Stalin

CHAPTER 11 PACT

In his present mood, PM [Neville Chamberlain] says he will resign rather than sign alliance with Soviet.

SIR ALEXANDER CADOGAN,

British permanent undersecretary for foreign affairs, private diary entry, May 20, 1939 ¹

HITLER: “The scum of the earth, I believe?”

STALIN: “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?”

DAVID LOW, “Rendezvous,” Evening Standard, September 20, 1939

ALMOST THE ENTIRE SUMMER OF 1939, Hitler would be absent from Berlin, ensconced at the Berghof, in the Obersalzberg, with Eva Braun, his longtime companion, leaving little central government to speak of. The Führer made strategic decisions, but their shape and timing depended to an extent on who might, or might not, enjoy access to him. Foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop—or his liaison—was contriving to show up at the Berghof to cajole Hitler into taking the plunge of rapprochement with the “Judeo-Bolsheviks.” For such a coup de main, the insecure Ribbentrop might seem an unlikely personage. Growing up, he had been middle class, then married the heiress to a champagne fortune, acquired knowledge of French and English, traveled Europe as a wine salesman, and cajoled an aunt into legally adopting him so that he could obtain her (recently acquired) aristocratic title. “Von” Ribbentrop had joined the Nazis late (1932), and, some said, only at his wife’s urging.² Goebbels said of him, “He bought his name, he married his money, and he swindled his way into office.” For Hitler’s interpreter, Paul-Otto Schmidt, Ribbentrop called to mind the dog on the label of the gramophone company His Master’s Voice. “If Hitler was displeased with him,” Schmidt noted, “Ribbentrop went sick and took to his bed like an hysterical woman.”³ Göring mocked Ribbentrop as “Germany’s No. 1 parrot” and badmouthed him to the Führer. “But,” the Führer would respond, Ribbentrop “knows a lot of important people in England.” Göring was scathing: “Mein Führer, that may be right, but the bad thing is, they know him.”⁴

Ribbentrop was a tool. But he was not only a tool. When serving as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—a posting he had gotten only as a consolation for originally being passed over for state secretary—he had rarely been at his post, for he was courting Hitler or negotiating with Japan and Italy for an alliance against Britain. When in London, he was mocked in British circles as “von Brickendrop,” infamous for mistreating all and sundry, including the tailors who served the British aristocracy and related stories of his imperiousness to their clientele. In Ribbentrop’s mind, however, the British had maltreated him.⁵ Now, for such a staunch Anglophobe, a deal with Moscow could be his revenge, and a stunning feather in his foreign minister’s cap.⁶ Otto von Bismarck—ostensibly a lodestar for Ribbentrop—had famously established good relations with Russia as a key to Germany’s aggrandizement. In truth, Ribbentrop could not even abide working in Bismarck’s modest old office at 76 Wilhemstrasse. (Back in the day, the Iron Chancellor had also been his own foreign minister.) Instead, the Nazi foreign minister moved his office to the former presidential palace next door, which was his official residence.⁷ But Ribbentrop operated by intuition and strove to be “radical,” rarely invoking limits (or consequences), which pleased Hitler no end. And what could be more radical, in its way, than a deal with Communist Moscow?

Molotov, too, was an Anglophobe. He was also a Germanophile, who had publicly differentiated between the “ideologues of National Socialism” and “the German nation, as one of the great nations of our times.”⁸ He doggedly insisted that a deal could be done with that swine Hitler. This view was, or had become, Stalin’s inclination, as Molotov knew. He would seem to be a fitting partner for Ribbentrop, and the two together, in turn, fitting representatives for their respective masters in the complicated game of finding the elusive rapprochement. But Molotov was negotiating with the British and the French; there were no political negotiations per se with Germany, other than the on-again, off-again trade talks. And the Far East seized center stage in the late spring and summer of 1939. There, against Japan, the Soviet Union had not even a whiff of possible “collective security” with the British or the United States (which was a supplier of strategic materials to Japan). On the contrary, with Japan armed in the east and Hitler armed to the teeth in the west, Stalin worried not only about a two-front war against the two powers that had defeated Russia in separate major wars earlier in the century, but about how Britain, opportunistically, might join one or even both.⁹

FAR EASTERN SKIRMISH

Back on May 10–11, 1939, as some twenty Mongol cavalry were grazing horses on the banks of the Halha River (Halhin Gol in Mongolian), near a cluster of huts (the village of Nomonhan, in Japanese), a Manchukuo force drove them off; the next day, the Mongols returned in numbers. Unlike the bloody clash over uninhabited hills at Lake Khasan near the Soviet-Korean-Manchukuo frontier the year before, this one concerned valuable pastures along the river, which served as a boundary.¹⁰ The Tokyo high command’s failure to impose unambiguous directives on Japan’s Kwantung Army, despite the latter’s record of high-handedness, reflected a multicenteredness in the Japanese political system that frustrated the Germans and the Soviets alike. It also allowed hotheads inside Japanese institutions to seize the initiative. The Kwantung Army had devised a new contingency war plan against the Soviet Union involving an all-out offensive toward Chita and Lake Baikal, to cut off the entire Soviet Far East. This bold design to seize a spectacular victory would expose the Kwantung Army to possibly devastating Soviet counterattack from the Mongolian salient, a vulnerability that argued for evicting the Red Army from Mongolia.

