Ten days later, on Thursday, April 13, in the debate following the invasion of Albania, Winston fired a second gun, warning Parliament that the peril is “now very near. A great part of Europe is to a very large extent mobilised. Millions of men are being prepared for war. Everywhere the frontier defences are manned. Everywhere it is felt that some new stroke is impending.” Should war come, he asked, “can there be any doubt that we shall be involved?” Three months earlier, Britain, free of commitments, could stand aloof, but now His Majesty’s Government had provided guarantees “in every direction, rightly in my opinion, having regard to all that has happened.” Before Munich, when prospects were brighter, Britain had backed away from the growing tension on the Continent. “Surely then,” he said, “when we aspire to lead all Europe back from the verge of the abyss onto the uplands of law and peace, we must ourselves set the highest example.” But if they were to “rescue our people and the people of many lands from the dark, bitter waters which are rising fast on every side,” they must seize every opportunity, or create opportunities where none existed.
Turning again to the need for an approach to the Soviets, he said:
The other day I tried to show the House the great interest that Russia has against further Eastward expansion of the Nazi power. It is upon that deep, natural, legitimate interest that we must rely, and I am sure we shall hear from the Government that the steps they are taking are those which will enable us to receive the fullest possible cooperation from Russia, and that no prejudices on the part of England or France will be allowed to interfere with the closest cooperation between the two countries, thus securing our harassed and anxious combinations the unmeasured, if somewhat uncertain, but certainly enormous counterpoise of the Russian power.”18
Two days later he got action—of sorts. England and France could not reject Russia’s Bucharest proposal outright; it would have been bad manners, bad diplomacy, and bad politics—the British people were beginning to anticipate the time when they would need every friend they could get. On April 15, therefore, the Soviets received formal proposals from Whitehall and the Quai. They found them disappointing. The British merely asked Russia to follow their example and affirm the independence of Poland and Rumania. The French had wanted more. They had proposed that Britain, France, and the Soviet Union come to one another’s aid should Germany make war on any one of them, but Chamberlain and Halifax weren’t prepared to go that far.19
Litvinov wanted them to go much further. The following Monday he rocked the chancelleries of Europe by handing Sir William Seeds, the British ambassador in Moscow, a formal proposal which, if it succeeded, would assure that any Wehrmacht offensive in the east would be met not only by Poland but also by the much larger resources of the Soviet Union, including the Red Army. What Stalin’s foreign commissar had submitted was, in fact, nothing less than a blueprint for a triple alliance—a re-creation of the entente which had declared war on the kaiser’s Second Reich in 1914 and which would have defeated Germany and Austria, without American help, had the Bolshevik revolution not shattered it three years later.
In Litvinov’s draft agreement, England, France, and Russia would not only provide mutual assistance if attacked by Hitler; the treaty would be backed by a specific commitment defining the strength and objectives of their armies, navies, and air forces. This alliance, which Poland could join if she chose, would bind the signatories to “render mutually all manner of assistance, including that of a military nature, in case of aggression in Europe” against any member of the alliance or against “Eastern European States situated between the Baltic and Black Seas and bordering on the U.S.S.R.” Further, the signing parties would neither negotiate nor make peace “with aggressors separately from one another and without common consent of the three Powers.”20
The encirclement of Germany, a myth spun by the Führer at Nuremberg rallies, would be real, and it would be awesome. Any Wehrmacht thrust, anywhere, would trigger retaliation from every country on the Reich’s borders except Switzerland and Italy, whose legions, after their performances in Ethiopia and Albania, counted for very little. Swift action was essential, however; with Germany on a war footing Hitler could strike while the alliance was being negotiated. Moreover, Litvinov was aware that Stalin would be highly suspicious of Allied delay. Therefore the commissar stipulated that military conversations between the three powers begin immediately. It was his last bid for a united anti-Nazi front with the West. He was staking his career on it. And he believed it would work.21
In London the critics of the Chamberlain government agreed. Macmillan recalled: “This was Litvinov’s last chance. It was also ours.” Later Churchill summed up the situation: “If… Mr. Chamberlain on receipt of the Russian offer had replied: ‘Yes. Let us three band together and break Hitler’s neck,’ or words to that effect, Parliament would have approved, Stalin would have understood, and history might have taken a different course. At least it could not have taken a worse.” Robert Coulondre, formerly France’s ambassador in Moscow and now her envoy in Berlin, thought Litvinov’s offer was almost too good to be true. He cabled Paris, urging instant acceptance.22
Churchill votes in the General Election, November 14, 1935. The Baldwin victory keeps him in political exile.
King George V dies on January 20, 1936. His son succeeds him as King Edward VIII.
The new king stands somberly at the Cenotaph, November 11, 1936.
Edward VIII insists upon marrying an American woman with a tarnished past. Churchill, in a highly unpopular stand, supports him. Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express tells the tale.
Hermann Göring (right) with one of his warmest admirers, Sir Nevile Henderson, His Majesty’s ambassador to Nazi Germany.
As Hitler overruns the Rhineland, Sir John Simon, Anthony Eden, and Sir Robert Vansittart follow the coffin of Leopold von Hösch, the German ambassador to Britain.
