Molotov reached Moscow on November 15. There is no reliable account of the report he delivered that evening to Stalin and anyone else the despot summoned to the Near Dacha.286 On orders, Molotov’s interpreter (Pavlov) told a pro-Soviet American that Molotov had “thawed” in Berlin and that Hitler had made a big impression. A cable from Molotov to Maisky in London (November 17) soberly noted that the Germans were trying to push the Soviets toward India and wanted Turkey for themselves.287 But at a reception given by the Italian ambassador, Augusto Rosso, for representatives of “friendly countries,” the Bulgarian envoy to Moscow perceived Molotov as “swollen-headed and puffed up.”288 Molotov, just as Stalin instructed, had stood up to Hitler.
Back in 1939, when Stalin had understood, correctly, the emptiness of the British and French negotiating positions vis-à-vis Moscow, he had not hesitated to humiliate them. Of course, at that time, he was assiduously cultivating an alternative: Nazi Germany. In 1940, he had not pursued a genuine alternative to Germany should its negotiating position prove empty. Stalin had not gone to the British of his own accord to create leverage for his demands vis-à-vis a newly triumphant Germany; the British, in the person of Sir Stafford Cripps, had come to him. Stalin only belatedly responded to the sincere British offers of a trade-and-nonaggression pact, and not even through the diplomatic channels in which they had been conveyed. Cripps, to accommodate Stalin’s requests, had urged the British government that any talks with Moscow had to be carried out in the utmost secrecy—no small feat for an open society and leak-prone political system like Britain’s. But then, on November 16, the confidential British proposals appeared in the English-language press, as Cripps heard over BBC radio in Moscow. Irate, he suspected the British foreign office, but the source was the Soviet embassy in London.289 In the event, Vyshinsky’s initial reaction to the Cripps proposal—deeming it of the greatest importance—had been shamelessly disingenuous. Stalin had used Cripps, again, then hung him out to dry, in a clumsy warning-cum-ingratiation directed at Hitler.
Other British actions unintentionally worked against rapprochement: Molotov’s unplanned refuge in the Berlin bomb shelter, a result of British bombing raids, had evidently helped solidify his view that Germany was still deeply mired in a war in the west, a circumstance that he interpreted in light of his conviction that no German leader would willingly launch a two-front war by attacking in the east. “Even after his visit to Berlin in November 1940, Molotov continued to assert that Hitler would not attack,” recalled Zhukov, who added that “one must take into account that in Stalin’s eyes, in this case, Molotov had the added authority of someone who had personally visited Berlin.”290
BULGARIAN GAMBIT
The Japanese government, for its part, was disappointed that nothing had emerged from the Hitler-Molotov summit; the Tripartite Pact had been expected to facilitate Japanese-Soviet rapprochement at U.S. and British expense in East Asia (especially the base at Singapore), but these hopes appeared unfulfilled. On November 18, 1940, Molotov received Japan’s ambassador, Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, and, referring to his conversation with Ribbentrop, declared that he welcomed Japan’s desire to normalize relations with the USSR, but he added that Soviet public opinion could not accept a bilateral nonaggression pact unless Soviet territorial losses in the Far East were “restored.” Molotov named Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, adding that if Japan was not prepared to discuss these claims, then he could recommend only a lesser “neutrality pact,” as well as a special protocol stipulating the liquidation of Japanese economic concessions on Soviet-controlled Northern Sakhalin.291
That same day, Hitler received Bulgaria’s tsar Boris III and his foreign minister at the Berghof, aiming to trump any Soviet entreaties to them. The king, fearing a Soviet backlash, “appeared less inclined than ever” to join the Tripartite Pact, even as he assured Hitler that “down here you have a true small friend, whom you do not have to disown.”292 On November 20, Hungary joined the Tripartite Pact, followed by Romania (November 23), then Slovakia (November 24), all of them in the Soviet backyard and all agreeing, in effect, to become junior partners in a German-dominated Europe. True, also on November 24, Italy was routed in Albania by Greece. And Soviet intelligence sources passed on word that Bulgaria’s king was resisting German pressure. But upon his return to Sofia, Boris did reject Soviet entreaties.