The Kwantung command, in this context, had recently issued inflammatory new guidelines, which Tokyo headquarters had rubber-stamped, for border skirmishes. “If the enemy crosses the frontier, . . . annihilate them without delay,” the new rules stated. “It is permissible to enter Soviet territory, or to trap or lure Soviet troops into Manchukuoan territory.”¹¹ The new rules even allowed local commanders to establish boundaries “on their own initiative” where ambiguity reigned (in effect, everywhere). When, during a briefing on the new rules of engagement, the latest grazing incident was reported to the Kwantung Army division commander responsible for the border, he decided, on May 13, to implement them.¹² Japanese reconnaissance discovered a pontoon bridge across the Halha to the right bank and decided to cut off this escape, entrap the “intruders,” and annihilate them. On May 19, Stalin had Molotov warn Japanese ambassador Tōgō that the Soviets possessed information concerning Japanese and Manchukuo forces violating the Mongolian frontier at the Halha River, and that “there is a limit to all patience, and I ask the ambassador to relay this to the Japanese government: that there will be no more of this.”¹³

Voroshilov, meanwhile, was receiving reports of Soviet indecisiveness from the area near the Halha River, and, on the recommendation of chief of staff Shaposhnikov, summoned a more decisive person. On May 24, in Voroshilov’s office, the deputy commander of the Belorussian military district, a cavalry specialist, received a briefing on developments along Mongolia’s borders, to which he was instructed to fly immediately. His mission was to investigate the military situation, then recommend and, if necessary, take corrective measures.¹⁴ That commander was Georgy Zhukov. Like Beria, he would prove to be another missing piece. A peasant’s son (b. 1896), he had worked the fields like all the village children (in his case from age seven), attended the local church school for three years, and, at age eleven, departed for Moscow to apprentice in a furrier’s shop (where he slept on the floor). Zhukov had been conscripted in the Great War and, despite his lowly origins, awarded two St. George’s Crosses before joining the Reds in summer 1918 and fighting in the famed First Cavalry Army. Twenty years later, the NKVD had wiped out almost all the commanders under whom he had served, making him an associate of “enemies of the people.” Zhukov would later claim that his summons by Voroshilov, without explanation, had given him pause, and that his unexpected posting to the Mongolia-Manchukuo frontier had saved his life.¹⁵

It did not take Zhukov long to see that Soviet forces facing the Japanese were a mess.¹⁶ But, incredibly, Kwantung Army intelligence had failed to notice that the bridgehead on the Halha was held by Soviet forces. On the morning of May 28, when 2,500 troops of the Japanese Kwantung Army followed through on the plan to cut off the pontoon escape route of the Mongol cavalry, then launch a frontal assault to drive them backward into waiting Japanese units, they met barrages of Soviet artillery and armor. Japan maintained air superiority, so, over just two days, the Red Air Force lost 15 fighter planes in combat, while the Japanese lost a single plane. (Voroshilov called the front and exploded.)¹⁷ But the Japanese rear unit sent to cut off the Mongol escape route was wiped out nearly to a man, and the battered Japanese troops in the frontal assault retreated.¹⁸ On May 31 at the Supreme Soviet, Molotov, in a speech almost entirely devoted to relations with the Western powers, publicly repeated the patience-running-out warning to Japan, noting that “we will defend the borders of the Mongolian People’s Republic as decisively as our own, in line with our mutual assistance pact with them.”¹⁹ But the Kwantung Army was not likely to walk away.

GERMAN CUL-DE-SAC

The Germans feared success in the Soviet-British talks, and on May 30, 1939, the German foreign ministry had suddenly been ordered to undertake “definite negotiations” with the Soviets and not to be limited to economic issues—an apparent affirmative response to Molotov’s ultimatum, a point conveyed by Weizsäcker to Astakhov, the Soviet chargé d’affaires in Berlin.²⁰ The next day in Tokyo, however, Ott suddenly became confident about German negotiations with Japan, reporting that the private secretary of Japan’s prime minister had told him that “the latter was firmly resolved to put through the [Germany-Japan] alliance,” and that the deputy war minister had told him the Japanese army would overcome the opposition of the Japanese navy.²¹ If so, this could scuttle any German talks with Moscow. On June 5, the Japanese cabinet approved a compromise vis-à-vis Germany’s demands whereby Japan assented to automatic involvement in any German-Soviet conflict and freedom to choose the appropriate moment to enter any other conflicts (such as a German-British one). This compromise represented a major policy victory for the Japanese army. But Japan’s unsophisticated representative in Berlin, Lieutenant General Ōshima, seems not to have conveyed the decision to Germany.²² Stalin, in any case, knew the real Japanese position—policy paralysis—thanks to Sorge, who had high contacts among Japanese ruling circles.

