The two sides could not even agree on a follow-up visit by Ribbentrop to Moscow. Amid the inconclusiveness, scores of top Nazis—but not the Führer—attended a farewell banquet given by the Soviet ambassador (the former textile plant manager) at the Unter den Linden Soviet embassy, whose fading tsarist-era splendor was now overseen by a bust of Lenin. The vodka and caviar were prodigious. “No capitalist or plutocratic . . . table could have been more richly spread,” recalled the German interpreter. “It was a very good party.”275
Churchill cut the festivities short: a British bombing squadron appeared over central Berlin at around 8:30 p.m. Ribbentrop conveyed Molotov the short distance to the safety of his bunker beneath the foreign ministry (the Soviet embassy had none). As a result, additional, unplanned talks ensued, from 9:45 p.m. until nearly midnight. The Nazi foreign minister removed from his pocket and read aloud a draft text, three paragraphs in length, on converting the Tripartite Pact into a four-power pact, with secret protocols to be appended later. A four-power pact would have confronted Britain, as well as the United States, with formidable challenges: the likely fall of not just the European continent but the Mediterranean, the Near East, and the Far East into the clutches of authoritarian Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union.276 At the same time, it was doubtful whether the tripartite alliance could counter the combined might of the Anglo-American bloc without the Soviet Union.
Molotov, according to the German record, again insisted that a new understanding of Soviet-German relations was a prerequisite to discussions about the USSR joining a pact of four; the Soviet record indicates that Molotov demanded an explanation of the alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy and insisted on the importance to the USSR of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Swedish neutrality, Finland, and more.277 Ribbentrop resumed expounding on the pending liquidation of the British empire. “If England is defeated, why are we sitting in this shelter?” Molotov interjected, in a retort Stalin would cherish and retell. “And whose bombs are dropping so close that we can hear the explosions even here?”278
THE NONPIVOT
The British press descended into a frenzy over Molotov’s visit to Berlin, warning that the Soviet Union was about to join the Axis. Prior to Molotov’s return, Stalin had sent suggestions on what the despot assumed would be a joint communiqué issued in Berlin. “The exchange of views took place in an atmosphere of mutual trust,” Stalin had written, “and they established mutual understanding on all the most important questions of interest to the USSR and Germany.” He had also instructed Molotov that “it would be better if the Germans proposed their draft first.” In fact, the Germans proposed nothing, and no joint communiqué was issued. After midnight on November 13–14, Molotov had cabled Stalin and admitted that the Berlin meetings “had not delivered the desired results.” The USSR’s interests in Eastern Europe were not being acknowledged. “Nothing to boast about, but at a minimum I ascertained the current mood of Hitler, which is something we will have to come to grips with.”279 Molotov departed Berlin later that morning.
The Germans recorded Amayak Kobulov as having stated that Molotov’s visit was a “powerful demonstration,” but that “not everything that shines is gold.”282 Some members of the Soviet delegation, while still in Berlin, had voiced suspicions that with the Tripartite Pact, Germany was actually working to “encircle” the Soviet Union, while also embroiling it in conflict with Britain over imperial possessions. Soviet military intelligence would inform Moscow that Scheliha (“Aryan”) had heard high officials in the German foreign ministry conclude that, during Molotov’s November 1940 visit, “consensus was not reached on a single important question—not on the question of Finland, not on the question of Bulgaria.”283 On the German side, Dr. Otto Meissner, the head of the (ceremonial) presidential chancellery, considered an old-school adherent of the Bismarckian policy of ties with Russia, was given the impression—which, as expected, he repeated so that it reached Soviet ears—that Hitler was “very satisfied with the visit and that Molotov’s personality impressed him.”284 This was disinformation that the Nazi regime rightly expected would now spread. Most German insiders judged Molotov’s visit a failure. “Two things became clear in the discussions,” one of Hitler’s interpreters later noted. “Hitler’s intention to push the Soviet Union in the direction of the Persian Gulf, and his unwillingness to acknowledge any Soviet interest in Europe.”285
