Stalin полностью

Cripps’s failure to create any momentum toward rapprochement might be blamed on a stubborn Churchill (as well as knaves in the foreign office).⁹⁰ Churchill, however, had provided the basis for bilateral cooperation in his resolve. On July 3, 1940, to prevent French warships from falling into German hands, he had scuttled the main part of the French navy, stationed near Algeria, killing 1,297 of his ally’s sailors. A French battleship and five destroyers escaped, but Churchill’s ruthless action made an impression on Hitler, as well as on Roosevelt. That same day, Churchill received Maisky at 10 Downing Street and told him Britain would never come to terms with Hitler. The next day, when Churchill reported on the naval destruction, the British Parliament rose in ovation; Maisky was present.⁹¹ Stalin kept insisting that Churchill refused to accept how the Versailles order had been shattered, but in truth, the British PM did admit Versailles was kaput.⁹² What the Bulldog did not want to admit was that a replacement international order would require a significant place for the Communist Soviet Union, in its now expanded borders, including Poland and the Baltics, the same tiny former tsarist possessions causing Stalin trouble with Hitler. The arch-imperialist Churchill, while holding one quarter of the world, took offense at these Soviet annexations of white peoples.⁹³ He wanted to prevail in the war without empowering the Soviets in Europe in the bargain. Neither he (nor most subsequent scholars) would admit as much, but this was the same sticking point that had inhibited Chamberlain from signing any alliance with Stalin.⁹⁴

The dilemma was stark. “We cannot defeat Germany fully without allies,” The Economist would editorialize in late July 1940. “Patiently, if need be, but with great persistence, we must work for a Russian alliance.”⁹⁵ Churchill, however, held to the minimalist British aim of stopping an escalation in Soviet material support of Germany, and he was already fixated on salvation from Roosevelt and the United States, which had the eighteenth-largest land army in the world, with fewer troops than Bulgaria, and no air force to speak of, but had immeasurable potential.⁹⁶ Such considerations amounted to formidable obstacles for Stalin to overcome. Perhaps they could not have been overcome. But the despot did not try.

Rumors were swirling in Berlin of a change in the USSR’s foreign policy orientation.⁹⁷ Back on the eve of Cripps’s arrival in Moscow, Soviet military intelligence had warned Stalin that German delays in military deliveries to the USSR stemmed from Berlin’s concern that Cripps would be bearing “some gifts.”⁹⁸ On July 13, Stalin had Molotov send a Soviet record of his conversation with Cripps to the Soviet envoys in London, Berlin, and Rome—and to the German ambassador in Moscow. Stalin aimed not to intimidate Hitler but to demonstrate his continuing loyalty. Stalin, as if speaking not to Cripps but directly to Hitler, was recorded as having replied to the ambassador’s suggestion that Britain and the USSR “ought to agree on a common policy of self-protection against Germany and on the re-establishment of the balance of power” by saying that “he did not see any danger of the hegemony of any one country in Europe and still less any danger that Europe might be engulfed by Germany.” He added that he “knew several leading German statesmen well” and “had not discovered any desire on their part to engulf European countries. Stalin was not of the opinion that German military successes menaced the Soviet Union and her friendly relations with Germany.”⁹⁹

German intelligence was closely following Cripps’s activities, thanks to intercepted telegrams sent to Belgrade by the Yugoslav envoy in Moscow, Milan Gavrilović, a Cripps confidant. Hitler was in a position to know the talks were fruitless. But to the Führer, Britain and the USSR were talking. The Wehrmacht, for its part, was monitoring Stalin’s troop buildup on the Soviet side of the border throughout southeastern Europe. German military aircraft were violating Soviet airspace but then claiming that these were errors committed by pilots in training.¹⁰⁰ On July 3, 1940, the German army chief of staff, Halder, in a conversation with the head of his operations section, had noted that a “military intervention . . . will compel Russia to recognize Germany’s dominant position in Europe.”¹⁰¹

INCOHERENCE