On June 4, further solid information on German plans for an invasion of Poland came from Rudolf von Scheliha, the Soviet spy in the German embassy in Warsaw, via Kleist, Ribbentrop’s aide for the east, who had recently visited the Polish capital. The German ambassador there (von Moltke) and the air force attaché had been recalled to Berlin for consultations.²³ The combination of Hitler’s designs on Poland and inconclusive German-Japanese talks could potentially push the Führer to cut a deal with the Soviet devil.²⁴ At long last, it appeared that Stalin’s long-standing use of economic talks as a pathway to political talks might bear fruit. But distrust ran deep.²⁵ And Hitler might be bluffing.

Soviet-German “talks” were not formal and not always direct. On June 14, as the German foreign ministry learned the next day, Astakhov told the Bulgarian envoy in Berlin, Parvan Draganov, that “if Germany would declare that she would not attack the Soviet Union or that she would conclude a nonaggression pact with her, the Soviet Union would probably refrain from concluding a pact with England. However, the Soviet Union did not know what Germany really wanted.”²⁶ Schulenburg had left Moscow for consultations in Berlin. On June 21, Köstring, also in Berlin for consultations, had an audience with Hitler.²⁷ Back in Moscow, on June 28, Schulenburg informed the Soviet foreign ministry that Germany sought “not just normalization but improvement in its relations with the USSR,” a stance he said had been conveyed to him by Ribbentrop and approved by Hitler.²⁸ Around this time, Ribbentrop’s Italian counterpart and confidant, Ciano, evidently “leaked” to the Soviet chargé in Rome the possibility of a German-Soviet nonaggression pact, economic agreement, joint guarantee of the Baltic states, and mediation in the relations with Japan.²⁹ But on June 30, Ribbentrop, on Hitler’s orders, suddenly directed that the haphazard political contacts be broken off and that any resumption of talks for a trade agreement be delayed.³⁰

NO ANSWERS

Soviet-Western talks were formal and direct, but fraught as well. Besides Polish acquiescence in possible Red Army transit, a second major sticking point proved to be Soviet insistence on “guarantees” for the Baltic states’ territorial integrity, to prevent Germany from using them as springboards for an attack. But the Western powers—citing the circumstance that these countries themselves were not asking for such guarantees—balked. As the Soviet ambassador would report from Paris, the Western powers viewed such a guarantee as offering Moscow “a free hand in the Baltics.”³¹ Stalin, for his part, viewed the Balts’ professed “strict neutrality” as a pretense.³² Top political figures in authoritarian Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as in democratic Finland, were publicly cozying up to the Nazis. On June 7, 1939, Estonia and Latvia had signed nonaggression pacts with Germany in Berlin; this was soon followed by visits to Estonia by chief of staff Lieutenant General Franz Halder, commander of German land forces, and Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr. Molotov demanded that Estonia reverse course and place itself under Soviet protection. But Estonia considered a Soviet “guarantee” of its territorial integrity the worst of both worlds: it would anger Nazi Germany and invite Soviet occupation.³³

On June 10, Molotov, through Maisky in London, communicated an unambiguous Soviet demand for British assent in preventing the three Baltic states from being used in an aggression against the USSR. Pravda (June 13) publicly dismissed possible objections.³⁴ On June 15, one month into the negotiations with the Western powers, Molotov, in a telegram to the Soviet envoys in London and Paris, wrote that the British and the French “do not want a serious agreement based on the principle of reciprocity and equality of conditions.”³⁵ Some British officials internally urged that London accede to Soviet security demands for “guarantees” for the Baltics, even while conceding that Stalin might then have a pretext to seize them. But Chamberlain—who had handed Hitler Czechoslovakia—refused.

Stalin was stupefied. The British imperialists had seized one quarter of the earth, across oceans, and yet they kept invoking “principle” in a refusal to allow him to protect himself in connection with microscopic territories, contiguous with the Soviet homeland, that until recently had belonged to Russia and that represented a threat? Around this time, at a Grand Kremlin Palace reception, the dancer Igor Moiseyev, whose folk ensemble had become among the most popular acts, was talking to Voroshilov. Stalin cherished their number “Moscow-Region Lyrical,” from the dance cycle Pictures from the Past, and, as the defense commissar asked what Moiseyev planned to stage next, Stalin approached. Apprised of the conversation, he said, “All the same, they will never stage what Stalin needs.” Moiseyev: “Iosif Vissarionovich, do you have a bad opinion of us?” Stalin: “Not at all, but what Stalin needs (he spoke of himself in the third person) you will not stage. . . . For example, will you stage the rout of England and France?” Silence ensued. Faces froze. Stalin moved on.³⁶

