An alarmed Moscow sought details. Soviet tensions with Romania had only intensified, but in 1939 the NKVD would arrest a mere fifty-nine Romanian “spies,” as compared with 7,810 in 1937–38.179 (Total NKVD arrests in 1939 would amount to 63,889, not only the fewest in the decade but a mere half of the next lowest year.) These statistics—compiled by the Soviet regime—give the lie to avowals that the terror constituted a campaign to root out a potential fifth column. More broadly, as Stalin also knew, the vast majority of former kulaks, national minorities, and recidivist criminals remained at large, meaning that the supposed potential fifth column of the wronged and resentful was still there, when the prospect of war surpassed that of the previous two years.
Back and forth the diplomatic volleys went. On March 25, 1939, the Polish government formally rejected Germany’s demands. Hitler secretly began to contemplate attacking Poland, to reestablish the pre-1914 frontiers in East Prussia and evict the ethnic Polish population.180 On March 28, Litvinov delivered official notes to Estonia and Latvia, warning that the Soviet Union would view any state agreement—made voluntarily or under duress—that diminished the Baltic states’ independence or led to the political and economic hegemony of a third state over their territory and infrastructure as unacceptable, “with all the ensuing consequences.”181
Then came the sensation: on March 31, Chamberlain, who had not stood up for democratic Czechoslovakia, announced a unilateral “guarantee” of Poland’s independence in the House of Commons. His act was hardly sentimental: Poland was a dictatorship, albeit one without a dictator (since Piłsudski’s death, in 1935). But British intelligence warned Chamberlain—wrongly, as it turned out—of an imminent coup in Danzig to turn the city over to Hitler. (Vernon Kell, head of MI5, also passed on a report that Hitler had mocked the Tory PM as an “asshole.”)182 Chamberlain had noted that the French government knew of the guarantee in advance and supported it, but the way he had made it public—in response to a parliamentary question about what the government would do in the event of a German attack on Poland—gave it the appearance of an improvisation.183 Maisky reported to Moscow that David Lloyd George, the former PM, had been told by Chamberlain on March 31, when asked why he had given a guarantee to Poland, that, “according to the information at his disposal, neither the German general staff nor Hitler would ever risk war if they knew that they would have to fight simultaneously on two fronts—the West and the East.”184 That said, the British offered no specific military commitments to Poland (or, over time, to any country in Eastern Europe).185
Trotsky, who had been allowed to visit London in March 1939, bitingly observed that “Chamberlain would give away all the democracies of the world (there are not many left) for one tenth of India.” Beyond personal foibles, Trotsky noted that “the fear of Great Britain and France before Hitler and Mussolini explains itself by the fact that the world position of these two colony-holding countries . . . no longer corresponds with their specific economic weight. The war can bring nothing to them, but can take a great deal from them.”186
Even the appeasement-inclined governments in the British empire’s dominions denounced Hitler’s action. Britain’s lively press had a field day with Chamberlain—the beak nose, the shiny top hat, the impeccably tailored overcoat, the umbrella. The prime minister had made a career in municipal politics in his native Birmingham, following an up-and-down business career, and had only become a member of Parliament at age forty-nine, rising to minister of health (twice) and chancellor of the exchequer (twice). He had become PM, in late May 1937, only when Baldwin had decided to resign (the Tories still commanded a majority in the House of Commons). Then sixty-eight, Chamberlain was the second-oldest person to become PM, and he was widely perceived as a caretaker until the next election. He saw himself as a reformer of domestic affairs, but he got entangled in trying to resolve international issues in order to pursue his domestic goals.187