NEGOTIATIONS OF MILITARY MISSIONS OF THE USSR, BRITAIN AND FRANCE
Diplomatic Battles Before World War II - Chapter IV
London and Paris Prefer Talking to Business
The world was fast drifting to war. London and
Paris knew that Hitler had decided to attack Poland, that a mobilisation was
under way in Germany, and that she was quite ready to open hostilities at the
end of August. The Soviet government likewise had rather complete and precise
information about the military plans and preparations of the Nazis.”104”
Although the British government did, finally, accept, on July 25, 1939, the Soviet proposal for negotiations of military representatives of the USSR, Britain and France, that did not mean at all, as stated earlier on, that Chamberlain 238had, indeed, decided to agree on Co-Operation with the USSR. One characteristic fact was that British and French military representatives had taken 17 days to reach Moscow. Military conversations could not start until August 12. The very composition of the British and French military missions showed that Britain’s and France’s attitude to these negotiations was not serious. At a meeting of the British government’s Foreign Policy Committee on July 10, the Minister for Coordination of Defence Lord Chatfield suggested that military conversations would have to be conducted on the level of Deputy Chiefs of Staff because of their complexity.”105” However, military representatives that were ultimately sent to Moscow were of a far lower rank. The British delegation was led by Admiral Drax. Even Lord Strang had to admit in his recollections that the British government had not wanted to conclude any military agreement with the USSR. That was why a military mission of an "inadequate standing" with instructions of a "limiting character" was sent to Moscow.”106”
The French military mission, led by General Doumenc,
member of the French Supreme Council, produced no better impression. The Soviet
Ambassador to France, Surits, reporting the make-up of the French mission to
Moscow, said it showed that the French government must have set a "modest
programme" for it to work on.”107”
Information now made public about the instructions
which had been given to the British and French military delegations bore out
this assessment.
The British delegation’s instruction had been examined
at a British Cabinet meeting on July 26. It is worth pointing out that the
minutes of that meeting contained not a single word about Britain’s interest in
the successful completion of the negotiations and in the signing of an
effective military convention. That put it beyond all doubt that the British
government had not set itself such a task at all. Halifax confined himself to
noting in his speech that the opening of the military conversations would have
a good effect on world opinion.”108” So the only concern of the British
government was to mislead both the Soviet government and British public
opinion, while trying to reach an understanding with the Nazi Reich (that was
just the time when Wilson’s above-stated proposals to the Nazi commissar
Wohlthat had been made).
The debate on this issue at the Cabinet meeting
predetermined the instruction to be given to the British military mission. The
instruction slated, for example: "The British government is unwilling to
enter into any detailed commitments which are likely to tie our hands in all
circumstances.” Although the political discussions had been suspended as early
as August 2 (William Strang returned to London) and the British government did
not propose to take any initiative towards their resumption, the British
military delegation was instructed until they were over to "go very
slowly" with the military conversations.”109” That was how the
British diplomacy created a "vicious circle" at the talks.
All the British government still intended to conduct
with the USSR was "conversations for the sake of conversations”. Referring
to the object of these “conversations”, Halifax pointed out that "so long
as the military conversations were taking place, we should be preventing"
a rapprochement between Germany and the USSR.”110”
Neither did the instructions to the French military
mission provide for an effective military convention to be concluded. All
referred to was a set of items of secondary importance, as the lines of
communication with the USSR, or action in the Baltic against the German sea
routes.”111” Naturally, such instructions were utterly inadequate for the
talks to be conducted successfully and for a military convention to be
concluded.
British general H. Ismay, having studied these
instructions, wrote: "The document strikes me as being couched in such
general terms as to be almost useless as a brief: it deals solely with what the
French wish the Russians to do, and throws no light on what the French will
do.” When, talking to the French generals Jamet and Doumenc, Ismay asked what
the French proposed to say about the contribution of France and Britain, Jamet
"smiled and shrugged his shoulders”, and Doumenc said: "Very little.