Domestic political pressures did compel Chamberlain to send someone to Moscow to “accelerate the negotiations.” Maisky, the Soviet envoy, had suggested on June 12 that the British send Foreign Secretary Halifax, who seemed favorably disposed to a deal, but nothing had come of it. Nor would Chamberlain consent to sending Anthony Eden, the former foreign secretary, who had met Stalin and offered to go. Instead the PM dispatched William Strang, who, during Eden’s Moscow visit, had also met Stalin. “Of all the dictators, Stalin was, in personal intercourse, seemingly most like a normal human being,” Strang would write. “In conference as we saw him, . . . his voice was low and even, his manner serene, his delivery unemphatic, his sense of humour quietly playful, his exposition concise in form, conciliatory in tone but unbending in substance. He had a rock-like quality which made him appear to be more securely founded than his rival dictators.”³⁷ But Strang was a mere foreign office functionary, and he was sent not as a special plenipotentiary, but only “to assist” Ambassador Seeds. Zhdanov, on June 29, published an essay in Pravda titled “The British and the French Do Not Want an Equal Agreement with the USSR.”

Molotov, for his part, referred to his capitalist counterparts as “crooks and cheats” internally, and to their faces he demanded that any obligations be spelled out in detail, telling Seeds that the 1935 Franco-Soviet pact “had turned out to be merely a paper delusion.” The Soviet Union’s top “diplomat” also made a point of sitting at his desk while raised on a proscenium, forcing his Western interlocutors to remain below in deskless chairs, their notepads uncomfortably perched on their laps. (Neither Molotov nor his deputy Potyomkin, who did the interpreting, took notes, according to the British side, but Molotov seemed to them to be pressing a button on his desk, perhaps to record the conversation.)³⁸ Seeds and French envoy Naggiar were also unnerved by the door behind Molotov that always seemed to be open, suspecting that Stalin was eavesdropping. (Kremlin logbooks record no meetings in the Little Corner during the time Molotov was negotiating.) Molotov introduced new demands at will, and he failed to perceive the differences in French and British proposals. Such incomprehension of nuance, on top of the disdain for diplomatic convention, might have mattered had the British government been interested in a deal. “I am so skeptical of the value of Russian help,” Chamberlain wrote privately to his sister (July 2, 1939), “that I should not feel our position was greatly worsened if we had to do without them.”³⁹

WAR

Vsevolod Meyerhold, the USSR’s most renowned theater director, who had traveled to Leningrad to finalize the choreography of a mass spectacle of physical culture involving 30,000 young athletes moving in unison to glorify the regime, was rewarded by being arrested. At Moscow’s infamous Butyrka prison, he would be tortured into confessing to espionage for Britain as well as Japan. “The investigators began to use force on me, a sick, 65-year-old man,” he wrote in a letter to Molotov. “I was made to lie facedown and then beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap. . . . When those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again began to beat the red-blue-yellow bruises with the strap, and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling hot water was being poured on those sensitive areas. . . . I began to incriminate myself in the hope that this, at least, would lead quickly to the scaffold.” Meyerhold’s interrogators had urinated into his mouth and smashed his right (writing) hand to bits.⁴⁰ Right around the same time, his second wife and lead actress, the Russified ethnic German Zinaida Reich, was brutally stabbed to death, including through the eyes, in their home.⁴¹ None of her valuables were taken.⁴² Meyerhold knew nothing of his wife’s murder; his colleagues knew nothing of his fate, only that his photographs had been taken down or cut out.

Molotov was stressing to the German ambassador that Berlin’s stance toward Soviet-Japanese relations was a key consideration in any possible German-Soviet rapprochement.⁴³ But Berlin was still looking for a deal with Tokyo, as Sorge had secretly reported on June 27.⁴⁴ On July 1, Ott conveyed to Berlin that he had still “not been able to obtain complete clarity regarding Japanese reservations.”⁴⁵ On July 2, Hitler, in Hamburg for the funeral of a military general, mentioned the possibility of an agreement with the Soviet Union in a speech to Nazi party officials.⁴⁶ On July 5, Ott wrote again to Weizsäcker: “As to the negotiations for an alliance, these arguments confirm once again that the Navy has been fighting tenaciously for a policy of waiting and seeing what America would do, and of entering the war only at a later stage.” Ribbentrop wrote on the document: “Führer.”⁴⁷ It had become evident that Germany would not be able to conclude a substantive military alliance with Japan, let alone intercede with Tokyo on behalf of Moscow.⁴⁸

