A World at Arms (59 page)

Long before the Japanese had brought the United States into the war,
the question of how the Western Powers could best help the Soviet Union in its travail had become the focus of complicated negotiations between the new partners. In early July 1941 Hopkins, who was in London in behalf of Roosevelt for conferences on supplies for the British at home and in the Middle East, went on to Moscow for several meetings with Stalin. On Roosevelt’s instructions, he discussed the aid requirements of the Russians and simultaneously received the clear impression of an effectively working system likely to continue in the war. The broader view of Russian determination and ability to continue the fight reinforced Roosevelt’s beliefs; the discussion of aid requirements led to a joint British–United States mission to Moscow in late September.
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The activities of this mission, led by Lord Beaverbrook for the British and Averell Harriman for the Americans, essentially set the tone for the aid the Western Powers provided to the Soviet Union until the end of the War. With the British at this point taking the lead, agreements were reached on substantial schedules of weapons and supplies to be delivered to the Russians. Since there was no prospect of any early invasion of Europe from the West, it appeared essential to help Russia keep fighting in the East with whatever could be sent, even if this meant–as it certainly did for the British–cutting back on the reinforcement of other theaters, especially the areas of Southeast Asia threatened by Japan. Beaverbrook was clear in his own mind that only aid provided unconditionally and on the largest possible scale made any sense, and the Americans quickly fell in with this line.

It was argued by a few at the time and many later that conditions should have been attached to the aid provided, but this view was rejected, especially by Beaverbrook, in view not only of the need to bolster the Soviet Union at first when it was in great danger and subsequently as it carried the greatest burden of the fighting, but also because there was no alternative. Even in the darkest days of the fighting the Soviet Union was unwilling to make the slightest political concessions; Stalin was never prepared to negotiate with the Western Powers in a bargaining fashion of give-and-take as he had been with Germany and with Finland-the British and Americans might accept his demands and deliver what they could or not; but he would not make any promises in return other than to fight the Germans. And if they decided to help Russia less, it would merely mean they would have to fight Germany the more–and suffer the attendant casualties and costs–with the possibility of a separate Soviet-German peace always in the background.
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The prospect first of a possible Soviet collapse and thereafter of a Soviet-German peace hung over the alignment of the three great powers from June 1941 until the end of 1944. Not only the memory of Soviet
action in making a separate peace which had left the Allies to face the German onslaught in the West in the latter part of World War I, but also their pact with Hitler in the first part of the Second World War was ever present in the thinking of British and American leaders–all of whom had lived to see the earlier as well as the later example of such a policy. In addition to the obvious possibility that, once the Germans had been halted, they might be amenable to some new deal with the Soviet government, there was the evidence of intercepted and decoded Japanese attempts to bring the Russians and the Germans together again. The ability of the Americans, and, through their assistance, of the British, to decipher Japanese diplomatic radio messages meant that they could follow in considerable detail the efforts of Tokyo to persuade the Germans and Russians to make peace, so that Germany could concentrate her strength on fighting against the British and, after December 1941, against the United States.

There will be repeated references to the Japanese interest in this possibility, but two aspects of that interest must be noted in its initial phase in the winter of 1941-42. In the first place, the Japanese, who very much wanted such a German-Soviet agreement, were probably more optimistic about the feasibility of their plan than the facts war-ranted;
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and secondly, their constant repetition of advice to the Germans to make peace in the East always reminded the Western Powers-who were reading this advice–that if the Soviet Union and Germany were ever both simultaneously interested in actually arriving at an agreement, there was a method readily at hand for getting negotiations started.
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The question of whether either was actually seriously interested in such a possibility will recur at several points in the history of the war. The existing literature is necessarily in large part speculative; and the most recent serious study of the issue, though of great value, is flawed by an interpretive framework which appears to discount Soviet interest in an accommodation and to over–emphasize the interest of some elements in Germany.
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The evidence convinces this writer that the first serious Soviet interest came after the halting of their great counter-offensive of early 1942, when the road to victory looked very difficult for Russia and, it could be assumed in Moscow, must now look more difficult for the Germans. On the German side, some of those opposed to Hitler hoped to arrange a compromise peace but had no influence on a government which remained determined to secure victory on the field of battle. Whatever the reality, however, the prospect of the possibility was always on British and American minds and contributed to the constant British preoccupation with making political and territorial concessions to the Soviet Union lest she pull out of the war.

This concern was exacerbated in the fall of 1941 by the great difficulties in allocating already scarce supplies to Russia and the inability to respond to Stalin’s appeal for either a massive invasion of Western Europe or the sending of 25-30 divisions to fight alongside the Red Army on the Eastern Front. Since the Soviet leader presumably knew that these divisions did not exist–and could not get there if they did his demand must be understood as a measure both of his desperation in the face of the German onslaught and his desire to pressure the British into doing
something.
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For a time Churchill seriously considered the sending of two British divisions to join the Russian southern front; but as the fighting in Libya turned into a slugging match in late November, it made more sense to employ them there in the operation, previously referred to, which diverted the 2nd German Air Fleet from the Eastern Front to the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the British government, at the personal and repeated insistence of Churchill, was providing the Soviet government with information on German plans for operations in Russia derived from the reading of German codes.
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It is unknown whether the Soviet high command made appropriate use of this highly valuable information, but from Kim Philby, their own agent in the relevant section of British intelligence, they had every reason to know the real source and hence reliability of the information they were receiving.
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Stalin’s continued complaints and the high level of friction in daily Soviet–British relations led the British to add to their supply, military and intelligence efforts a mission by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to confer with the Russians in Moscow.
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Authorized to sign a wartime alliance together with a commitment to post-war cooperation, Eden was confronted by a demand for the recognition of the annexation of the Baltic States, the cession of not precisely defined portions of Poland, the 1941 border with Romania and Finland plus the addition of Petsamo, the partition of East Prussia between the Soviet Union and Poland, and a host of other territorial changes, along with Soviet agreement to British bases in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. By December 16, the date of this meeting of Stalin and Eden, the world situation had greatly changed from the time when Eden’s trip had been planned. The Soviets had halted the Germans and were throwing them back; the Japanese had attacked the Western Powers; and Britain, at Soviet insistence, had declared war on Finland, Hungary, and Romania. Stalin recognized, or at least temporarily recognized, that the British could no more help the Soviet Union by a second front in Europe than he could help them by opening a new front against Japan in East Asia, but he was absolutely
insistent on a treaty in which the British would agree to the pre-June 1941 border of the Soviet Union.

