fully trust him either.” As for Truman, he abruptly stopped Lend-Lease
to the Soviet Union, while senior American officials saw no grounds for long-term
good relations with Moscow.
31
Each side reverted to prewar fear and aversion of the
other. The big difference in 1945 was that the Soviet Union had become a world
power. Stalin was no longer UJ; he was the bloody dictator again. A wolf after all
cannot shed its skin.
The grand alliance was wrapped in irony. Stalin wanted to avoid carrying alone
the burden of war against Nazi Germany. So did the French and British. In the end
the Red Army had to carry the burden anyway, while the French collapsed and the
British barely held out. They were all outsmarted. The French debacle left the Soviet
Union, and not just Britain, alone against Nazi Germany. Neither Churchill nor Stalin