Near Mongolia, as Japan’s Kwantung Army readied its counterstrike, Voroshilov was receiving denunciations of Soviet commanders in the Far East, Beria playing his part.⁴⁹ Zhukov, with the support of Grigory Stern, head of the Transbaikal military district in Chita (and the victor in the Lake Khasan border skirmish), had sacked the Soviet frontline commander in Mongolia. He also set up a belated intelligence network on the enemy and began massing troops, artillery, tanks, and planes with experienced airmen (many of them Spanish civil war veterans).⁵⁰ Colonel Akio Doi, Japanese military attaché in Moscow, who happened to be returning to Japan, warned Kwantung Army headquarters in person on his way home that although the Soviets had often shown passivity during previous border incidents, this time a firm reply could be expected. The Kwantung Army’s own intelligence warned that the Soviets had two rifle divisions, not the anticipated small subdivisional unit, poised for action near Nomonhan. Nonetheless, Major Tsuji Masanobu, the author of the new border guidelines at Kwantung Army headquarters, was determined to avenge the earlier failures. The Kwantung Army head ordered an offensive without the approval of his superiors in Tokyo, avoiding sending his directives by telegraph, lest HQ get wind and cancel them.⁵¹

The Japanese counterattack had commenced on June 26–27, 1939, with a 130-airplane raid deep behind the Soviet-Mongolian positions. Tokyo, which wanted to localize the skirmish, reacted angrily to this “defense” of Manchukuo, but the bombing proved successful. On July 1, at sunrise (4:00 a.m.), the Kwantung Army launched a ground offensive with 15,000 troops. By July 2–3 they had achieved tactical success, crossing the Halha River in force to the western bank, thanks to Tsuji’s boldness. By July 4 Zhukov was pounding the Japanese positions with Soviet-made heavy guns as well as German-made 152-millimeter Rheinmetall artillery. The latter, acquired during the cooperation with Germany, had a range (20,000 yards) double that of the Japanese guns. Japanese casualties mounted, and they retreated back across the Halha (the rest of the fighting would take place on the eastern bank). But the Soviets lost huge amounts of armor. Adding to the difficulties, Marshal Kulik, deputy defense commissar and chief of Soviet artillery, had gotten himself posted to the theater and on July 13 ordered Zhukov to withdraw Soviet artillery from the Halha’s eastern banks to the western, so as not to lose it. When Shaposhnikov, chief of staff in Moscow, heard of this the next day, he ordered Zhukov to disobey Kulik. Voroshilov, white hot, dressed Kulik down on the high-frequency phone (“Babble less about all kinds of nonsense”). On July 19, the Soviet forces at the frontier were reorganized into a unified First Army Group, to ensure Zhukov’s uncontested authority.⁵²

SUMMER OF INDETERMINACY

Besides Japan, the Baltic states presented another key to any Nazi-Soviet deal, which Ribbentrop understood, but his deputy, Weizsäcker, opposed any Baltic partition.⁵³ An internal German decision to renew bilateral economic negotiations with the Soviet Union, offering a 200-million-reichsmark credit for Soviet purchases in Germany, emerged on July 7, 1939, and was conveyed to Mikoyan three days later.⁵⁴ On July 9, Proskurov, Soviet military intelligence head, reported to Stalin on the basis of information from the Warsaw-based Soviet spy Kurt Welkisch (“ABC”), who had visited Berlin in June, that Kleist had reconfirmed Nazi plans to annihilate Poland, with a target date of late August or early September (Scheliha’s earlier report had it for July). Kleist noted that Hitler was set upon a “radical solution of the Polish question” regardless of the military position of France and Britain. “Neither the Führer nor Ribbentrop,” Kleist was quoted as saying, “believe that the Soviet Union would take part in Anglo-French military actions against Germany.” That conclusion was based upon the inconclusive state of Western negotiations in Moscow and “the recent behavior of Moscow toward Berlin. Moscow gave us to understand that it is ready to conduct negotiations with us, that it is utterly uninterested in a conflict with Germany, and that it is also uninterested in fighting for England and France.” Kleist added that Germany would keep its hands off the Baltic states, in deference to the Soviet Union, and that “peace-loving relations between Germany and Russia over the next two years, in the Führer’s opinion, are the prerequisite for resolving the problems of Western Europe.”⁵⁵

But Stalin further learned that, with Chamberlain’s approval, on July 18, 1939, Horace Wilson, an adviser to the PM, had met secretly with a “special assistant” to Göring, Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat. The full range of what they discussed cannot be gleaned from Wilson’s account.⁵⁶ Still, Germany’s ambassador to London, Herbert von Dirksen, informed Berlin that Wilson had stated that a nonaggression pact with Germany “would allow England to free itself from its obligations vis-à-vis Poland.”⁵⁷ On July 19, reinforcing the renewed push to cut a deal with Hitler, Chamberlain and Halifax, at a British cabinet meeting, carried the argument not to accede to Soviet demands to open military talks immediately and earnestly for a full alliance with ironclad commitments. But Britain conveyed its agreement to launch the military talks with Moscow, in parallel with the political ones. Maisky was fooled.⁵⁸ On July 20–21, as Stalin took in a physical culture parade on Red Square, the secretary of the British department of overseas trade, Robert Hudson, a scion of a soap king, met with Wohlthat, too, and, as if representing the British government, seems to have offered Hitler not just Danzig and the Polish Corridor but also a large British loan and the settlement of all of Germany’s colonial claims—if only the Führer would refrain from taking all of Poland by force.⁵⁹

