World War II Behind Closed Doors (37 page)

The official minutes
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reveal a number of almost surreal moments during the meeting. Voroshilov was either unable to accept or to
comprehend the difficulties of a cross-Channel operation. ‘Marshal Voroshilov agreed that the launching of such an operation [the second front] was more difficult than the crossing of a big river’, record the minutes, ‘but somewhat similar. During recent operations the Russians had crossed several big rivers and in each case the rivers had been defended by the enemy who held the higher west bank. With the help of artillery, machine guns and mortars, the German defences had been overcome. He thought that with such help, and with the aid of mine throwers, the difficulty con fronting the cross-Channel operation could be overcome’.

‘That wasn't very productive’, recalls Lunghi, with considerable understatement. In the face of Voroshilov's attempt to compare crossing the English Channel with crossing a big river both the British and Americans initially did their best to try to humour him. General Brooke even acknowledged that amphibious landings ‘should have the mortar support of which Marshal Voroshilov had spoken’. But eventually General Marshall cracked. ‘The difference between the river crossing and a landing from the ocean’, he said, ‘was that, whereas the failure of a river crossing would be a reverse, the failure of an amphibious landing would be a catastrophe for it would mean the utter destruction of the landing craft and the troops involved’. In response to Marshall's comments, Voroshilov said ‘quite frankly’ that he ‘did not agree’.

Stalin's attitude to Voroshilov bordered on open contempt as Lunghi witnessed: ‘Stalin was generally treating him…rather like an old dog’. Why Stalin chose to bring Voroshilov to Tehran as his sole military representative is something of a mystery. The Soviet leader remarked during the conference that he had not expected military men to hold separate meetings, which could possibly be true – on many occasions Stalin asserted that it was the duty of political leaders to decide and military commanders to implement. And perhaps he had wanted to ensure that the Soviet Union's best military brains were kept far from the decision-making forum.

If the military meeting on the morning of 29 November was something of a dialogue of the deaf, a conversation between
Roosevelt and Stalin after lunch the same day was a good deal more productive.
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Significantly, as on the previous day, Churchill was deliberately excluded (indeed, Roosevelt had so far declined the opportunity to meet the British Prime Minister on his own at the conference). During his private conversation with Stalin, the American President outlined his idea for the new organization that was dearest to his heart – the United Nations. He talked of his plans for what would eventually become the General Assembly of the UN and the Security Council. What is remarkable is that, even though there were subsequent changes in detail and composition of the two bodies, the shape of the United Nations as we know it today was clear in Roosevelt's mind at this moment in November 1943.

Stalin's response was relatively amenable. He clearly had what for him were more important matters on his mind – notably the practical matter of how first to win the war and then to ensure the security of the Soviet Union in the immediate post-war world. Indeed, it is possible to see in this brief encounter the essential political character of each of these massive twentieth-century icons. Stalin was practical, suspicious and looking for the advantage of the moment; Roosevelt presented an extraordinary mix of crafty, workaday politician and idealistic dreamer. For whilst the visionary Roosevelt had outlined to Stalin his world-changing plans for the future of the planet, the politician in him had recognized the value of keeping Churchill out of the meeting. Not only did this prevent any impression that the Western Allies were ‘ganging up’ on the Soviets, it also allowed Roosevelt an opportunity to work his charm on Stalin – something that did not, as yet, appear to be having much effect.

After their meeting, Stalin and Roosevelt attended the ceremonial handing over of the sword of Stalingrad by Churchill to the Soviet leader in the hall of the embassy. This was a gift from King George VI to the people of Stalingrad in recognition of their extraordinary tenacity and bravery during the siege of their city. Etched in acid on the 36-inch blade were the words: ‘To the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad, the gift of King George VI, in token of homage of the British people’.

