He had flown in with Eden earlier in the day for the summit with Stalin, codenamed Tolstoy. Dressed in military uniform with rows of medals, the Prime Minister aimed not only at reaching agreements with the dictator but also at re-establishing his own position in the alliance.
‘Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans,’ he told the Soviet leader, according to his memoirs. ‘Your armies are in Roumania [sic] and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don’t let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Roumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?’
The deal he had suggested to the Soviet leader in May to swap influence in Greece for a Soviet sway over Romania had worked out satisfactorily as far as he was concerned. While the Red Army had taken the Romanian oilfields and prepared to advance on Bucharest, British forces had landed in the Peloponnese and moved into Athens as the Germans evacuated the city. According to the Soviet interpreter, Berezhkov, he stated that Britain must be ‘a leader in the Mediterranean’, which Stalin recognised.
Still, the Prime Minister pointed to the need to avoid phrases like ‘division of spheres of influence’ since, as he noted, this would antagonise the Americans who would be shocked by how crudely he was speaking. In an echo of Roosevelt’s conduct at Teheran, he said that, while he welcomed the presence of Harriman at some of his meetings in Moscow, this should not prevent private Anglo-Soviet talks, such as this opening session without the US ambassador. According to the British record, which Churchill did reproduce in his memoirs, he went on to remark that Stalin was a realist while he, himself, was not sentimental and ‘Mr Eden was a bad man’. Making clear that this was his personal initiative, the Prime Minister stated that he had not put his ideas to the Cabinet, let alone the Commons.
Just as he had got in digs at Churchill in Teheran, the Soviet leader now said he thought ‘the United States claims too many rights for itself leaving limited opportunities for the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Yet our two countries have a treaty of mutual assistance, do we not?’ It was all the Prime Minister could have hoped for.
There are two versions of what came next. Churchill wrote that, as the conversation was being translated, he took half a sheet of paper and set down his proposal, adding that there would be a fifty-fifty share in Hungary and that Bulgaria would be 75 per cent under Russian influence. Berezhkov had Churchill reaching into his breast pocket to bring out a paper folded four times which he smoothed on the table, saying: ‘I have this naughty document here with some ideas of certain people in London.’ Both versions agree that he pushed the sheet over to Stalin.
The Soviet leader paused to examine the numbers. He picked up a blue pencil to tick the top left corner of the paper before pushing it back. Churchill did not pick it up. There was a long silence broken by the Prime Minister.
‘Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner?’ he asked. ‘Let us burn the paper.’
‘No, you keep it,’ Stalin replied. Churchill did.
Given the military situation in the east, the deal was, in many respects, being overtaken by events. At best, it was an attempt to get a toehold in countries which would fall under Soviet influence. There was no way the British could keep Stalin to any of the divisions outlined on the paper. Still, in talks that resembled a bridge bidding game, the matter was ‘flogged out’ by Eden and Molotov, as Churchill put it. Berezhkov reported that the Soviet minister began by saying that Moscow’s share of influence in Yugoslavia and Hungary should increase to 75 per cent.2
‘That is much worse than what was agreed on,’ Eden objected.
‘Then let the percentage for Bulgaria be ninety and ten, for Yugoslavia fifty-fifty and as for Hungary, we’ll work out agreement at a later date.’
‘We are prepared to accept your proposal for Hungary, but we would like to have more influence in Bulgaria.’
‘If the ratio for Hungary is seventy-five by twenty-five, let the same ratio apply to Bulgaria, too. But then it must be sixty by forty for Yugoslavia. This is our limit and we won’t go down any further.’
Eden countered with eighty-twenty for Bulgaria, but insisted on equality in Yugoslavia which partly fell into what Britain considered its zone of interest. He complained about Bulgarian action against the British in frontier regions of Greece. Molotov hit back by stating that, if Moscow agreed to equality in Yugoslavia, it would want ninety-ten in Bulgaria.