“The Biggest Bribe in History,” ran the scandalous headline in the British Daily Express (July 22), which published leaks, evidently from Hudson, of Chamberlain’s back-channel efforts to negotiate with Hitler. Forty-eight hours later, Pravda carried word of the British offer to Germany, with details that were wildly inaccurate but repeated from the British press.⁶⁰

British intelligence had come to understand that “Germany’s future policy is in the keeping of a single man: a visionary, fanatic, and megalomaniac, a being of violent complexes,” who aimed for European domination. But they surmised that Hitler’s rearmament had resulted in a supposedly fragile German economy starved of resources, as well as a supposedly disaffected German populace. Therefore, British intelligence reasoned, Hitler could fight only short wars, and only in places like Poland and Ukraine, where he could not just expend but also grab resources. Halifax, however, wondered whether the limitations on Germany spotlighted by British intelligence might push “the mad dictator to insane adventures.”⁶¹ Chamberlain, for his part, believed that if Britain applied pressure, Germany’s strategic weaknesses would compel Hitler to back down from his domination schemes. After all, what government could avoid accommodating social and economic pressures at home? If he became too headstrong, Hitler might even be overthrown by “moderates.”⁶² “Hitler has concluded that we mean business and the time is not ripe for a major war,” the PM wrote to his sister Ida (July 23, 1939). “Unlike some of my critics I go further and say that the longer the war is put off the less likely it is to come at all.”⁶³

That same day, just as Stalin had learned of Chamberlain’s attempts once more to “bribe” Hitler, the despot further learned of Chamberlain’s pending acquiescence to Japanese pressure. Britain faced a strategic dilemma in Asia, not just Europe, and it was linked to any British policy options for the USSR. Japanese forces were blockading the British—as well as the French—concession in Tientsin (near Peking). The British Royal Navy was far away, and the United States had no intention of risking war with Japan by coming to the aid of British imperial interests in Asia. With Hitler threatening Poland, for which Britain had issued the “guarantee,” London felt constrained to sign the Anglo-Japanese Tientsin Agreement (July 24) to protect its exposed positions. London refused Tokyo’s demands to turn over the Chinese silver in British banks, but it handed over four Chinese nationals accused of assassinating Japanese nationals and then hiding out in the British concession. (The four Chinese were soon executed.) Some contemporaries dubbed the Tientsin deal a Far Eastern Munich. For Stalin, Tientsin underscored the absence of serious Western opposition to Japan’s aggression in China and its imperial ambitions, including vis-à-vis Soviet territory in the east.⁶⁴

The Japanese war minister had resumed his drive against internal opposition from the navy and the civilian government for a binding alliance with Germany against the USSR; Sorge continued to report on the talks.⁶⁵ The Kwantung Army, at the same time, was planning a renewed offensive near Mongolia. In late July, the Red Army began bringing massive reinforcements into the battle zone. Colonel Doi, back in Moscow, warned Tokyo that something very major was afoot.⁶⁶

Also on July 23, 1939, Molotov demanded of Britain and France that, before the conclusion of a political agreement, tripartite military plans against Germany be coordinated in detail. Two days later, the Western ambassadors conveyed their governments’ willingness to open military-to-military talks.

BALTIC FLIP

In Berlin, rumors had begun to circulate that Ribbentrop had fallen out of favor, because he had failed to anticipate the British guarantee to Poland and its generally hard-line position after the Nazis’ destruction of all of Czechoslovakia.⁶⁷ In fact, Ribbentrop had maneuvered himself into the catbird seat. “He asked the liaison man he kept around Hitler to tell him what the Führer had said in the circle of his closest confidants,” recalled Gustav Hilger, of the Moscow embassy. “From statements of this kind he drew conclusions about Hitler’s intentions and ideas and, at suitable opportunities, would present them to him as his own thoughts.”⁶⁸ The Wehrmacht’s insatiable supply needs, seen against the uncanny complementarity of the Soviet and German economies, and the circumstance that the Soviets could enable Germany to overcome an anticipated British blockade, had provided the foundation for a rapprochement. But the key to everything was Hitler’s planning for war against Poland, in the face of the publicly voiced guarantees to Poland by Britain and France.⁶⁹ Once Ribbentrop had learned that Hitler wanted to “isolate Poland”—that is, to remove or undercut the Anglo-French “guarantees”—the foreign minister had his opening to encourage Hitler to “seize Russia” from the British and the French.⁷⁰

Suddenly, on July 26, 1939, Schnurre, the trade official in the German foreign ministry, invited Astakhov and a Soviet trade official to a private room at a Berlin restaurant and told them that—in fulfillment of Molotov’s prior condition for a commercial treaty—a political agreement was possible, and that the fate of the Baltic states and any other Soviet desiderata would be open for discussion.⁷¹ Astakhov had no instructions for a response. “After the statement of the Russians, I had the impression that Moscow had not decided what they wanted to do,” Schnurre observed in a long memorandum the next day. “The Russians were silent about the status and chances of the English pact negotiations. . . . As a further handicap, there is the excessive distrust not only toward us but toward England as well. From our point of view it may be regarded as a noteworthy success that Moscow, after months of negotiations with England, still remains uncertain as to what she ought to do eventually.”⁷²