I shall just listen.” "“2”
Once informed of the instructions to Drax, Ambassador
Seeds could not but come to the conclusion that they meant creating a hopeless
deadlock at the talks which would be immediately obvious to the Soviet
government, too. There is no doubt, he wrote to London on August 13, that under
such conditions the "military talks are likely to produce no 240result
beyond arousing once again Russian fears that we are not in earnest, and are
not trying to conclude a concrete and definite agreement". ”113”
The principal objective of the British military
mission was to keep on creating a semblance of negotiating until autumn rains which,
as British military experts believed, would make Germany’s attack on Poland
virtually impossible. Thereupon, the negotiations with the USSR were to have
been suspended in the hope of overtaking the Nazi Reich in the arms race to
some extent until the subsequent spring and also coming to terms with it on a
division of the spheres of influence. The Director-General of the British
Territorial Army, General W. Kirke, declared that by that spring Britain would
have become strong enough militarily "not to need any more Russian
help".”114” Ambassador Seeds also noted in one of his letters to
London that the military conversations "might be prolonged
sufficiently" to tide over the nearest dangerous period.”115” The
Foreign Office even informed the U.S. Embassy in London that the British
military mission "has been told to make every effort to prolong its
discussions until October 1." ”116” A member of the French
military mission in Moscow General Beaufre and the French Ambassador in Warsaw
pointed out in their recollections that the British government was concerned,
above all, with gaining time in the military conversations. ”117”
The British plans became known to the Nazis as well.
For example, the German Ambassador in Moscow, von Schulenburg, cabled to Berlin
to say that he had been informed by British military sources that "from
the very start the military missions were under instruction to go slow in
Moscow and to drag out the conversations until October, if possible".
It was understood perfectly well in London and Paris
that the central problem in the negotiations would be that of the passage of
Soviet troops through the territory of Poland to engage the German troops. The
Soviet government, as has been shown earlier on, had raised the matter back in
1937 and also in 1938 in connection with possible Soviet assistance to
Czechoslovakia. The same issue was raised by the French, too, in their note of
July 11, 1939, to Britain. William Strang reminded Halifax of that problem on
July 20 just when the British government was 241drawing up the instruction
to its delegation at the military conversations. "The military
negotiations will probably not be brought to a conclusion,” Strang wrote,
"until it can be agreed, for example, between the Soviet Union and Poland
that the Soviet Union will have passage through at any rate a section of Polish
territory in the event of a war in which Poland is involved on our
side." ”118”
However, no steps were suggested either by the British
or by the French government towards resolving the issue.
The British government had virtually brought the
political discussions into an impasse by the stand it had taken on guarantees
for other nations in the event of indirect aggression. As far as the military
conversations were concerned, it did want to have them deadlocked on the issue
of passage for Soviet troops through the territory of Poland. Besides, London
was striving to put the blame for the breakdown of the talks on the Polish
government because its abstractionist position furnished enough reason for
doing so.
One cannot fail to note that having dispatched their
military mission off to Moscow with an instruction that doomed the talks to
failure, all British ministers (that is, the British government as a whole)
went on holiday, by tradition, early in August. And that at a time when London
knew that Nazi Germany contemplated an attack on Poland before they would be
back from their holiday! Just as there is a notion of "diplomatic
sickness" in historical vocabulary, so there is ample reason to speak of
the British government’s "diplomatic holiday”. The whole point was this: how
could the British government be reproached with having failed to offer any
resistance to German aggression when it was on its statutory holiday? All that
meant that the British government was not proposing to make any change in the
instruction to its military mission even if Nazi Germany really decided to
attack Poland at the end of August, as planned (which was well known to
London).
The Soviet Union’s altitude to the military
conversations was quite different. On August 2, 1939, the composition of the
Soviet military delegation was endorsed by People’s Commissar for Defence
Marshal K. Y. Voroshilov.
The General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces had
prepared a detailed plan of military co-operation of the Three Powers in time
for the talks. That was a clear indication of 242the Soviet government’s
keen interest in bringing the talks to conclusion as soon as possible and
thereby preventing the Nazis from starting the war.
At the same time the Soviet side could not help being
alerted by the true intentions oi the British and French governments. So one
objective the Soviet military delegation had to achieve was to hand out these
intentions of the British and French missions so as to avoid being misled.
The Soviet-British-French conversations opened in
Moscow on August 12, 1939. The head of the Soviet military mission, Voroshilov,
proposed, first of all that they should open with a statement of the powers the
delegation had. Those of the Soviet representatives were full and
comprehensive. However, it turned out that the head of the French delegation,
Doumenc, was authorized only to negotiate, but not to sign any agreements. Drax
had arrived in Moscow without any powers at all (he had to declare that he would
ask for them and present them subsequently).