‘There was an honour guard of the Buffs, a British regiment’, recalls Hugh Lunghi, who witnessed the ceremony. ‘The NKVD provided their own honour guard with Tommy guns. Our honour guard simply had fixed bayonets’. When Churchill formally presented the sword to Stalin, ‘he was clearly very moved, kissed the hilt and took the sword over to show it to Roosevelt, who was quite rightly taking very much a back seat at the side of the hall, and then brought it back and handed the sword to the only senior military that he had there – to Voroshilov – who took the sword, but he let it slide out of the scabbard. He clutched it to his chest and that didn't help – it fell on to his toes. He blushed all over his face, looked very discomfited, managed somehow to put it back into the scabbard again, then looked at Stalin from under his eyes and was obviously afraid he was going to get a real ticking off’.

As Lunghi left the hall after the ceremony, ‘I heard a sort of shuffling noise behind me, and someone [was] tugging my sleeve. I was following Churchill who was just in front of me, and the person who was tugging my sleeve, of course, was Voroshilov. And I turned around, and he said: “Can you help me?” And I said: “Yes, of course, sir. What can I do?” And he said: “I'd like to speak to your Prime Minister”. So we caught up with Churchill and I said: “Excuse me, sir,” and Churchill turned round, looked a bit discomfited, and looked at Voroshilov and smiled, and Voroshilov mumbled his apology, and Churchill sort of just waved his hands…and then he [Voroshilov] wished him a happy birthday’.

But Voroshilov had got the date wrong. The Prime Minister's birthday was the next day. ‘Churchill walked over to the legation, where he was staying’, says Lunghi, ‘and I followed him – and it was just across the road, only a few yards across the road dividing the two. And he said to me: “He [Voroshilov] must be angling for an invitation [to Churchill's birthday party the next night]. He got the date wrong, and he couldn't even play a straight bat with the sword”. So that was Churchill's verdict on Voroshilov’.

Zoya Zarubina too was present when the sword was handed over, and she recalls the Soviet leader's emotional acceptance of the King's gift: ‘Stalin, I will tell you, never showed any outward
feeling, but the one thing that really touched him was the way Churchill presented that sword…. His voice wavered… and he just said thank you’. For Zoya, a Soviet intelligence officer who was helping with press arrangements, the ceremony had special significance. She knew that a group of Allied delegates – both military men and diplomats – had flown to the conference from Moscow, stopping en route at Stalingrad; and she recalls the delegates' ‘feeling of guilt’ when they saw the devastation of the city. Moreover, she believed they were ‘right’ to feel guilty – by delaying the second front, the Western Allies had let the Soviets carry the chief burden of the war. For her, the ceremony of the handing over of the sword of Stalingrad was almost open recognition by the Western Allies of their culpability. Yet she says she felt no bitterness: ‘I will tell you, the Russian people are a special type of people – they never expect too much of anybody’.

At four o'clock that afternoon the three leaders sat down with their advisers – political and military – for the second plenary meeting of the conference. There were no surprises in substance – Stalin simply reiterated once again that he wanted a second front and he wanted it in May – but there were a few surprises in tone. When Stalin learnt that no commander had yet been appointed for Overlord he remarked dismissively that ‘nothing would come of the operation’.
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Although it had been agreed that an American would be in command, Roosevelt had doubts about appointing the obvious candidate – General Marshall. So the American President was unable to commit to a name at the conference – much to Stalin's irritation.

The Soviet leader grew still more annoyed when Churchill launched into his idea for an advance on both Rome and the island of Rhodes. Stalin finally asked point-blank: ‘Did the British believe in Overlord, or were they just saying so in order to pacify the Russians?’ Churchill replied that the British did believe in Overlord, but only if the right conditions were met – an answer, not surprisingly, that did little to appease Stalin.

