The World at War (50 page)

ANTHONY EDEN

Both the Moscow conference between Foreign Secretaries and at Tehran between the heads of government the atmosphere was better than it later became, and probably for the simple reason that the Russians at that time militarily had not become so far advanced that they felt they could absolutely insist on whatever the things were that they required, because they hadn't the command of the situation. But we did manage to settle some things in Moscow, for instance rather astonishingly there was agreement about the restoration of
Austria's independent life between the three of us and eventually that was carried out and Austria to this day fortunately still leads her independent and natural life. If you look beneath the surface in Moscow, there were differences in outlook and approach: there was Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov harping all the time on the Second Front, and there was US Secretary of State Hull who wanted a rather grandiloquent but a fine declaration about the rights of free nations and how they should behave to each other. And I was trying to get an arrangement for post-war Europe. At least the machinery which would enable us three powers to discuss how we wanted to shape the post-war Europe, and we were following our own particular thoughts and wishes, and they did progress a little bit each of them. But there was not all that close a meeting of minds.

LIEUTENANT GREENFIELD

The great event as far as I was concerned was Churchill's birthday party. When Stalin arrived he had fourteen picked Georgian bodyguards who rushed into the British legation and shooed everybody out of the way and lined the steps up from the drive. In the meantime wooden ramps had been built for Roosevelt and beforehand a bunch of tough guys with guns obviously under their armpits came all around the place, pushing Churchill out of the way and looking under cushions and divans and heaven knows what. And there was Churchill in a dinner jacket looking absolutely calm, smoking a large cigar, with a very bored sergeant of Military Police standing twenty-five yards away, looking vaguely into the distance. Stalin arrived in an enormous black bullet-proof limousine, just came out, gave the most perfunctory glance at the guard of honour, came up the steps very slowly and just gazed at Churchill. Churchill came halfway down the stairs to meet him and Stalin just stood and looked at him in a very cold, evil sort of way. Then he walked straight on up past him, more or less left him with his hand extended, straight up past him and into the main hall. We all felt it was a really calculated insult.

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS

Chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg

Stalin said that he thought fifty thousand of the German General Staff and officers should be gathered together and summarily executed. He wasn't joking. President Roosevelt thought he was and said, 'Oh, well, perhaps forty-nine thousand.' But Churchill said that he'd rather be taken into the garden and shot at once than be a party to such an iniquity. But the Russians persisted almost to the end in saying that there should be no trial: these men were criminals and they should be immediately executed the moment they were caught.

AMBASSADOR HARRIMAN

Roosevelt had a feeling that there was this antagonism, which had arisen because Churchill had been the sponsor of the British intervention in the Revolution after World War One. And he felt it might be possible for him to go a little bit further with Stalin because of that. He was very anxious to see Stalin alone, but Churchill wasn't at all keen to have something being done behind his back. It wasn't a question of lack of confidence but Churchill didn't want to be cut out of anything. Actually, as it turned out, Churchill saw Stalin more frequently than Roosevelt – he saw him twice alone, I was representing the United States in both those cases but Roosevelt only saw Stalin at Tehran and then again at Yalta. He did have private talks but he wanted to give Stalin the idea that he could talk to him without Churchill, and Roosevelt was very keen to establish the United Nations.

ANTHONY EDEN

I wasn't particularly conscious that at Tehran there were differences with the Americans about Poland, but there were so many differences on the merits of the thing between us – there was reluctance on their part to talk about Poland because of the political dynamite with an election pending. I wouldn't have thought there was wrangling in front of the Russians, I don't recall that. There was even some
humour sometimes, of which Stalin was perfectly capable. I remember one evening, after all the discussions were over, we'd been dining together, I think FDR was the host and there was just FDR, Stalin and Winston, Molotov and I and Harry Hopkins sitting round this table having coffee afterwards. Winston, funnily enough, soberly but firmly, said, 'I think God is on our side – at any rate I've done my best to make Him a faithful ally' and Roosevelt looked a little bit astonished at this statement but didn't comment. It was translated into Russian and Stalin said, 'Yes, I'm sure that's correct and of course the Devil is on our side because everybody knows the Devil is a Communist and God, I've no doubt, is a very good Conservative.' I thought that a pretty good impromptu reply.

AMBASSADOR HARRIMAN

Because at
Tehran most of the concentration was on military action, it was then that agreement was reached that the Second Front would be undertaken. Stalin was pressing for the appointment of the Supreme Commander; somehow that came in his mind if the Supreme Commander was appointed, that committed both. It was tentatively agreed that General Marshall would be the Supreme Commander. When Roosevelt got back to Washington it was strongly advised not to let General Marshall leave because he was such a vital force in every aspect of our military action and he decided on Eisenhower. I was given the task of telling Stalin about this change; I was quite stirred, I felt that this would mean that Stalin would think that there was a hedging of the commitment to Tehran, but not at all. Stalin said Eisenhower is a general of experience particularly in amphibious warfare. He didn't think it was any of his business who the general was as long as the man was appointed and so after Tehran there was no doubt in Stalin's mind as to the Second Front coming about, it was a question of when. In the meantime there were other military activities which were being considered by the British and Americans. The Chiefs of Staff were working on those questions when we were at Casablanca; it was decided to go to Sicily and then to Italy. Churchill wanted to cross into the Balkans and go to Vienna, and that was considered a diversionary move. Our Chiefs had different relationships to the President than the British Chiefs who are recognised as advisers to the British War Cabinet; whereas Roosevelt is the Commander-in-Chief, they have direct relationships. Over the years the British soldiers had been trained to realise that war is a political expression and somehow our Chiefs got the idea that Churchill had some Empire and post-war Empire considerations, and that wasn't true at all. What he had in mind was a settlement in Europe which would be workable, in which the hopes and aspirations of the people of eastern Europe could be attained and it would lead to a chance of peace.

