Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

Cripps’s optimism swiftly wilted, however. His first interview with Molotov was decidedly chilly, and he was obliged to report that, despite his requests, no further meeting was granted for another ten days thereafter—the classic diplomatic snub. Moreover, the realization began to dawn on him that the Soviets were minded to maintain their benevolent relationship with Germany, and instead of being keen on a realignment of their foreign policy, they were apparently only interested in securing a few additional supplies and using the prospect of British negotiations as a lever on Berlin. Back in London, Foreign Office mandarin Sir Orme Sargeant was grimly realistic:

I am sorry for Sir S. Cripps, who is now entering the humiliating phase which all British negotiators in Moscow have to go through when they are simply kept waiting on the doormat until such time as the Soviet Government consider it desirable, as part of their policy of playing off one Power against the other, to take notice. Stalin has meanwhile got Sir S. Cripps exactly where he wants him, that is to say, as a suppliant on his doormat holding his pathetic little peace offerings of tin in one hand and rubber in the other. Stalin hopes to be able to counter any German browbeating and nagging by pointing to Sir S. Cripps on the doormat, and threatening to have him in and start talking with him instead of with the German Ambassador.

Cripps’s left-wing convictions, far from endearing him to his Soviet hosts, may also have proved an obstacle. As Churchill confessed after the war, “We did not at that time realize sufficiently that Soviet Communists hate Left Wing politicians even more than they do Tories and Liberals. The nearer a man is to Communism in sentiment, the more obnoxious he is to the Soviets, unless he joins the Party.” Cripps, it seems, may have been the wrong choice after all. As the Foreign Office noted, it would have had more success in Moscow if it had sent “a rather rude duke.”

Nonetheless, Cripps persevered, and on July 1, he was granted an audience with Stalin to present a personal message from Churchill. France having now fallen, Churchill was anxious to reiterate Britain’s position and to ask Stalin to reconsider his. “Germany became your friend almost at the same moment as she became our enemy,” Churchill wrote. Now that the military situation had changed, he wanted to make it plain that it remained Britain’s policy to save herself from German domination and to liberate the rest of Europe. And, while he conceded that only the Soviet Union could judge whether Germany’s bid for hegemony constituted a threat to its interests, Churchill reassured Stalin that the British government was prepared to discuss any of the problems created by German aggression.

Stalin’s response gave little away. He was said to have been “formal and frigid” during the meeting, ignoring Cripps’s tentative probing and delivering no direct reply to Churchill’s message. If concerned by the strategic shift that Hitler’s defeat of France had clearly caused, he certainly did not let it show. Indeed, during this “severely frank discussion,” Stalin made his clumsy comments about opposing Britain’s desired preservation of “the old equilibrium” in Europe, thereby appearing to welcome the seismic impact that Hitler’s aggression had wrought. Far from mourning France’s fall, therefore, Stalin seemed to celebrate it.

Cripps was left in little doubt that Stalin was wedded to his German alignment and that there would be no major shift in Soviet foreign policy without substantial concessions from the British side. This, he feared, was most unlikely, not least because he believed that Britain in truth had “not the slightest desire to work with Russia” and that ingrained British hostility to the USSR had in fact contributed to driving Stalin into Hitler’s arms. As if his task were not difficult enough, Cripps’s faith in it was tested still further by the release of documents captured by the Germans in Paris relating to Operation Pike, the aborted Allied plan to bomb the Soviet oilfields. Britain’s embarrassment, it seemed, was complete.

In an attempt to break the resulting impasse, Cripps’s next approach sought to add some genuine substance to the well-meaning rhetoric, in what he saw as a “last opportunity” to shift Moscow in London’s direction. Building on conversations both with Molotov and with his political masters in Whitehall, Cripps presented a revised proposal on October 22 that amounted in many ways to a mirror image of the arrangement that the Soviets had come to with Hitler the year before. Under its terms, Britain offered what might be called a reset of its relationship with Moscow. It promised to treat the USSR on a par with the United States, consulting with the Soviet government on questions of postwar organization and ensuring Moscow’s participation in the future peace conference. In addition, Britain pledged to refrain from entering into anti-Soviet alliances, on the condition that Moscow abstained from hostile action either directly or by internal agitation. Furthermore, the British government agreed to recognize the de facto sovereignty of the USSR over those areas gained under the pact with Hitler: the Baltic states, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. Also, trade between the two countries was to be developed to the widest possible extent, with particular emphasis on supplying those items that the USSR required for its defense. In return, the Soviet Union was obliged to maintain the same “favorable neutrality” in its relations with Britain that it did with Germany. Lastly, London and Moscow would sign a pact of nonaggression.

The Soviet response was less than enthusiastic, stymied no doubt by the fact that Molotov was in Berlin in mid-November 1940 to discuss a possible reset of the eminently more fruitful Soviet-German relationship. Matters were also not helped by the fact that details of the British approach were leaked to the international press, and the story duly appeared—to profound embarrassment in Whitehall—in the News Chronicle on November 16, 1940, and in the Times two days later. Although Cripps angrily suspected the Foreign Office as the source of the leak, it had actually come from the Soviet embassy in London, doubtless timed to put maximum pressure on the Germans by highlighting Moscow’s ongoing discussions with the British.

In the absence of any formal Soviet reply, it was left to the veteran ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky, to articulate Moscow’s concerns. In his view, the proposals aroused “surprise and irritation.” Surprise because he believed that the British position lacked any realistic foundation: Britain simply had little of any value to offer, he said—even recognition of Soviet sovereignty in the Baltic and elsewhere was scarcely a novel development. His irritation, meanwhile, stemmed from the perceived arrogance of the proposal, the idea that Britain could somehow dispense its postwar benefices to a grateful world. “Does the British Government imagine itself to be something like the Apostle Peter,” Maisky asked mockingly, “who holds in his hands the keys to Paradise?”

Clearly, London would have to work substantially harder, offer much more of substance, or think more laterally if it were to win Moscow over. As Maisky put it to Halifax some days later, “Believe me we are tired of your good intentions, we can only be convinced by your good deeds.” The British proposal would be formally rejected on February 1, 1941.

With that, many in Whitehall were content to concede that there was little mileage to be gained through further overtures. Britain had made its best offer and been rebuffed; “it was up to the Russians,” said one mandarin, “to make the next approach.” Yet Cripps was undeterred, and in early April he submitted a memorandum to Molotov’s deputy, Andrei Vyshinsky, hinting at the new direction he thought British policy might take, raising the specter of London making peace with the Germans. Cripps, formerly a hardened apologist for Soviet actions, had begun to doubt that the Soviets were entirely honorable in their negotiations and worried that they, too, were merely playing with the British. His experience of negotiating with Stalin and his acolytes, it appeared, had convinced him that the best way to deal with the Soviets was to take a firm line—more rude duke than devout Marxist. And much to Whitehall’s amusement, he was now pushing London to adopt a policy of toughness toward Moscow rather than conciliation. In his memorandum to Vyshinsky, therefore, Cripps indulged in some mealymouthed saber rattling of his own, warning that “it was not outside the bounds of possibility, if the war were protracted for a long period, that there might be a temptation for Great Britain to come to some arrangement to end the war on the sort of basis which has again recently been suggested in certain German quarters.” Whether or not Vyshinsky fully grasped his meaning, Cripps evidently believed that one way of exerting pressure on Stalin was to threaten to negotiate with Hitler.