Tiring of the argument, Eden said he did not much care for numbers, and took issue with a secret visit to Moscow by Tito, which the British had only just been told about. When the session finished at 9 p. m., he learned with horror that he was expected for dinner at the Prime Minister’s dacha, a forty-five-minute drive away. Over the meal,
Churchill listened unhappily to his report on the discussion with Molotov. He thought it had dispelled the good atmosphere fostered the previous day. ‘I explained that this was the real battle and I could not and would not give way,’ Eden wrote in his diary.
The next meeting with Molotov was, he recorded, ‘as smooth as it had been rough yesterday’. Moscow would ‘summon Bulgaria out of Greece and Yugoslavia tonight,’ the Soviet minister said.
But Churchill was getting worried about what he had proposed, the repercussions if it leaked, and how to break the news to Roosevelt. To prepare the ground, he wrote to the President about the importance of reaching a common position on the Balkans to head off civil wars in which they would find themselves backing the opposite side to Stalin.
Lifting a corner of the veil over his guilty secret, he added: ‘Nothing will be settled except preliminary agreements between Britain and Russia, subject to further discussion and melting-down with you. On this basis I am sure you will not mind our trying to have a full meeting of minds with the Russians.’2
He then worked on a letter to Stalin intended to limit what the Russians might read into his proposal, and to ensure secrecy. The percentages proposal was, he wrote, ‘no more than a method by which in our thoughts we can see how near we are together, and then decide upon the necessary steps to bring us into full agreement. As I said they would be considered crude, and even callous, if they were exposed to the scrutiny of the Foreign Office and of diplomats all over the world. Therefore they could not be the basis of any public document, certainly not at the present time. They might however be a good guide for the conduct of our affairs. If we manage these affairs well we shall perhaps prevent several civil wars and much bloodshed and strife in the small countries concerned.’3
The aim should be to let each country have the form of government its people preferred. All he wanted was to ‘adumbrate the degrees of interest which each of us takes in these countries with the full assent of the other, and subject to the approval of the United States, which may go far away for a long time and then come back unexpectedly with gigantic strength.’
Harriman got wind of Churchill’s idea during a Kremlin dinner and called on the British leader on the morning of 12 October to learn more. The Prime Minister was in bed working on his letter to Stalin. When he read it out, Harriman said he was sure Roosevelt would repudiate the initiative.
Eden came in, and Churchill told him the American thought the letter to Stalin should not be sent. It was not. The percentages were never mentioned again. Though Harriman had been let in on the secret, there is no record of a message about it to Washington. He may have deemed the matter too sensitive to commit to paper; due to fly home to report to Roosevelt, he could save it for a verbal report.
Churchill later characterised his decision not to send the letter to Stalin as ‘deeming it wiser to let well alone’. But he must have realised that he had risked opening up a major fissure in the Western alliance. With the presidential election less than a month away, Roosevelt would have had to have disowned his ally if the scheme had become known. The alliance had again narrowly avoided a potentially fatal crisis.
‘Stalin will get what he wants,’ Churchill said privately. ‘The Americans have seen to that.’ His own attitude to Moscow was complex. He retained his innate hostility to Communism, recognised the reality of the Red Army’s advance, and saw the need for a strong Western Europe to avoid Soviet domination after the war. At the same time, he still believed that, if he could establish a good personal rapport with Stalin, the alliance could prosper to their mutual benefit. He told Harriman his main aim was to ‘create good feelings’. ‘We can settle everything, we three, if we come together,’ he said at a meeting with Eden and Clark Kerr. ‘If we don’t there’ll be years of diplomatic wrangling and suspicion
The concern lay, rather, in Washington. Worried that Stalin might think Churchill was speaking for both Western Allies, Hopkins had drafted a message which Roosevelt sent to Harriman to take to the Kremlin before Churchill arrived in Moscow. ‘I am sure you understand that in this global war there is literally no question, military or political, in which the United States is not interested,’ it told Stalin. ‘I am firmly convinced that the three of us, and only the three of us, can find the solution of the questions unresolved. In this sense, while appreciating Mr Churchill’s desire for the meeting, I prefer to regard your forthcoming talks with the Prime Minister as preliminary to a meeting of the three of
55
Us.
