The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (247 page)

Churchill appeals for Territorial Army recruits at the Mansion House, April 24, 1939.

The press heightens its demands; this cartoon appeared in the
Daily Express
on July 6, 1939.

Six days later this cartoon appeared in
Punch
.

In the turmoil of the 1930s Churchill often found sanctuary in painting.

On July 24, 1939, a huge sign, paid for by an anonymous backer of Churchill, appears on the Strand.

War is imminent in late August 1939, as Churchill and Anthony Eden walk down Whitehall to the House of Commons. Both are still treated as lepers by Chamberlain.

On September 1, 1939, the Germans invade Poland, and that same day Chamberlain appoints Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty. On September 3 Britain declares war on Germany. This photograph was taken on September 4, Churchill’s first full day at the Admiralty.

In the first month of the war Randolph, serving in his father’s old regiment, the 4th Hussars, marries Pamela, the daughter of Lord and Lady Digby.

New York Times
, May 11, 1940.

As France collapses and all seems lost, Winston Spencer Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.

His advice was rejected. As Thomas Jones wrote, in both Paris and London the Men of Munich were “much more optimistic than I am about the behavior of the dictators”—Hitler and Mussolini—and far more wary of the despot in the Kremlin. Jean Montigny, a Radical-Socialist, had warned the Chamber of Deputies on “the error and the illusion of any foreign policy based even partly on confidence in the power of the Russian army outside its frontiers and on the loyalty of the Soviet government.” Many deputies were concerned about Poland’s willingness to accept Soviet aid; as Poland’s ally, France had to deal with it. Nevertheless, on April 22 the French cabinet, albeit without enthusiasm, agreed to Litvinov’s proposal as a basis of negotiation, and so informed the British. The Quai declared, Whitehall delayed.
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On April 19 the cabinet’s Foreign Policy Committee considered the Litvinov initiative. The Foreign Office was startled by its airtight language; by contrast—and by design—Britain’s Polish guarantee was a sieve of loopholes. Litvinov took Horace Wilson’s breath away; what if a copy of this document fell into the Führer’s hands? Suppose he blamed England for it? The consequences didn’t bear thinking about, and so, instead of thinking about them, Cadogan, in the absence of Halifax, described the Russian plan as “extremely inconvenient,” suggested that Soviet military strength was trivial, and declared that “from the practical point of view there is every argument against accepting the Russian proposal.” As a civil servant, however, the under secretary had to recognize that England had more than one party. Politically, the issue could become a quagmire. Thus, “there is great difficulty in rejecting the Soviet offer…. The left in this country may be counted on” to exploit a refusal. There was also a “very remote” possibility that the Russians might join hands with the Germans. Nevertheless, Cadogan ended, “on balance” Litvinov’s offer should be turned down on the ground that it might “alienate our friends and reinforce the propaganda of our enemies without bringing in exchange any real material contribution to the strength of our Front.” One wonders who, in Cadogan’s opinion, England’s “friends” and “enemies” were.
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The situation, as one cabinet member pointed out, was “very awkward.” The French cabinet, however reluctantly, had voted to accept the plan. Churchill, Lloyd George, Eden, Duff Cooper, Labour, and the Liberals would raise Cain if His Majesty’s Government rejected it. The Poles and the Rumanians,
per contra
, would be up in arms if Litvinov’s offer were accepted. Finally—and this was decisive—Chamberlain, Halifax, Wilson, Cadogan, Inskip, and Simon were revolted by the prospect of an alliance with Bolsheviks. The Russians, as Thomas Jones wrote in his diary, “made our flesh creep.” Looking for a way out, the P.M. solicited the views of the Chiefs of Staff and seized upon one point in their report. The military support the U.S.S.R. could provide to Poland or Rumania, they wrote, “is not so great as might be supposed generally.”
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Chamberlain ignored what followed, which was the chiefs’ conclusion that “Russian cooperation would be invaluable in that Germany would be unable to draw upon Russia’s immense reserves of food and raw materials and should succumb more quickly to our economic stranglehold.” He also suppressed the chiefs’ supplementary appraisal, which concluded:

According to Cadogan, this passage “annoyed” Chamberlain. Privately he threatened to “resign rather than sign an alliance with the Soviet.” Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, whose commitment to defend Britain eclipsed his hostility to bolshevism, pointed out that the chiefs were “very anxious that Russia should not under any circumstances become allied with Germany. Such an eventuality would create a most dangerous situation for us.” In the Foreign Office this minute was the source of great amusement. The admiral was informed that Communists and Nazis were as unlikely a combination as oil and water. If he would look after the Royal Navy, he was politely told, Whitehall would tend to foreign affairs.
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After a fortnight of silence from London, Stalin, not a man of great patience, lost the little he had. On the back page of
Pravda’s
May 3 issue a small item appeared in the “News in Brief” column: “M. Litvinov has been released from the Office of Foreign Commissar at his own request.”

The significance of Litvinov’s dismissal passed almost unnoticed in the Western democracies. Because of an intelligence failure in MI6 and the Deuxième Bureau, Allied governments did not know, as Churchill later wrote, that Vyacheslav Molotov, Litvinov’s successor, “had always been favourable to an arrangement with Hitler,” that he had been “convinced by Munich and much else that neither Britain nor France would fight until they were attacked, and would not be much good then.” Like the FO diplomats, ordinary citizens never dreamed that a treaty binding Moscow and Berlin was possible. Eventually, it was assumed, the two would go to war.
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But it would not be Molotov who would make the final decision as to which way the Soviets turned; that power belonged exclusively to Joseph Stalin. Exploring the mind of a psychotic is impossible—the shortest distance between two points becomes a maze—yet as Churchill perceived, there was method in Stalin’s dementia. In his own twisted way he was a patriot; like Winston he saw the peril in the Reich and wanted his country to survive it. That was his end. Any means was acceptable to him. He was quietly searching for one that would work.

Doubtless he would have preferred to avoid allies altogether. If he was viewed with suspicion in the capitals of Europe, his suspicions of their leaders ran to paranoia. Nevertheless, the necessity of making a choice, however distasteful, was becoming clear to him, and although Litvinov was in disgrace, an attachment to Britain and France was still preferable to a loathsome alliance with Berlin. Therefore the new foreign commissar, despite his Germanophilia, was instructed not to abandon discussions with Halifax and Bonnet.

Coulondre was encouraged by Molotov’s accession. Molotov, he cabled the Quai from Berlin, was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and a “member of the Politburo, depositary of the thoughts of Stalin”; his appointment meant “Soviet foreign policy can only gain in clarity and precision, and France and England will have no reason to regret it.” Bonnet wrote in his memoirs that he was “quite satisfied by the assurances” of the Russian ambassador in Paris that the switch in foreign commissars “does not denote any change in Soviet foreign policy,” and that diplomatic discussions between envoys of the three nations could open whenever Britain and France were ready. Maisky brought the same message to Chamberlain and Halifax, who protested that they weren’t ready.
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In fact, the democracies had every reason to regret the departure of their champion in the Kremlin. The Germans realized that they had gained ground. To drive the point home, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Berlin called at the Wilhelmstrasse to stress “the great importance of the personality of Molotov”—a curt, mulish man who spoke only Russian and held the Western Allies in contempt—and his “importance for future Soviet foreign policy.” A dispatch from Warsaw reported that Litvinov had resigned after Marshal Kliment Voroshilov had told him that the Red Army was not prepared to fight for Poland and had denounced, in the name of the Russian General Staff, “excessively far-reaching military obligations.” The
Frankfurter Zeitung
commented that Litvinov’s fall was a serious setback for Anglo-French plans to “encircle” the Reich. The German chargé in Moscow cabled the Wilhelmstrasse:

Some Englishmen were apprehensive. In London, Nicolson noted in his diary that “the left-wing people” in particular were “very upset…. They are not at all sure that Russia may not make a neutrality pact with Germany. I fear this terribly.” In his memoirs Churchill would write scathingly of Litvinov’s dismissal: “The eminent Jew, the target of German antagonism, was flung aside for the time being like a broken tool, and, without being allowed a word of explanation, was bundled off the world stage to obscurity, a pittance, and police supervision.”
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The extent of Churchill’s information about Kremlin infighting is unknown. But the Soviet envoy Maisky was almost certainly his chief confidant. It can hardly have been coincidence that he renewed his campaign for the triple alliance on May 4, the day after Litvinov was sacked. The chief stumbling block, he knew, was Poland. The Poles were adamant that Russian troops never be permitted to cross their territory, not even, say, if Germany attacked France and the Red Army lunged westward to support the French. Beck and his fellow officers in Warsaw not only persisted in regarding the Russians as lepers; they resented anyone who suggested that they be treated as anything else.

Churchill believed the moment must be seized despite the fears in Warsaw. He pointed out in the
Daily Telegraph
that “Ten or twelve days have passed since the Russian offer was made. The British people… have a right, in conjunction with the French Republic, to call upon Poland not to place obstacles in the way of a common cause.” Hitler’s prey needed not only “the full cooperation of Russia” but also the three Baltic states, who, with arms and munitions from the Soviet Union, could provide “perhaps twenty divisions of virile troops.” He appreciated the Polish policy of “balancing between the German and Russian neighbour,” but now that “Nazi malignity is plain, a definite association between Poland and Russia becomes indispensable.” Otherwise, war would be certain, and a German victory likely, with Poland in chains. The British and French could hold the Wehrmacht in the west, he wrote, but without the Red Army, the eastern front would collapse. He believed the Soviet Union would be responsive to overtures.

Unmentioned in his column, but of greater concern, was his knowledge that his own government was as hostile to the triple alliance as Beck. Britain had yet to issue a formal reply to Litvinov’s proposal. That same day Lord Camrose, acting, in effect, as Winston’s representative, called at the Foreign Office for a lord-to-lord talk with Halifax. Camrose reviewed all the reasons for establishing the peace bloc. After leaving the FO he wrote an account summing up the foreign secretary’s counterarguments. Halifax thought such an alliance would be ill-received in Tokyo. Rumania, as well as Poland, would oppose it. England’s Roman Catholics would be offended. Spain might react by joining the Axis, Italy would be alienated, the Portuguese might object, and Hitler might be driven into undertaking “desperate measures.” Camrose had patiently replied that all these points were trivial or irrelevant—the Italians were already German allies—when balanced against the need to halt Nazi aggression in its tracks, defend Britain, and avert a general European war. Halifax listened politely but was unmoved.
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On May 8, three weeks after the Soviet Union had made its great move, London replied to it. “The response,” William Shirer notes, “was a virtual rejection. It strengthened suspicions in Moscow that Chamberlain was not willing to make a military pact with Russia to prevent Hitler from taking Poland.” His Majesty’s Government did leave the door ajar—a few inches. The proposal would be restudied. A flame of hope gleamed, but it was faint and flickering.
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Chamberlain did not reveal his opinion of the Russian proposal in the House of Commons until May 19, and then only after Churchill, Lloyd George, and Eden had, in Winston’s words, “pressed upon the Government the vital need for an immediate arrangement with Russia of the most far-reaching character and on equal terms.” For an hour Lloyd George appealed for decision, a clear policy to succor England’s friends and confound her enemies. Churchill described the prime minister’s speech on the Soviet proposal as “cool, and indeed disdainful.” Chamberlain’s view, he later wrote, showed “the same lack of proportion as… in the rebuff to the Roosevelt proposals a year before.” The P.M. insisted that “the suggestion that we despise the assistance of the Soviet Union is without foundation.” If the government could “evolve a method by which we can enlist the cooperation and assistance of the Soviet Union… we welcome it; we want it; we attach value to it.” It would be foolish, he said, to suppose that Russia, “that huge country, with its vast population and enormous resources, would be a negligible factor.” Talks between British and Soviet diplomats had, he said, already begun. Unfortunately, they had bogged down. He acknowledged that he was reluctant to join hands with Moscow, but insisted that his position was based “on expedience and not on any ideological ground.” There was, he said, “a sort of veil, a sort of wall, between the two governments which is extremely difficult to penetrate.”
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