CHARLES BOHLEN

Churchill and Stalin more or less agreed on the Curzon line and tentatively agreed on
Poland's frontier, but that produced a certain amount of confusion later on because there were two rivers there. Churchill meant the eastern and the Russians took it to be the western.
Roosevelt did not participate in that particular discussion because he had told
Stalin that he was coming up for re-election again in 1944 and he didn't feel it proper for him to offer any opinion on any Polish matter at that time. We had brought some rather carefully prepared maps of Poland and the British delegation was operating on a map torn out of the London
Times,
a little flimsy piece of paper. I finally said to Roosevelt, 'Can't we offer them this map of ours which is a much better map?' and he said yes. I took it over and gave it to the British, and Stalin looked at it, and then came over and said, 'I see this map was made with Polish statistics,' and I replied to him that I don't know that there were any others in existence at that time.

AMBASSADOR HARRIMAN

People say Roosevelt thought he could use his personality to get Stalin to do things. I think that's wrong; what he felt was that if he could establish a basis of mutual understanding during the wartime period that would last into the post-war period. He knew the differences in the system and the greater difficulties, but he felt that in time this arbitrary rule would not last, and it wouldn't be possible to keep two hundred million people under his complete control. Roosevelt was a religious man and he thought that the Russian people were religious and they would change. If only we could have cooperation during the period after the war, that it might lead to a change in Russia and a permanency. He was always afraid that the personal antagonism between Stalin and Churchill would interfere with that.

LIEUTENANT GREENFIELD

Of the three great leaders I think in a way Stalin was the most impressive, although that may be in a negative sense. Roosevelt struck one – and I'm speaking out of a period as a junior officer, some thirty years ago – as being a big fixer, the man who worked in the smoke-filled rooms and so on, very jovial and glad-handing. Churchill was of course Churchill and I had seen quite a lot of him during the war so I knew him or knew of him well. But Stalin I had never seen before. He was a tiny little man about five feet four inches in height, very grey – his hair was almost white and so was his very bushy moustache. He had the most cold, poker-player's eyes, very dark, lustrous – small but lustrous eyes one would say – very dark brown, almost black, a very fixed stare and a very immobile, hard face. It's not fanciful to say that there was an aura of cruelty about him, most remarkable, and I noticed he exchanged notes with people who had exactly the same expression: very hard, very composed. A most cunning and cruel peasant.

CHAPTER 20
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS

The fact that American and British geopolitical interests were often divergent did, not greatly impinge on the conduct of the war at the practical level. There were moments of cultural abrasion and many illustrations of George Bernard Shaw's aphorism about Britain and America being 'two countries divided by a common language'. However, US Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott summed it up well: 'British and American soldiers invariably got on well together, and it was only among the higher echelons that friction developed between the Allies. All in all, British and Americans held each other in mutual respect; they were worthy Allies who fought well together.' At a time when more Britons than ever before are indulging in the anti-Americanism that has become such a feature of politics in Europe, it is perhaps as well to remember that not long ago one of the many Commonwealth war cemeteries in France was vandalised by someone who left a message that the British should take away their garbage. In international relations, as Ambrose Bierce put it, to do a favour is often to make an enemy because the beneficiaries, anxious to be relieved of the burden of gratitude, will submit the motives of the benefactors to forensic examination in an effort to prove that they were not altruistic. Because my words of introduction to the last chapter could be read in that light, it is appropriate to follow them with some of the material available in
The World at War
transcripts – little of which reached the broadcast programmes – that reminds us of the instinctive affinity that existed between Americans and British, and the enormous patience each had at times to exercise with the other in the complex joint pursuit of their
common cause. At the same time the manner in which institutional concerns dictated US strategy, in particular with regard to the invasion of Europe, and the American philosophy of overwhelming rather than solving problems, are themes not without resonance today.

ANTHONY EDEN

British Foreign Secretary

There was of course the big problem of Anglo-American relations, where
Churchill played this very key part throughout. It's been said, and perhaps there's some truth in it, that he was perhaps over-anxious to keep in step with FDR, on the other hand a little incident happened one evening which illustrated Winston's mind in that respect. For some reason he wanted to call a meeting of ministers on the afternoon of Christmas Eve in 1942, and I protested vehemently so he moved it to the morning. After the meeting Attlee and I had luncheon with him alone. We were talking about the war and Winston said this to us: 'I want you to understand the key importance of FDR. After all, if I was eliminated or even if all three of us were eliminated, there would still be responsible men who would carry on the battle and see us through to victory. But in the United States, if anything happened to FDR where is the man who could carry on as things are today?' And that, I have no doubt, was in Winston's mind all through, particularly in view of the system in the United States where the Vice President was not in the picture and there was no obvious successor. And that explains a large part of it. On the whole our relations were good, despite all the many difficulties. On the military side, of course, the man who contributed enormously to this was Sir John Dill, our military representative in Washington, and his relations with General Marshall. When Dill died America paid this unique compliment in their whole history, of asking that he should be buried in Arlington cemetery with the American war heroes.

DR STEPHEN AMBROSE

American historian

The British Empire and the greatness of the British as a nation was dependent upon her physical separation from the continent and on the very wise British foreign policy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, of which the most outstanding part was that the British paid others to do the fighting for them. You see this most clearly in the Napoleonic Wars – the British Treasury is used to support the Prussian armies and to support the Russians to fight against Napoleon. So Britain emerges from the Napoleonic Wars in a very strong position thanks to the geographical accident that there is an English Channel. In the twentieth century, technology overcame the Channel and Britain is now part of Europe and very much involved in Europe's wars. And the United States becomes the offshore island and in World War Two was very wise indeed – what we did was pay the Europeans to do our fighting for us.