This puzzled Stalin. ‘I had imagined that Mr Churchill was coming to Moscow in keeping with an agreement reached with you at Quebec,’ he replied. ‘It appears, however, that my supposition is at variance with reality.’6
* * * *
The Warsaw Rising had ended a week earlier with capitulation to the Germans, and Churchill wanted to use his visit to find a solution to the Polish question. He summoned the Polish Prime Minister from London to Moscow, making it plain that if he did not come, Britain would withdraw support from his group. After a preliminary meeting with the British, Mikolajczyk and his colleagues went to the Soviet Government Hospitality House to see Stalin, Molotov, Churchill, Eden and Harriman.7
Acting as chairman, the Soviet Foreign Minister gave a short introduction, and invited Mikolajczyk to speak. The Polish leader had little room to negotiate. His Cabinet in London had laid down that its country must have as much territory after the war as before, including sources of raw materials and cultural centres in eastern regions. The government in Warsaw should contain five main parties, four of which were in London. Laying down a marker as regards the Lublin group, Mikolajczyk began by saying that his aim was to produce ‘an agreement between Poland and Russia, not between Russia and a handful of Poles, arbitrarily chosen by a foreign power’. [The fullest version of the dialogue is in Mikolajczyk’s memoirs. When Moran put these to Churchill after their publication in 1948, Churchill did not demur. His own memoirs and those of Eden and Harriman are more truncated as if it was not a matter they wished to dwell upon during the Cold War]
Stalin expressed doubt that the underground had considered any plan given recent events.
‘Marshal, perhaps you forget that as a younger man, you, too, were in the underground,’ the Pole replied by his own account. ‘Yet you remained active and made plans and programmes which affected the future of your country.’
The Soviet leader grinned.
Had the Lublin group been consulted? Churchill asked.
Mikolajczyk said his consultation had been with the Polish people.
‘The Lublin government should have a bigger share in the post-war Polish government,’ Churchill interjected.
Stalin said the Lublin group had ‘done good work’, but was being ignored. Nor was the Curzon Line being recognised. ‘These two flaws must be corrected,’ he insisted.
‘You accuse me of ignoring the Lublin Committee,’ Mikolajczyk objected. ‘You’re ignoring the Polish government which has fought the Germans, our common foe, for five years. You’re ignoring the Polish government which created strong armies, a navy and an air force, and which now fights on all fronts!’
‘I recognise this,’ Stalin replied. ‘I have given the proper credit.’
‘But you haven’t.’
‘I want no argument.’
‘Nor do I. But you mention the “good work” of the Lublin Committee. Yet it has permitted your agents to arrest and deport some of the very Home Army men who helped the Red Army liberate parts of Poland.’
‘Things are bad everywhere.’
‘Anyway,’ Mikolajczyk said, ‘I cannot accept the Curzon Line. If I agreed to cede forty per cent of Poland’s pre-war territory and five million people, everyone would have the right to say, “It was for this that the Polish soldiers fought? A politician’s sell-out.”’
‘You’re an imperialist,’ Stalin answered, noting the scale of Soviet losses. To which, the Pole replied that, proportionately, his country had suffered even worse.
‘Who is threatening the independence of Poland?’ the Soviet leader asked. ‘Soviet Russia?’
Thinking back, Mikolajczyk believed he might have replied ‘Yes.’
‘But all this was settled at Teheran,’ Molotov barked, staring at Harriman and Churchill, who said nothing.
‘If your memories fail you, let me recall the facts to you,’ the Foreign Minister went on. ‘We all agreed at Teheran that the Curzon Line must divide Poland. You will recall that President Roosevelt agreed to this solution and strongly endorsed the line. And then we agreed that it would be best not to issue any public declaration about our agreement.’
