Simon Montefiore - Stalin

The removal of the Jews was a signal to Hitler—but Stalin always sent double messages: Molotov appointed Solomon Lozovsky, a Jew, as one of his deputies. 2

The European poker game was played out with swift moves, secret talks and cold hearts. The stakes were vast. The dictators proved much more adept at this fast-moving game than the democracies who had started to play in earnest much too late. As the fighting intensified against the Japanese, Hitler was raising the ante, having consumed Austria and Czechoslovakia, by turning his Panzers towards Poland. Belatedly, the Western democracies realized he had to be stopped: on 31 March, Britain and France guaranteed the Polish borders. They needed Russia to join them but failed to see things from Stalin’s angle and did not understand his sense of weakness and isolation. Ironically the Polish guarantee increased Stalin’s doubts about the depth of this British commitment: if Hitler invaded Poland, what was to stop “perfidious Albion” from using the guarantee as a mere bargaining chip to negotiate another Munich-style deal, leaving Hitler on his borders?

Stalin therefore required a contractual military alliance with the West if he was not to turn to Hitler. On 29 June, Zhdanov backed the German option in a Pravda article in which he stated his “personal opinion” that “I permit myself to express… although not all my friends share it… They still think that in beginning negotiations with the USSR, the English and French governments have serious intentions… I believe the English and French governments have no wish for a treaty of equality with the USSR…” The vulnerability of Leningrad made a free hand in the Baltic States necessary: that was the price of what Zhdanov called “equality.” Zhdanov’s son Yury remembers Stalin and his father reading a specially translated Mein Kampf and endlessly discussing the pros and cons of a German alliance. Stalin read in D’Abernon’s Ambassador of the World that if Germany and Russia were allies, “the dangerous power of the east” would overshadow Britain. “Yes!” Stalin noted approvingly in the margin.

Britain and France had despatched a hapless and ludicrously low-level delegation to Moscow by slow steamship to offer an alliance but no guarantee of Soviet frontiers and no freedom of action in the Baltics. When Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (author of a book called Handbook on Solar Heating ) and General Joseph Doumenc arrived in Leningrad on the night of 9–10 August, the German–Russian flirtation was getting serious. The Admiral and the General took the train to Moscow and were taken to meet Voroshilov and Molotov.

Stalin was unimpressed with the quadruple-barrelled Admiral when he discussed the delegations with Molotov and Beria: “They’re not being serious. These people can’t have the proper authority. London and Paris are playing poker again…”

“Still the talks should go ahead,” said Molotov.

“Well if they must, they must.” This was now turning into an auction for Stalin’s favours but with only one serious bidder. In Germany, meanwhile, Hitler decided to invade Poland on 26 August: suddenly, the agreement with Stalin was desperately necessary. The meetings with the Western powers only got started on 12 August but the gap between what the West was willing to offer and the price Stalin demanded was unbridgeable. That day, the Russians signalled to the Germans that they were ready to start negotiations, even on the dismemberment of Poland. On the 14th, Hitler decided to send Ribbentrop, his Foreign Minister, to Moscow. On the 15th, the German Ambassador Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg requested a meeting with Molotov, who, rushing to check with Stalin, reported that Russia was ready. When this news reached Ribbentrop, he hurried to tell Hitler at the Berghof. On the 17th, Voroshilov proposed a treaty of mutual military assistance to the British and French but added that there was no point in continuing the discussion until they had persuaded the Poles and Romanians to allow the passage of Soviet troops in the event of a German attack. But Drax had not yet received orders from London.

“Enough of these games!” Stalin told Molotov. “The English and French wanted us for farmhands and at no cost!” On the afternoon of Saturday the 19th, Molotov hurriedly summoned Schulenburg, handing him a draft non-aggression pact that was more formal than the German version but contained nothing objectionable. Having signed the trade treaty that Stalin had specified was necessary before the real business could begin, the Germans, whose deadline was fast approaching, waited with a gambler’s anticipation. Hitler shrewdly decided to cut the Gordian knot of mutual trust and prestige by personally addressing Stalin in a telegram dated 20 August: “Dear Mr. Stalin.” Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov agreed to the reply:

To Chancellor of Germany A. Hitler. Thank you for your letter. I hope the German–Soviet agreement of non-aggression will be a turning point towards serious improvement of political relations between our countries… The Soviet government has instructed me to inform you that it agrees to Mr. Ribbentrop visiting Moscow on 23 August.

Far to the east, that Sunday the 20th, Georgi Zhukov, commander of the Soviet army on the Khalkin-Gol River, launched a formidable cannonade against the Japanese, then attacked across the front. By the 23rd, the Japanese were defeated with losses as high as 61,000 men, a bloody nose that was enough to dissuade them from attacking Russia again.

At 3 p.m. on Monday the 21st, Molotov received Schulenburg who passed on Hitler’s request for a meeting on the 23rd. Two hours later, he and Stalin confirmed the historic visit of Ribbentrop. Suddenly the two dictators were no longer holding back but hurtling towards one another, arms outstretched. At 7 p.m. the next day, Voroshilov dismissed the British and French: “Let’s wait until everything has been cleared up…” [152] The comedy of these negotiations was neatly encapsulated in the question of the Order of the Bath. Drax had arrived without the relevant credentials, a mistake that told Stalin all he needed to know about Western commitment. At the very moment the credentials finally arrived, they had become utterly irrelevant. When Sir Reginald proudly read out his official titles and arrived at this noble order, the Soviet interpreter declaimed: “Order of the Bathtub.” Marshal Voroshilov, displaying both his overwhelming characteristics—childlike naïvety and heroic bungling capacity—interrupted to ask: “Bathtub?” “In the reign of our early kings,” Drax droned, “our knights used to travel round Europe on horseback, slaying dragons and rescuing maidens in distress. They would return home travel-stained and grimy and report… to the King [who] would sometimes offer a knight a luxury… A bath in the royal bathroom.” The Western democracies could not deliver the “price” of a Soviet alliance, namely to back up the Polish guarantee and deliver the Baltic States into Stalin’s sphere of influence. Perhaps they were right since this would still not guarantee stopping Hitler, while there seemed little point in saving Poland from the Huns to deliver her to the Tatars.

Stalin’s reply reached Hitler at eight-thirty that evening: “Marvellous! I congratulate you,” declaimed Hitler, adding, with the flashiness of the entertainer: “I have the world in my pocket.”

That night, Voroshilov was leading a vital delegation of the Soviet leadership on a duck-shooting expedition into the countryside. Khrushchev had just arrived from Kiev. Before setting off to shoot duck, Khrushchev dined with Stalin at the dacha. It was then that Stalin, “who smiled and watched me closely,” informed him that Ribbentrop was arriving imminently. Khrushchev, who knew nothing about the negotiations, was “dumbfounded. I stared back at him, thinking he was joking.”