When the discussions on the substance of the matter
opened, the head of the Soviet military mission asked the British and the
French to state their proposals regarding the steps which, in their opinion,
should assure a joint organisation of defence by the contracting parties, that
is, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. "Do the missions of Britain and
France have appropriate military plans?" Voroshilov asked. The head of the
Soviet military delegation underlined that the Three Powers had to work out a
joint military plan to meet the contingency of aggression. "This plan must
be discussed in detail,” he said, "so we must come to agreement, sign a
military convention and go home to wait for the course the events will take,
sure of our own strength." ”119”
It turned out that the British and French delegations
had arrived in Moscow without any detailed plans of military co-operation of
the Three Powers. That fact could not, of course, fail to alert the Soviet
delegation no less than the absence of the requisite powers.
What the head of the French delegation general Doumenc
announced at the talks on August 13 had nothing to do with France’s real plans
and intentions. As stated earlier on, the Western powers had agreed between
them long in advance that, in the event of war, they would stick to purely
defensive tactics, pinning their greatest hopes on 243a blockade. Doumenc,
however, asserted that the French Army, 110 divisions strong, would, having
first checked enemy advance on its line of fortifications, "concentrate
its forces in places convenient for tank and artillery action and then go over
to a counter-offensive”. Should, however, Lhc bulk of the Nazi forces be channeled
eastwards, France "will throw all of her forces into an offensive against
the Germans.” ”120” That statement was a premeditated attempt at
misleading the Soviet government.
British General Heywood announced that Britain had as
few as five infantry divisions and one motorised division at the time. ”121” This
statement signified that in the event of war Britain virtually intended to keep
out.
Cardinal Issue
At the session of the talks on August 13, Voroshilov
asked how the military missions and General Staffs of France and Britain visualized
the Soviet Union’s involvement in a war against the aggressor, should the
latter have attacked France, Britain, Poland, Romania or Turkey. He explained
that he put the question that way because Soviet involvement in war was
possible, owing to its geographical position, only on the territory of
neighbouring states, above all Poland and Romania.”122” The conversations of
August 14 dealt with the same problem. The head of the Soviet military mission
emphasised that this was the "cardinal issue" of the conversations.
He specified that he meant passage of Soviet troops through some limited areas
of Poland, namely the Vilno Corridor in the north and Galicia in the south. The
Soviet military mission declared that "without a positive solution to this
issue, the whole of the enterprise undertaken with a view to concluding a
military convention between Britain, France and the USSR is doomed to failure
in advance, in its opinion".
Voroshilov told the conferees and showed on the map
how the USSR could take part in a common struggle against the aggressor
with its armed forces. Having heard him produce that information, Doumenc
exclaimed: "That will be the final victory".”123”
As to the question raised by the Soviet delegation,
Doumenc, avoiding a straightforward answer, pointed out that 244Poland, Romania
and Turkey had to defend their own territory with their own forces, while the
Three Powers must be ready to come to their assistance "when they ask for
it”. In that context, the head of the Soviet delegation pointed out that Poland
and Romania could just as well fail to ask for aid in good time, but surrender.
It was, however, not in the interest of Great Britain, France and the Soviet
Union to see "additional armed forces of Poland and Romania destroyed”. So
it was necessary to agree in advance on the involvement of Soviet forces in the
defence of those countries against aggression. “124”
The Soviet delegation, therefore, raised an issue
which was crucial to Soviet active involvement in the struggle against the
common enemy. Although Britain and France understood that perfectly well, they
had taken no steps whatsoever towards settling the issue.
The position of Britain and France showed that there
was, in effect, no ground for agreement between the Three Powers. "I think
our mission is finished,” Drax noted after that session.”125” The French
military mission also stated in its diary that the session held on that day
"having been of a rather dramatic character, marked the end of the current
conversations".”126”
The Soviet government could not, naturally, help
drawing similar conclusions and, thus, there was every reason for it to arrive
at the conclusion after the session of August 14 that actually there was no
hope any more for agreement to be reached.
At the opening of the session on August 15, Drax announced that the British and French military missions had relayed the Soviet statement to their governments and were now waiting for a reply to it. In this context, the Soviet delegation agreed to continue the discussions.
The military quarters of Britain and France realised
the danger the breakdown of the talks spelled. They were well informed that the
projected Nazi attack on Poland was just a few days away. On August 16, the
Foreign Office inquired about the judgement of the Deputy Chiefs of Staff of
the three services of the British Armed Forces. The reply came on the same day.
Unlike their earlier statements which had played down the importance of
co-operation with the USSR, this document said: "We feel that this is no
time for half-measures and that every effort should be 245made to persuade
Poland and Romania to agree to the use of their territory by Russian forces.. .