On July 29, Nevile Henderson, British ambassador to Germany, drove to Bayreuth to contrive a meeting with Hitler. (“Though absolutely unmusical,” Henderson would observe, “I like Wagner.”) His car broke down en route. Once finally there, during Die Walküre, he managed only to glimpse the Führer from afar. “If he had wanted to speak to me,” Henderson noted, “Hitler could have done so; for he must have been informed that I was there.”⁷³ But the envoy did not lose faith. “As I pointed out at the time to His Majesty’s Government, the Polish question was not one of Hitler’s making,” Henderson would write. “The Corridor and Danzig were a real German national grievance, and some equitable settlement had to be found.”⁷⁴

Britain had also been consulting in Baltic capitals, posing as the defender of small countries, but the Balts, perceiving fecklessness, more and more looked to Germany as the only realistic counterbalance to the USSR. Germany’s position, however, had shifted precipitously. On August 2, Ribbentrop invited in Astakhov and told him that, “from the Baltic to the Black Sea, there was no problem which could not be solved to our mutual satisfaction.”⁷⁵ The Soviet envoy, in his report to Molotov, surmised that the Germans were declaring their disinterest in the fate of former Russian Poland, the Baltic states (Lithuania excepted), and Bessarabia and repudiating any designs on Ukraine. In exchange, Germany sought Soviet disinterest in the fate of Danzig and the provinces of former German Poland, with former Austrian Poland a matter for further clarification. Germany’s ultimate aim, Astakhov concluded, was “to neutralize us in the case of war with Poland,” although, he added, any long-term acquiescence by Germany to the above arrangements was doubtful.⁷⁶

Schulenburg enjoyed more frequent access to Molotov than other ambassadors in Moscow, but still he found him largely inscrutable; the pair never developed chemistry. On August 3, Molotov acceded to the German’s request for an audience and heard the recent accommodating news from Ribbentrop firsthand. “Molotov abandoned his habitual reserve and appeared unusually open,” Schulenburg reported to Berlin the next day, but the Soviet government head nonetheless made a point of condemning the Anti-Comintern Pact and stated that “proofs of a changed attitude of the German Government were for the present still lacking.” Schulenburg further noted to Berlin that “my general impression is that the Soviet Government are determined to conclude an agreement with Britain and France, if they fulfill all Soviet wishes.” He added that the “negotiations, to be sure, might last a long time, especially since mistrust of England is also great.”⁷⁷ Hitler had become exceedingly anxious about a British-French-Soviet military convention.⁷⁸ Wittingly or unwittingly, Schulenburg was enhancing Stalin’s bargaining position.

PLAYED FOR A FOOL

To lead the long-awaited military-to-military talks with the two Western powers, Stalin appointed defense commissar Marshal Voroshilov, assisted by chief of staff Marshal Shaposhnikov, the naval commissar, and the air force head—the highest-level military group the Soviet despot could have assembled.⁷⁹ The British, after very long delay, finally indicated that they would send the Honorable Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, commandant of Portsmouth. Beria, as per usual, prepared an NKVD dossier, which was unflattering to the unknown “commandant.”⁸⁰ In London, Maisky noted in his diary, in a tone of considerable optimism about Anglo-Soviet relations, that “a bloc is gradually coming together. . . . The trip of the military missions to Moscow is an historical stage.” And yet he also wrote to Moscow, “I think that, judging from the posts they hold, the delegates will not be able to make any decisions on the spot.”⁸¹ When the Western ambassadors informed Molotov who would be coming, he evidently launched a tirade, then stormed out of his own office.

Stalin received damning reports about British motives from the spy Guy Burgess, who worked at MI6 and divulged crucial information to Anatoly Gorsky (b. 1907), originally a code clerk who had become acting Soviet intelligence chief in London (since late 1938) after the arrests of two superiors in succession. Gorsky was single-handedly responsible for fourteen field agents, including Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, and Kim Philby. He also had to manage cryptography, photography, translation, typing, and communications.⁸² On August 3, Burgess reported to Gorsky that Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s special adviser on foreign affairs, had told him that “the British chiefs of staff are firmly convinced that war with Germany can be won without difficulty and therefore the British government has no need to conclude a defense pact with the Soviet Union. In government circles the opinion expressed is that England never thought about concluding a pact with the USSR. The prime minister’s advisers say openly that Great Britain can do without a Russian pact.” Gorsky also reported that another source, Montagu “Monty” Chidson, had told him that “it is a fundamental policy to work with Germany whatever happens, and, in the end, against the USSR. But it is impossible to conduct this policy openly.” Gorsky added, “Chidson told me that our aim is not to resist German expansion to the east.”⁸³