Remembering how Roosevelt had told him that he did not support the line, Mikolajczyk was shocked. He looked at Churchill and Harriman, willing them to deny what Molotov had said. Given Roosevelt’s avoidance of the Polish issue at Teheran, this could have been a case of what the ambassador had warned about, a Soviet tendency to take silence for acquiescence. Harriman kept silent, looking at the floor and deciding that his role of observer meant it would not be right for him to speak.
‘I confirm this,’ Churchill said in a quiet voice.
Growing angry at having been put on the spot, he insisted that the Poles must agree to Stalin’s demands. British aid made it their duty to accede to what he was now supporting.
‘I didn’t expect to be brought here to participate in a new partition of my country,’ Mikolajczyk shouted.
No public announcement was necessary, Churchill said. Seeking compromise, he said the Curzon Line might be regarded as a temporary frontier against which Warsaw could appeal at a peace conference. Far from calming the atmosphere, that brought Stalin to his feet.
‘I want this made very clear,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mr Churchill’s thought of any future change in the frontier is not acceptable to the Soviet government. We will not change our frontiers from time to time. That’s all!’
Wheezing, the Prime Minister held out his hands, looking at the ceiling in despair. The session was over. In subsequent conversations with the London Poles, Churchill blamed them for not coming to an agreement with Stalin that would have cut the ground from under the Lublin Committee. When Mikolajczyk referred to the Atlantic Charter, the British leader replied that he would tell Parliament he and Stalin were in agreement. ‘Our relations with Russia are much better than they have ever been,’ he said. ‘I mean to keep them that way.’ Mikolajczyk added a demand for the Baltic port of Stettin (Szczecin), with which Churchill was ready to go along with, though Eden demurred. Then the Poles went too far by demanding the city of Lvov, across the proposed border in Ukraine.8
Churchill exploded, berating the Polish Prime Minister for sacrificing his country for a single city and sowing the seeds of a future war. Striding up and down, he cursed, ‘I will have nothing more to do with you... I don’t care where you go... I will indict you.’
Recalling a remark by the Polish General Anders about fighting the USSR once Germany had been beaten, he stormed: ‘If you think you can conquer Russia, well, you are crazy, you ought to be in a lunatic asylum. We shall tell the world how unreasonable you are. We shall not part friends.’
Mikolajczyk refused to give way.
‘Then I wash my hands of this,’ Churchill riposted, by the Pole’s account. We are not going to wreck the peace of Europe...you wish to start a war in which twenty-five million lives will be lost! ’
‘You settled our fate at Teheran,’ the Polish leader objected.
‘Poland was saved at Teheran,’ Churchill replied.
‘I am not a person whose patriotism is diluted to the point where I would give away half of my country.’
‘Unless you accept the frontier, you’re out of business for ever! ’ Churchill exclaimed. ‘The Russians will sweep through your country, and your people will be liquidated. You’re on the verge of annihilation. We’ll become sick and tired of you if you keep arguing.’
Eden calmed things down for a moment, but Churchill was soon back on the attack. ‘You are bound to accept the decision of the Great Powers,’ he insisted.
When the Pole referred to Churchill’s speeches decrying the taking of territory by force, the Prime Minister denounced his government as callous people who wanted to wreck Europe. ‘I shall leave you to your own troubles,’ he thundered. ‘You have no sense of responsibility when you want to abandon your own people at home. You are indifferent to their sufferings. You have only your miserable, petty selfish interests in mind.’
Mikolajczyk had had enough. In his memoirs, he recalled that he was ‘furious at the man, and could not conceal it’. He asked Churchill to let him parachute into Poland to join the anti-German resistance.
‘Why?’ the Prime Minister asked, taken aback.
‘Because I prefer to die fighting for the independence of my country, rather than be hanged later by the Russians in full view of your British ambassador!’
Churchill walked from the room. Mikolajczyk thought he had hurt him more than he wanted to. But, after a few minutes, he was back, putting an arm round his shoulder. Both men were on the verge of crying. Telling Moran that night of the Pole’s request to be dropped into his homeland, Churchill had tears in his eyes.