It is perfectly clear that without early and effective Russian assistance, the
Poles cannot hope to stand up to a German attack on land or in the air for more
than a limited time. . . The conclusion of a treaty with Russia appears to us
to be the best way of preventing a war ... At the worst, if the negotiations
with Russia break down, a Russo-German rapprochement may take place.”127”
However, this conclusion was not even examined by the
British government, nor were any steps taken in this respect.
The French Chief of Staff, General Gamelin, produced
his own judgement as well. He declared that France’s inaction could have
disastrous consequences for her. Control of Poland would materially strengthen
Germany. Should Poland get support, she would be in a position to resist long
enough to keep Germany from throwing her forces into action against France in
1939.”128”
Soviet Plan for Military Co-operation
The plan for Three-Power military co-operation, worked
out in every detail by the Soviet side, was set out at the Anglo-Franco-Soviet
military talks on August 15 by B. M. Shaposhnikov, Chief of the General Staff
of the Red Army. He announced that the USSR was prepared to field 136
divisions, 5,000 heavy guns, 9,000–10,000 tanks and 5,000-5,500 combat aircraft
against the aggressor.
In the report he presented, Shaposhnikov suggested
three versions of joint action by the armed forces of the USSR, Britain and
France in the subsequent variations of aggressive action by Germany:
aggressors’ attack on Britain and France; attack on Poland and Romania; and
attack on the USSR through the Baltic region.”129”
Doumenc cabled to Paris after the session that the
Soviet representatives had set out plans of "very effective assistance
they are determined to afford us”. Tn another cable, ho reported the Soviet
Union’s willingness to undertake offensive action in support of France should
the main strike be directed against her. "In short,” he wrote, "we
have to 246acknowledge a clearly expressed desire not to stay out, but, just on
the contrary, to act in earnest." “13”°
Referring to the Soviet proposals, a member of the
French delegation, General Beaufre, pointed out: "It would have been
difficult to be more concrete and more clear. . . The contrast between this
programme . . . and the confused abstractions of the Franco-English project is
amazing, and it shows the gap between the two conceptions. .. The Soviet
arguments carried weight. . . Our position was false." “131”
The plan of military co-operation set forth by
Shaposhnikov attested to the Soviet government’s earnest intentions. In the
event of war being started by the Nazi aggressors, the Soviet Union was
prepared to act together with Britain and France in a determined operation to
defeat the aggressor within the shortest space of time and with the least
casualties. The main thing, however, was that should the Soviet-proposed
agreement have been concluded, the aggressor would not have ventured to go to
war.
The proposals of the Soviet government conclusively
disprove the allegations circulated in the West to the effect that Moscow was
dreaming of a war between the two groups of imperialist powers. Such
contentions had nothing to do with the real state of things. The Soviet
government realised perfectly well that neither Poland, nor France, nor both,
would have been in a position, without Soviet aid, to stand up against the
onslaught of Nazi Germany. Nor did it have any doubt that, having routed those
two countries, the Nazis would throw their full strength against the USSR. As
slated earlier on, it was in the spring of 1939 that the Soviet government
received information that the Nazis were planning to crush Poland already in
that year, to defeat France in 1940, and then, launch a war against the USSR.
That alone made it clear that the Soviet Union had to, and did strive to
forestall Germany’s attack on Poland and France for the sake of its own
security: the defeat of those two countries was, in effect, sure to make it
impossible to prevent the Nazi Reich’s subsequent attack on the USSR. And,
conversely, had the Nazis been stopped from overrunning Poland and France,
there would have been less danger of Germany attacking the Soviet Union.
There was, however, no reply either on August nor 17
to the Soviet delegation’s question about the passage 247of Soviet troops
through the territory of Poland and Romania. Thereupon, the conversations were
adjourned until August 21, on a motion from Drax. The only thing that meant was
that the governments of Britain and France, far from being in any hurry to
bring off the talks, were holding them up advisedly. The Soviet government,
naturally, could not see the situation thus created as anything but a sign of
the utter futility of the talks.
Should the governments of Britain and France have
really wanted to arrive at an agreement with the USSR, they should have settled
the issue of Soviet-Polish military cooperation with the government of Poland
even before the Moscow talks started. When, however, the matter arose in its
full dramatic meaning in Moscow, the British and the French ought, it would
seem, to have taken most urgent steps to get it settled. Since, however, what
the governments of Britain and France were preoccupied with was not to conclude
an agreement with the USSR but just to drag the talks on as long as possible,
they were in no hurry to turn to the Polish government, still less get it to
agree to military co-operation with the USSR. Incidentally, while they did,
after all, establish some contact with the Polish government at long last, they
never so much as addressed the government of Romania.