Discussing Hitler’s Austrian Anschluss, Churchill and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax walk from the Foreign Office to Parliament, March 29, 1938.
Alfred Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty, resigns from Chamberlain’s cabinet in disgust over Munich
At the peak of the Munich crisis, September 1938, Winston Churchill gloomily leaves No. 10 Downing Street after conferring with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
At Chartwell in early 1939 Winston nails tiles to the roof of Orchard Cottage, which he designed and largely built as a retirement home for Clementine and him.
Clementine in 1939 with one of Chartwell’s two fox cubs, Charles-James and Victoria. With war imminent, both cubs were turned loose in the wild.
As Honorary RAF Commodore, Winston flies as copilot at Kenley, April 16, 1939.
Demands that Churchill be brought into the government had been swelling for three years. The Daily Mail ran this article on May 11, 1936, in reaction to Hitler’s seizure of the Rhineland.
By the spring of 1939, the dictators were overrunning Europe; Memel, Albania, and what was left of independent Czechoslovakia fell to Hitler and Mussolini. Now most of Fleet Street sounded the alarm.
Churchill appeals for Territorial Army recruits at the Mansion House, April 24, 1939.
The press heightens its demands; this cartoon appeared in the Daily Express on July 6, 1939.
Six days later this cartoon appeared in Punch.
In the turmoil of the 1930s Churchill often found sanctuary in painting.
On July 24, 1939, a huge sign, paid for by an anonymous backer of Churchill, appears on the Strand.
War is imminent in late August 1939, as Churchill and Anthony Eden walk down Whitehall to the House of Commons. Both are still treated as lepers by Chamberlain.
On September 1, 1939, the Germans invade Poland, and that same day Chamberlain appoints Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty. On September 3 Britain declares war on Germany. This photograph was taken on September 4, Churchill’s first full day at the Admiralty.
In the first month of the war Randolph, serving
in his father’s old regiment, the 4th Hussars, marries Pamela, the daughter of Lord and Lady Digby.
New York Times, May 11, 1940.
As France collapses and all seems lost, Winston Spencer Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.
His advice was rejected. As Thomas Jones wrote, in both Paris and London the Men of Munich were “much more optimistic than I am about the behavior of the dictators”—Hitler and Mussolini—and far more wary of the despot in the Kremlin. Jean Montigny, a Radical-Socialist, had warned the Chamber of Deputies on “the error and the illusion of any foreign policy based even partly on confidence in the power of the Russian army outside its frontiers and on the loyalty of the Soviet government.” Many deputies were concerned about Poland’s willingness to accept Soviet aid; as Poland’s ally, France had to deal with it. Nevertheless, on April 22 the French cabinet, albeit without enthusiasm, agreed to Litvinov’s proposal as a basis of negotiation, and so informed the British. The Quai declared, Whitehall delayed.23
On April 19 the cabinet’s Foreign Policy Committee considered the Litvinov initiative. The Foreign Office was startled by its airtight language; by contrast—and by design—Britain’s Polish guarantee was a sieve of loopholes. Litvinov took Horace Wilson’s breath away; what if a copy of this document fell into the Führer’s hands? Suppose he blamed England for it? The consequences didn’t bear thinking about, and so, instead of thinking about them, Cadogan, in the absence of Halifax, described the Russian plan as “extremely inconvenient,” suggested that Soviet military strength was trivial, and declared that “from the practical point of view there is every argument against accepting the Russian proposal.” As a civil servant, however, the under secretary had to recognize that England had more than one party. Politically, the issue could become a quagmire. Thus, “there is great difficulty in rejecting the Soviet offer…. The left in this country may be counted on” to exploit a refusal. There was also a “very remote” possibility that the Russians might join hands with the Germans. Nevertheless, Cadogan ended, “on balance” Litvinov’s offer should be turned down on the ground that it might “alienate our friends and reinforce the propaganda of our enemies without bringing in exchange any real material contribution to the strength of our Front.” One wonders who, in Cadogan’s opinion, England’s “friends” and “enemies” were.24
The situation, as one cabinet member pointed out, was “very awkward.” The French cabinet, however reluctantly, had voted to accept the plan. Churchill, Lloyd George, Eden, Duff Cooper, Labour, and the Liberals would raise Cain if His Majesty’s Government rejected it. The Poles and the Rumanians, per contra, would be up in arms if Litvinov’s offer were accepted. Finally—and this was decisive—Chamberlain, Halifax, Wilson, Cadogan, Inskip, and Simon were revolted by the prospect of an alliance with Bolsheviks. The Russians, as Thomas Jones wrote in his diary, “made our flesh creep.” Looking for a way out, the P.M. solicited the views of the Chiefs of Staff and seized upon one point in their report. The military support the U.S.S.R. could provide to Poland or Rumania, they wrote, “is not so great as might be supposed generally.”25
Chamberlain ignored what followed, which was the chiefs’ conclusion that “Russian cooperation would be invaluable in that Germany would be unable to draw upon Russia’s immense reserves of food and raw materials and should succumb more quickly to our economic stranglehold.” He also suppressed the chiefs’ supplementary appraisal, which concluded:
A full-blown guarantee of mutual assistance between Great Britain and France and the Soviet Union offers certain advantages. It would present a solid front of formidable proportions against aggression…. If we fail to achieve any agreement with the Soviet, it might be regarded as a diplomatic defeat which would have serious military repercussion, in that it would have the immediate effect of encouraging Germany to further acts of aggression and of ultimately throwing the U.S.S.R. into her arms…. Furthermore, if Russia remained neutral, it would leave her in a dominating position at the end of hostilities.26
According to Cadogan, this passage “annoyed” Chamberlain. Privately he threatened to “resign rather than sign an alliance with the Soviet.” Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, whose commitment to defend Britain eclipsed his hostility to bolshevism, pointed out that the chiefs were “very anxious that Russia should not under any circumstances become allied with Germany. Such an eventuality would create a most dangerous situation for us.” In the Foreign Office this minute was the source of great amusement. The admiral was informed that Communists and Nazis were as unlikely a combination as oil and water. If he would look after the Royal Navy, he was politely told, Whitehall would tend to foreign affairs.27
After a fortnight of silence from London, Stalin, not a man of great patience, lost the little he had. On the back page of Pravda’s May 3 issue a small item appeared in the “News in Brief” column: “M. Litvinov has been released from the Office of Foreign Commissar at his own request.”