When the British leader met representatives of the Lublin Committee with Stalin, Molotov and Eden present, the Soviet-backed group demanded between two-thirds and three-quarters of seats in government in return for agreeing that Mikolajczyk should be Prime Minister. As its members made lengthy, wandering, cliche-ridden statements, Stalin looked at his guest and smiled mischievously. Eden seemed incredibly bored, whispering ‘the rat and the weasel’ to Churchill at one point about two of the group. Molotov was impassive. Having had as much as he could endure, his face darkening, Churchill got up and walked to a side table where glasses and plates had been arranged for refreshments. He rearranged them with such a clatter that the noise drowned out the Pole who was speaking. Laughing, Stalin told the group they talked enough. Churchill later compared them to the Quisling collaborators in Norway.
Writing to his wife, Churchill noted the ‘great cordiality’ he was shown. ‘Life is however the same and I did not get to bed till 4 a. m. this morning,’ he added. ‘I have had very nice talks with the Old Bear. I like him the more I see him. Now they respect us here and I am sure they wish to work with us — I have to keep the President constantly in touch and this is the delicate side.’
Reporting to Roosevelt, he stressed the ‘extraordinary atmosphere of goodwill’ he found in Moscow. Moran noticed that every time his patient returned from a talk with Stalin, he seemed in a good mood. He allowed himself to josh with the dictator—when Churchill observed that Mikolajczyk was a peasant and very obstinate, Stalin noted that he, too, was a peasant, at which Churchill said, ‘You can be as obstinate as any of them.’ Still, he recognised to the doctor that it was ‘all very one-sided. They get what they want by guile, flattery or force.’
* * * *
The British scored a notable social success when Stalin dined at their embassy on 11 October, the first time he had gone to a foreign legation in Moscow. The NKVD searched the gardens, the cellars, the attics and the out-houses. Servants were questioned. A searchlight was mounted on the roof of the British building, which was ringed with guards.9
Stalin stepped from his car wearing a long grey military overcoat with red facings and a peaked cap with a red band. Underneath, he had on his usual marshal’s tunic with a single star—the interpreter Birse noticed that the sleeves reached down to his knuckles. The visitors variously found him looking thinner, older, sprucer and more ashen than when they had last seen him.
Molotov, in diplomatic uniform, gazed suspiciously at a man scribbling notes; Birse explained that he was the single journalist allowed to witness the proceedings. Vyshinsky pointed to the Soviet guards and said: ‘I see the Red Army has had another victory. It has occupied the British Embassy.’ When Churchill asked Lazar Kaganovich, the Prime Minister, how the USSR kept its transport system running, the Russian slashed his fingers across his throat, smiled and said: ‘If a locomotive engineer does not fulfil his responsibilities, he gets this.’
The meal was English style, preceded by sherry and cocktails. Stalin said he could not understand why Westerners weakened whisky by adding water. During the dinner, he stared at portraits of George V and Queen Mary on the wall, and asked if the man was Tsar Nicholas II.
When Churchill recounted the cheers he had received during his visit to Italy on the way to Moscow, the dictator observed that the people had been applauding Mussolini only a short time before.
As the leaders went into a private room after the meal, guns outside fired to celebrate a Red Army victory. Fireworks exploded from the Kremlin walls opposite the embassy, bathing it in light. According to Berezhkov’s account, Churchill spoke of ‘our three great democracies’ which were ‘committed to the lofty ideals of freedom, human dignity and happiness’. That, he added, was why he attached such importance to a good atmosphere between the USSR and Poland. Noting that Poland was a Catholic country, he said the situation there could not be allowed to complicate relations with the Vatican.
‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ the Soviet leader asked.
Raising the question of the Warsaw Rising, Stalin insisted that only military problems held the Red Army back from intervening—though he said he had not been able to admit this at the time. Churchill declared that he had never believed anything else. Harriman chipped in to claim that the same was true for the people of America. So, as over Katyn, alliance solidarity triumphed over truth. Stalin could but take note.