The British, however, had committed themselves to the Americans in the Atlantic Charter in public and in diplomatic negotiations in private
not
to make any agreements on post-war borders, a position that fitted with the public posture the Soviet Union had announced on November 6
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but was now completely contradicted by Stalin’s proposal. Eden could only offer to bring the Soviet demands to the attention of his government; and in the ensuing negotiations, the vehement insistence of the United States restrained the willingness of the London government to agree with a Soviet position which was obviously so important to them and from the implementation of which–assuming victory in the war-the Western Powers could not keep them anyway.
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Roosevelt, however, was absolutely insistent on this issue, influenced by memories of the World War I secret treaties, which in the eyes of many had contributed to the failure of the peace settlement of 1919, and by great concern for domestic United States opposition to any such actions. When, in view of their inability to mount substantial military operations in Western Europe the British began to give in anyway, they quickly discovered that this led to new Soviet demands, and the 20-year alliance treaty of May 26, 1942, finally signed contained no territorial provisions. Partly because of United States insistence on no wartime agreement on post-war borders, partly because of excessive Soviet demands once the British had agreed to Stalin’s original ones, the territorial issues were left open for more difficult negotiations later. It was not a happy beginning for an alliance, made all the less happy because the one joint military project which once had appeared capable of realization, a joint attack on the Finnish port of Petsamo, had proved impossible to launch after all.
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On specific issues on which the Russians wanted the assistance of their allies in the West, such as the possibility of German use of poison gas, they would be quite cooperative.
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But in general, the relationship was exceptionally difficult from the start. Having themselves helped Germany against the Western Powers earlier in the war, the Russians now often assumed that the British and later the Americans were deliberately following a somewhat similar policy. The fact that they carried such a large share of the burdens of war reinforced this view,
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while it provoked reminders from their allies that the terrible situation of the Soviet Union was of its own making.
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The contrast between the Soviet victories in Europe in the winter of 1941–42 and the disasters of Britain and the United States in the Pacific and Southeast Asia only heightened Soviet disdain for their allies. The insistence of the Soviets on neutrality in the
Pacific War led to Stalin’s refusal for a general meeting of the major Allies in Moscow when Roosevelt proposed it in December of 1941.
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The three powers, joined by the attacks on them of Germany and Japan, would continue to work together for victory, but only with enormous difficulty. But, whatever those difficulties, the Soviet Union could count on a measure of help for itself and none for its mortal enemies, a situation very different from that faced by the British in their hour of greatest peril.

It was in this context that the Red Army launched its counter-offensive on the Central front on December 5, surprising its allies as well as the Germans.
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The prior and concurrent limited but successful Soviet attacks at the northern and southern ends of the front, at Tikhvin and Rostov, meant that the stretched out German forces on the Central front, exhausted and at the end of their own unsuccessful and already halted attacks toward Moscow, could not count on any substantial reinforcements from the other segments of the front. Both north and south of the capital Soviet reserve formations struck at the German pincers reaching for Moscow; and immediately afterwards, the Red Army also drove westwards between those pincers. Careful preparations and shrewd timing characterized a Soviet offensive operation directed and largely planned by Zhukov, and totally surprising the Germans. Although the balance of forces only slightly favored the Russians, their superior equipment for the weather, the fact that many of the attacking units were rested, and the exhaustion and surprise which characterized the Germans, gave the Red Army a substantial advantage. Urged on by Stalin and a sense of uplift that accompanied the largest Soviet offensive of the war to date, the Russian troops smashed the German advance units, drove at places into their rear, and, especially in the area northwest of Moscow, quickly threatened to cut off and destroy large portions of the German forces which had come closest to the city.
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The bitter fighting which ensued during the remaining days of 1941 was marked by several significant characteristics. First, the Red Army, in spite of some local setbacks, was able to drive into the German lines and force them back, inflicting great losses on the whole central portion of the front. Second, in this process the Germans not only suffered heavy casualties from both combat and frost but also lost vast quantities of equipment not only to Soviet artillery but also because they simply could not haul it back, in some instances having to destroy it themselves.
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Third, there were clear signs of panic in many German units as poorly
clad soldiers in the most wretched weather (for which they had not been equipped on the assumption that the fighting would have ended long before) faced an attacking foe who seemed likely to overwhelm them. Fourth, in spite of all these hallmarks of a great Soviet victory, the Red Army was not able to trap any large German units. Sometimes with and sometimes against the orders of Hitler, the German generals on the spot did what they could to extricate their forces as their soldiers fought desperately to hold together with some semblance of cohesion.