Drax and his French counterpart traveled to the USSR by sea. The foreign office explained to the British public that no British or French commercial airline flew to the Soviet Union. Of course, the British had the world’s number-one air force. But they had opted not to use their Sunderland “flying boats,” because, it was said, at least eight would have been taken up to accommodate all personnel on the mission. Wellington bombers would have been capacious enough, but these were said to be “uncomfortable.” Water travel, meanwhile, could have been undertaken on fast naval cruisers, but it was said that such vessels lacked sufficient cabins. And so on. What the British and the French would not say was that they worried about the repercussions of crossing Germany, even in the air; the French in particular wanted to avoid too spectacular a method of travel, in order to avoid embarrassment if the Moscow talks failed.⁸⁴ But the Anglo-French decision to travel to Moscow by slow passenger and cargo steamers, and their dubious public explanations, conveyed a stark message to Moscow: this was a charade. On top of everything else, Drax departed the UK only on August 5.

The German foreign ministry official Weizsäcker complained in his diary (August 7) that Berlin was now straining every nerve to achieve a breakthrough, but the Soviets were not responding.⁸⁵ Hitler, with his decision to attack Poland despite British and French guarantees, had effectively backed himself into a corner, and time was running out: also on August 7, Soviet intelligence reported to Stalin that Hitler’s attack on Poland could commence as soon as August 25.⁸⁶ Suddenly, Stalin held all the cards. The despot played it slow. The tension in Berlin reached near hysteria.⁸⁷ Chamberlain, too, had played right into Stalin’s hands, but, unlike Hitler, the British PM appeared to be taking Stalin for a fool. On August 11, the risible Drax mission finally reached Moscow. It carried nine tons of baggage, but just a single person (an aide) who spoke Russian or had some experience of the Soviet Union.⁸⁸ That same day, Stalin convened the politburo and resolved to enter into official talks with Germany.⁸⁹

In the negotiations with the Drax mission, Stalin instructed Voroshilov, mapping out the steps in writing, to take a hard line, but in such a way that the British and the French would be blamed for any failure.⁹⁰ At the opening banquet for the late-arriving, low-level Western delegation, Voroshilov, in dress whites, was in top form, exuding his considerable charm as host at the Spiridonovka Palace, the main reception hall for foreign dignitaries.⁹¹ Treated to a fifty-foot-long table of delicacies, rivers of drink, musicians, and acrobats, the British and the French staggered back to their quarters in the wee hours. The next morning, first thing, Voroshilov pointedly requested their credentials. The French had balanced the British admiral with a general, Joseph Doumenc, who at least had a piece of paper signed by Prime Minister Daladier: it allowed Doumenc to negotiate but not to sign anything. Drax—tall, silver hair, blue eyes—had to admit, as the Soviets already knew, that he had no written authority even to negotiate, let alone sign, a military convention.⁹² When Voroshilov pointedly asked whether the Anglo-French mission had secured permission from their Polish ally for Soviet transit across Poland in the event of war with Germany, Drax gave no answer.

The defense commissar insisted on direct confirmation from the Poles and the Romanians. At a break in the talks, Doumenc took it upon himself to send his own envoy to Warsaw to arrange Polish agreement for Soviet passage through its territory.⁹³ On August 13, with the Nazis openly threatening Danzig, Poland had ordered a partial mobilization of its army. Two days later, the Poles publicly celebrated the nineteenth anniversary of the “miracle on the Vistula,” in which they had driven back the Red Army. In response to French inquiries about granting Red Army transit, Warsaw refused again. Soviet “assistance,” many Poles felt, would be worse than facing the Nazis. “An intelligent rabbit,” Halifax had written of the Poles, “would hardly be expected to welcome the protection of an animal ten times its size, whom it credited with the habits of a boa constrictor.”⁹⁴ But Halifax, just like the Polish government, failed to grasp that refusing the Soviets would mean facing both predators.

Voroshilov initiated a pointed discussion of each side’s common-defense contributions to a prospective anti-German military alliance. Shaposhnikov outlined a massive Soviet commitment of up to 120 infantry divisions, as well as 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks, and as many as 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers. This amounted to more than a million-man force, to be fielded immediately if necessary. The French claimed to have 110 available combat divisions. The British, reluctant to divulge “military secrets,” finally stated that they could commit 16 army divisions. So few? Pressed, the British admitted that the real number was perhaps 5.⁹⁵ (In fact, it was probably 2.) The Soviets, as a land power, had difficulty grasping the full measure of British strength, which was in the air and, especially, on the sea.⁹⁶ Be that as it may, by forcing such a conversation, one of Voroshilov’s interpreters surmised, the defense commissar had deliberately been seeking to humiliate the Anglo-French military men.⁹⁷ Fair enough. But could Stalin be faulted? As far as London was concerned, the real action was in Berlin, where the British had even let on that they did not take seriously their own negotiations with Moscow.⁹⁸

THE HITLER CARD