The conversation moved to Yugoslavia, a country which clearly presented a major problem of national cohesion after a war in which collaborationist Croats had slaughtered Serbs, Serb partisans had slaughtered royalists and some Muslims had sided with the Germans. Both leaders were firm in backing Tito, but Stalin warned that the partisan leader thought the Croats and Slovenes might not agree to work with the Serbian monarch and his government-in-exile in London.
When the talk drifted to the British general election, which would be held when the war ended, Stalin said he had no doubt the Conservatives would win (though recent by-elections had shown voters turning against them). He put the Labour Party in the same bag as the Mensheviks who had been overcome by the Bolsheviks in 1917. If Churchill had been in power at the time of Munich, he added, things would have turned out differently. At one point, he offered Eden 200 cases of Russian wine. When the Foreign Secretary said there was no room on the plane to transport them, Stalin offered to get them to London by his own methods.
On what was to be a more sinister matter given their fate, the Soviet leader said he would be grateful if London could arrange to send home Russians who had fought for the Germans and were being held as prisoners in Britain. Eden replied that the government would do all it could, despite pressure on shipping. In return, he asked for Moscow’s good offices in ensuring the repatriation of British prisoners of war held in Poland and Germany. Stalin said that ‘every care and attention would be given to our men’, Eden recalled. He could have had little doubt about what would happen to the Russians sent home.
Stalin stayed for six and a half hours, finally leaving at 4 a. m. The social entente continued on the night of 14 October, when Churchill was guest of honour at a command ballet and opera performance at the Bolshoi. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Stalin appeared through a side door to slip into the box. It was the first time the Soviet leader had been to the theatre since the German attack. The audience—‘undoubtedly handpicked’, Berezhkov noted—cheered loudly. Stalin stepped back into the shadows, leaving Churchill alone in the limelight. The British leader sent Vyshinsky to pull his host forward. When Stalin walked to the rail, the audience unleashed a salvo of cheers described by Kathleen Harriman as ‘like a cloudburst on a tin roof.
In the interval, there was supper of cold cuts, caviar, crabmeat, Georgian chicken and nuts, suckling pig, sweets, fruit, wine, vodka, tea and coffee. Molotov toasted Stalin with familiar phrases, leading Stalin to observe: ‘I thought he was going to say something new about me.’ When
Somebody compared the Big Three to the Holy Trinity, Stalin said Churchill must be the Holy Ghost because ‘he is flying all over the place’.
Before regaining their places, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary went to the toilet. There, Churchill started to talk excitedly about Poland. Outside, the third bell rang for the start of the second half. Stalin sent Berezhkov to fetch them. Eden explained to him that Churchill had become so carried away with his ideas that he had not heard the ringing. The performance was held up until they got back.
Afterwards, Stalin left as unobtrusively as he had arrived. A late-night meeting at the Kremlin, attended by military leaders, reviewed Anglo-American plans to drive up into north-west Europe, progress across the Pacific and the situation on the eastern front. Stalin said the Red Army would push vigorously into Germany, and added that Moscow would enter the war against Japan ‘several months’ after the Nazis had been defeated.
The next day, Churchill suffered from diarrhoea and his temperature rose to 101. Taking his place, Eden went to the Kremlin to pass on the Polish demand for Lvov. Stalin and Molotov replied that the city was part of Ukraine, which would be ‘an independent state’; so nothing could be done. In his diary, Eden described the talks as ‘the stiffest negotiations I have ever known’. Clark Kerr wrote in his journal: ‘Mik (Mikolajczyk); Christ god damn fuck and bugger.’ Not surprisingly, when the Poles made what—for them — was a concession of talking about agreeing to the Curzon Line provided they got Lvov and oil and potash deposits, Stalin would have none of it.8
Still, Churchill remained optimistic. He told Roosevelt the Polish leader was going to recommend acceptance of the Curzon Line and drop the claim to Lvov. ‘I am hopeful that even in the next fortnight we may get a settlement,’ he added. Roosevelt asked to be consulted if an agreement was reached so that publication could be delayed until after the presidential election.
Meeting Mikolajczyk before he left for London, Stalin said he could not agree to Lvov being ceded, but went on to say Poland was fortunate he was not asking for more.