The significance of Litvinov’s dismissal passed almost unnoticed in the Western democracies. Because of an intelligence failure in MI6 and the Deuxième Bureau, Allied governments did not know, as Churchill later wrote, that Vyacheslav Molotov, Litvinov’s successor, “had always been favourable to an arrangement with Hitler,” that he had been “convinced by Munich and much else that neither Britain nor France would fight until they were attacked, and would not be much good then.” Like the FO diplomats, ordinary citizens never dreamed that a treaty binding Moscow and Berlin was possible. Eventually, it was assumed, the two would go to war.28
But it would not be Molotov who would make the final decision as to which way the Soviets turned; that power belonged exclusively to Joseph Stalin. Exploring the mind of a psychotic is impossible—the shortest distance between two points becomes a maze—yet as Churchill perceived, there was method in Stalin’s dementia. In his own twisted way he was a patriot; like Winston he saw the peril in the Reich and wanted his country to survive it. That was his end. Any means was acceptable to him. He was quietly searching for one that would work.
Doubtless he would have preferred to avoid allies altogether. If he was viewed with suspicion in the capitals of Europe, his suspicions of their leaders ran to paranoia. Nevertheless, the necessity of making a choice, however distasteful, was becoming clear to him, and although Litvinov was in disgrace, an attachment to Britain and France was still preferable to a loathsome alliance with Berlin. Therefore the new foreign commissar, despite his Germanophilia, was instructed not to abandon discussions with Halifax and Bonnet.
Coulondre was encouraged by Molotov’s accession. Molotov, he cabled the Quai from Berlin, was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and a “member of the Politburo, depositary of the thoughts of Stalin”; his appointment meant “Soviet foreign policy can only gain in clarity and precision, and France and England will have no reason to regret it.” Bonnet wrote in his memoirs that he was “quite satisfied by the assurances” of the Russian ambassador in Paris that the switch in foreign commissars “does not denote any change in Soviet foreign policy,” and that diplomatic discussions between envoys of the three nations could open whenever Britain and France were ready. Maisky brought the same message to Chamberlain and Halifax, who protested that they weren’t ready.29
In fact, the democracies had every reason to regret the departure of their champion in the Kremlin. The Germans realized that they had gained ground. To drive the point home, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Berlin called at the Wilhelmstrasse to stress “the great importance of the personality of Molotov”—a curt, mulish man who spoke only Russian and held the Western Allies in contempt—and his “importance for future Soviet foreign policy.” A dispatch from Warsaw reported that Litvinov had resigned after Marshal Kliment Voroshilov had told him that the Red Army was not prepared to fight for Poland and had denounced, in the name of the Russian General Staff, “excessively far-reaching military obligations.” The Frankfurter Zeitung commented that Litvi
nov’s fall was a serious setback for Anglo-French plans to “encircle” the Reich. The German chargé in Moscow cabled the Wilhelmstrasse:
Since Litvinov had received the English Ambassador as late as May 2 and had been named in the press of yesterday as guest of honour at the parade, his dismissal appears to be the result of a spontaneous decision by Stalin…. At the last Party Congress, Stalin urged caution lest the Soviet Union should be drawn into conflict. Molotov (no Jew) is held to be “the most intimate friend and closest collaborator of Stalin.” His appointment is apparently the guarantee that the foreign policy will be continued strictly in accordance with Stalin’s ideas.30
Some Englishmen were apprehensive. In London, Nicolson noted in his diary that “the left-wing people” in particular were “very upset…. They are not at all sure that Russia may not make a neutrality pact with Germany. I fear this terribly.” In his memoirs Churchill would write scathingly of Litvinov’s dismissal: “The eminent Jew, the target of German antagonism, was flung aside for the time being like a broken tool, and, without being allowed a word of explanation, was bundled off the world stage to obscurity, a pittance, and police supervision.”31