This heated exchange was the background to one of the most extraordinary moments in all of the conferences between Stalin,
Roosevelt and Churchill, an incident that occurred that night at a dinner attended by all three leaders. The minutes of the encounter stress the ‘[bad] attitude of Marshal Stalin toward the Prime Minister’.
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Stalin inferred that the British were trying to deceive the Soviets. ‘Just because Russians are simple people’, he said, ‘it was a mistake to believe they were blind and could not see what was before their eyes’. Stalin also implied that Churchill had a ‘secret affection’ for Germany. Stalin's remarks were thought at the time to be motivated by ‘his displeasure at the British attitude on the question of Overlord’. But the Soviet leader was also indulging in what might best be termed ‘tactical teasing’. He was watching to see not just Churchill's reaction to his remarks, but also the extent to which Roosevelt defended or supported him.

Stalin gained his greatest insight that night into the respective characters of the two Western leaders when he remarked that, in order to subdue Germany after the war, ‘At least 50,000 and perhaps 100,000 of the German Commanding Staff must be physically liquidated’. Churchill, in his post-war writings, said that he had not resented any of Stalin's remarks until this last one about the killing of Germans at the end of the war. ‘The British parliament and public’, said the Prime Minister, ‘will never tolerate mass executions’.
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And when Stalin still insisted that 50,000 ‘must be shot’, Churchill lost his temper. ‘I would rather’, he said, ‘be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself than sully my own and my country's honour by such infamy’.

At this point Roosevelt intervened – but in an oblique way. Instead of supporting Churchill, or simply changing the subject, he said that his compromise was that ‘49,000’ should be shot. The American President clearly intended this remark as a joke. But, knowing as he did Stalin's track record in matters of mass murder, it was a strange kind of jest. Others present took Stalin's words at face value. Elliott Roosevelt, the President's thirty-three-year-old son who was also at the dinner, said: ‘Look: when our armies start rolling in from the West, and your armies are still coming on from the East, we'll be solving the whole thing, won't we? Russian, American and British soldiers will settle the issue for most of those
fifty thousand in battle, and I hope not only those fifty thousand war criminals will be taken care of but many hundreds of thousands more Nazis as well’.
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This was too much for Churchill. It was bad enough being teased and harassed by Stalin, but to have to listen to the uncongenial views of a relatively junior American air force officer was more than he could stomach. The British Prime Minister stood up and left the table, stomping off into the room next door. Moments later Stalin and Molotov followed him, smiling, and the Soviet leader announced that he had only been ‘playing’.

It was a watershed moment; not so much in the context of the relationship between Stalin and Churchill – the Soviet leader had verbally attacked the British Prime Minister before – but in the context of the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt. Stalin had bullied Churchill in front of an entire dinner party, and Roosevelt had not come to his aid.

Churchill returned in a melancholy mood to the British legation, and remarked around midnight to his doctor, Lord Moran: ‘There might be a more bloody war. I shall not be there. I shall be asleep. I want to sleep for billions of years’. And later, ‘I believe man might destroy man and wipe out civilisation. Europe would be desolate and I may be held responsible…. Stupendous issues are unfolding before our eyes and we are only specks of dust that have settled in the night on the map of the world’.
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Moran wrote that he ‘lay awake for a long time, frightened by his [Churchill's] presentiment of evil’. And it was clear what the source of the Prime Minister's ghastly vision of the future had been. It was a world in which the democracies would not stand firm in the presence of dictators. ‘Now he sees he cannot rely on the President's support’, wrote Moran. ‘What matters more, he realizes that the Russians see this too’. And, in the last entry in his diary for 29 November, Moran records perhaps his most poignant insight of all: ‘The PM is appalled by his own impotence’.

That same day the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, gave vent in his diary to his own feelings about the conference so far. ‘After listening to the arguments put
forward over the last two days’, he wrote, ‘I feel more like entering a lunatic asylum or a nursing home than continuing with my present job. I am absolutely disgusted with the politicians' methods of waging a war!! Why will they imagine they are experts at a job they know nothing about! It is lamentable to listen to them!’
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The next day, 30 November, began with a meeting of the British and American Chiefs of Staff. General Brooke and the other members of the British military delegation managed to convince the American military chiefs that a small delay in the date of Overlord would benefit them all – and a new date of 1 June was finally agreed.