Did he want to make Poland a Communist state? Mikolajczyk asked. ‘Absolutely not,’ Stalin replied. ‘Communism does not fit the
Poles. They are too individualistic, too nationalistic capitalist state.’
Poland will be a
Seeing the surprise of his visitor, he went on: ‘There is no middle system. Capitalism can assume many forms, have many different controls. But what is not Communism is capitalism.’ After the war, Poland would not be ‘disturbed by fratricidal fights between Communists and non-Communists though there are certain people—both Left and Right—that we cannot allow.’
‘But Marshal,’ Mikolajczyk objected, ‘one cannot dictate who will be in public life.’ Stalin looked at him as if he was mad.
In his reports to Roosevelt, Churchill wrote that Stalin wanted Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to form ‘a realm of independent, anti-Nazi, pro-Russian States’ with the first two possibly uniting. The Soviet leader no longer objected to the British notion of a Danubian federation of Austria, Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Baden with Vienna as its capital— though he did not want Hungary to join. In Germany, the Ruhr and Saar should probably be put under international control, as should the Kiel Canal. The Rhineland was to be a separate state. ‘I am not opposed to this line of thought,’ Churchill wrote, ‘however, you may be sure that we came to no fixed conclusion pending the triple meeting.’
Going out of his way to be a good host, Stalin even changed his tune on the punishment of Germans by saying there should be no executions without trial. He gave his guest a brooch of British and Soviet flags with ‘Liberty’ written beneath them in Russian—a present from Svetlana for Sarah Churchill. He reassured Churchill that, ‘We Russians are not as clever as you think; we’re simple, rather stupid. No one in Europe can be persuaded that England is either simple or stupid.’
He described himself as a ‘rough man and not much good at compliments.’ ‘I do not speak much but drinking eases the tongue,’ he reflected. Churchill told his doctor it would be ‘a catastrophe’ if anything happened to the Soviet leader.
* * * *
For their final meeting, Churchill, accompanied by Eden, arrived at the Kremlin at 10 p. m. for dinner in Stalin’s private quarters. As they entered
The entrance hall, the dictator nodded to a door and, recalling the interval delay at the Bolshoi, said: ‘That is where you can wash your hands if you want to, the place where, as I understand it, you English like to conduct your political discussions.’10
They talked of the diplomatic methods of different nations, and Churchill mentioned the Morgenthau Plan—he knew it had been abandoned, but must have wanted to impress the Soviet leader with the readiness of the West to be tough with Germany. Stalin reminisced about his time as a political prisoner in Siberia. He recalled how he caught a big sturgeon by floating a log decked with hooks down a river. When he put it in a pool with several smaller fish, it ate them. Churchill told Moran later that Stalin’s sense of humour was his strongest characteristic.
Referring to his backing for intervention against the Bolsheviks, which seemed to haunt him, the Prime Minister said, ‘I am glad now that I did not kill you.’
Stalin replied with a proverb—‘A man’s eye should be torn out if he can only see the past.’ Churchill made to leave at 3 a. m. The dictator kept him an hour more, growing ever more animated and expansive. As for Churchill, Eden told Oliver Harvey he was ‘very garrulous and repetitive’.
The weather was cold with heavy rain as the British flew out.
Stalin waited in the rain, in a light green overcoat and marshal’s cap.
Standing in front of the cameras, clad in a double-breasted greatcoat and military cap and carrying a stick, Churchill stressed the importance of his ‘many long and intimate talks with my friend and war comrade Marshal Stalin’. He was sure that ‘the warrior statesman and head of Russia will lead the Russian people, all the peoples of Russia, through these years of storm and tempest into the sunlight of a broader and happier age for all.’
The two leaders walked together to the plane. Churchill invited the dictator to inspect the interior. After which, Stalin said he now knew why his visitor enjoyed flying round the world so much. Then the plane taxied down the runway, the Prime Minister doffing his military cap behind the window. As it took off, the Soviet leader waved his handkerchief.
World History
