Stalin полностью

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