Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

News of these negotiations leaked out, apparently from the French, who wished to break them off, but the rumor was that the discussions were concerned with Chamberlain’s efforts to give Germany a loan of £ 1,000,000,000. This is not supported by the documents. This outcry, however, made it difficult to carry on the discussions, especially as Hitler and Ribbentrop were not interested. But Chamberlain kept Lord Runciman busy training to be the chief economic negotiator in the great settlement he envisaged. On July 29th, Kordt, the German charge d’affaires in London, had a long talk with Charles Roden Buxton, acting, he believed, on behalf of Chamberlain. It was along the same lines. These offers were repeated in a highly secret conversation between Dirksen and Wilson in the latter’s residence on August 3rd. Wilson wanted a four-Power pact, a free hand for Germany in eastern Europe, a colonial agreement, an economic agreement, and so forth. Dirksen’s record of this conversation then reads:

“After recapitulating his conversation with Wohlthat, Sir Horace Wilson expatiated at length on the great risk Chamberlain would incur by starting confidential negotiations with the German government. If anything about them were to leak out, there would be a grand scandal and Chamberlain would probably be forced to resign.” Dirksen did not see how any binding agreement could be reached under conditions such as this, “for example, owing to Hudson’s indiscretion, another visit of Herr Wohlthat to London was out of the question.” To this, Wilson suggested that “the two emissaries could meet in Switzerland or elsewhere.” It was pointed out by Wilson that if Britain could get a nonaggression pact with Germany, it would adopt a nonintervention policy in respect to Greater Germany. This would embrace the Danzig question, for example.

It is clear that these negotiations were not a purely personal policy of Chamberlain’s but were known to the Foreign Office. For example, on August 9th Lord Halifax repeated much of the political portion of these conversations. After Munich, he said, he had looked forward to fifty years of peace, with “Germany the dominant power on the continent, with predominant rights in southeastern Europe, particularly in the field of commercial policy; Britain would engage only in moderate trade in that area; in Western Europe, Britain and France protected from conflicts with Germany by the lines of fortification on both sides and endeavoring to retain and develop their possessions by defensive means; friendship with America; friendship with Portugal; Spain for the time being an indefinite factor which for the next few years at least would necessarily have to hold aloof from all combinations of powers; Russia an out-of-the-way, vast and scarcely survey able territory; Britain bent on safeguarding her Mediterranean communications with the dominions and the Far East.” This was “three-bloc-world” talk straight from All Souls College or Cliveden.

It was almost impossible to keep negotiations such as these, or rather proposed negotiations, secret. There can be no doubt that rumors about them reached the Russians in July 1939 and, by strengthening their ancient suspicions of Britain, made them decide to avoid any agreement with Britain and to take instead the nonaggression pact offered by Hitler. The outburst of public rage at Russia for doing this by Britain and America now seems singularly inappropriate in view of the fact that the British government was trying to do the same thing at the same time and the fact that France had signed what Russia regarded as a nonaggression pact with Germany on December 6, 1938. Indeed, Sir Nevile Henderson, who undoubtedly was more extreme than some of his associates, went so far as to condone an alliance between Britain and Germany on August 28, 1939. Obviously, such an alliance could be aimed only at Russia. The relevant portion of his report to Lord Halifax reads:

“At the end Herr von Ribbentrop asked me whether I could guarantee that the Prime Minister could carry the country with him in a policy of friendship with Germany. I said there was no possible doubt whatever that he could and would, provided Germany cooperated with him. Herr Hitler asked whether England would be willing to accept an alliance with Germany. I said, speaking personally, I did not exclude such a possibility provided the development of events justified it.”

The theory that Russia learned of these British approaches to Germany in July 1939 is supported by the fact that the obstacles and delays in the path of a British-Russian agreement were made by Britain from the middle of April to the second week of July, but were made by Russia from the second week in July to the end on August 21st. This is supported by other evidence, such as the fact that discussions for a commercial agreement between Germany and Russia, which were broken off on January 30, 1939, were resumed on July 23rd and this agreement was signed on August 19th.

The negotiations for an Anglo-Russian agreement were opened by Britain on April 15th, probably with the double purpose of satisfying the demand in Britain and warning Hitler not to use force against Poland. The first British suggestion was that the Soviet Union should give unilateral guarantees to Poland and Romania similar to those given by Britain. The Russians probably regarded this as a trap to get them into a war with Germany in which Britain would do little or nothing or even give aid to Germany. That this last possibility was not completely beyond reality is clear from the fact that Britain did prepare an expeditionary force to attack Russia in March 1940, when Britain was technically at war with Germany but was doing nothing to fight her.

The Russians did not reject the British suggestion of April 1939, but agreed to guarantee Poland and Romania if the guarantee were extended to all the states on their western frontier, including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania, and if it were accompanied by a mutual-assistance pact of Britain, France, and Russia and by a military convention in which each state specified what it would do if the pact came into effect. This offer was a much greater concession than the British seemed to appreciate, since it meant that Russia was guaranteeing its renunciation of all the territory in these six states which it had lost to them since 1917.

Instead of accepting the offer, the British began to quibble. They refused to guarantee the Baltic States on the ground that these states did not want to be guaranteed, although they had guaranteed Poland on March 31st when Józef Beck did not want it and had just asked the Soviet Union to guarantee Poland and Romania, neither of whom wanted a Soviet guarantee. When the Russians insisted, the British countered by insisting that Greece, Turkey, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland must also be guaranteed. In place of the alliance which Russia wanted, to protect itself against having to fight Germany alone, Britain suggested that the Russian guarantee would become valid only if Britain and France took action to fulfill their own guarantee first.

France and Russia were both pushing Britain to form a Triple Alliance, but Britain was reluctant. Churchill and Lloyd George were pushing in the same direction, but Chamberlain fought back on the floor of the House, refusing to “help to form or to join any opposing blocs.” He also refused to send a cabinet minister to negotiate in Moscow, and refused Eden’s offer to go. Instead, he sent William (later Lord) Strang, a second-rank Foreign Office official, and only on June 14th. Moreover, the British delayed the discussions to the great irritation of the Soviet leaders, although verbally they were always insisting on speed.

To show its displeasure, the Soviet Union on May 3rd replaced Litvinov with Molotov as foreign minister. This should have been a warning. Litvinov knew the West and was favorable to democracy, to collective security, and to the Western Powers. As a Jew, he was anti-Hitler. Molotov was a contrast from every point of view, and could not have been impressed with British sincerity when he had to negotiate with Strang rather than with Halifax or Eden. The conversations continued, with Molotov still in insisting on the three essentials: (1) mutual assistance in a triple alliance, (2) guarantees to all the border states, and (3) specific obligations as to the amount of assistance by a military convention.