Poland’s Part in Breaking Off the Talks
The contact which Britain and France established with
the Polish government in those days was of a very peculiar character. For
example, the French representatives in Warsaw showed no intention at all to get
the Polish government to agree to co-operation with the USSR in action against
German aggression, but just wanted to get the right for themselves to make a
statement in Moscow about Poland’s position which would enable the Three-Power
military conversations to continue without in any way committing Poland. The
member of the French delegation in Moscow, Beaufre, subsequently pointed out
that the problem was not to secure a Polish reply to the question of whether or
not they would allow passage of Soviet troops through their territory but to
"find a pretext to continue the talks."“132” 248With the Nazi Reich’s
attack on Poland only a few days away, the Polish ruling circles still flatly
refused all cooperation with the USSR because of their flagrantly anti Soviet
position. The French War Ministry stated in a memorandum about the progress of
negotiations in Moscow: to make it easier for Poland to decide in favour of
military co-operation with the USSR, the Soviet delegation very neatly limited
the zone of passage of Soviet troops through Polish territory and determined
them out of considerations of "purely strategic character”. However, Jozef
Beck and the Polish Chief of Staff General Stachiewicz, showed "
irreconcilable hostility".”133” On August 20, 1939, Stachiewicz told the
British military attache that "there could never be any question of Soviet
troops being allowed to cross the Polish frontier".”134” All the Polish
government quarters consented to be the pretext suggested by French diplomacy.
Such a position of the Polish rulers will be easier to
understand if one takes into account the fact that they, as has since been made
clear by the reminiscences of the Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipski,
were still obsessed in those crucial days with their own plans of reaching an
accommodation with the Nazi Reich. On August 18, Lipski suggested to Beck the
idea of a visit to Berlin to negotiate with the Nazi chiefs. Beck agreed on the
following day. On August 20, Lipski flew to Warsaw on an urgent mission to talk
over with Beck the substance of the coming negotiations. “135”
The Polish rulers could hardly have any doubt about
the character those “talks” might have and what they might end up in. For
everybody still remembered only too well the similar “talks” between Hitler and
President Hacha of Czechoslovakia in Berlin in the middle of March 1939. The
Fiihrer is known to have forced him into "agreeing to a dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia and the establishment of a Nazi Reich’s protectorate out of what
would be left of her by threatening to wipe Prague off the face of the earth.
The Polish rulers could not fail to realise that at a time when the Nazi Reich
had massed its troops close to the Polish borders in order to carry out a
devastating strike against her, something like it was bound to be imposed on
Poland in the negotiations in Berlin. But they, evidently, were ready and
willing to capitulate in the hope of becoming Hitler’s lieutenants in the
Poland he would 249enslave, as a result of this betrayal of their own people.
Hitler, however, was not at all disposed to have any
negotiations with Poland’s representatives. He was not to be satisfied even
with her voluntary surrender. He bad brought off his preparations for a
military defeat of Poland and he wanted no other solution to the issue.
Britain and France Deadlock the Talks
The British government, wishing no agreement with the
USSR and anxious to put the blame for the breakdown of the military
conversations on Poland, did not even try to convince the Polish rulers in
anything. The German troops were poised in readiness for yet another
breakthrough eastward, not westward, so the British ruling establishment saw no
particular reason to worry. While the alliance with the USSR "was essential
to France from the military point of view”, Beaufre pointed out, since it was
the "only means" of preventing war, for the British and French
governments the negotiations with the Soviet Union were nothing but a means to
achieve their true diplomatic and strategic ends. As he stated these ends,
Beaufre wrote that during the talks Britain and France were thinking of a
"possible German-Soviet clash".”136”
The way London saw that clash can be judged from some
pronouncements of the British military attache in Moscow, Firebrace, about the
views the British military mission guided itself by at the negotiations:
"In the coming war Germany would remain on the defensive in the West,
attack Poland with superior forces and probably overrun her with one to two months.
German troops would then be on the Soviet frontier shortly after the outbreak
of war. It was not out of the question that Germany would then offer the
Western Powers a separate peace on condition that she received a free hand to
advance in the East." “137”
There was no reply to the cardinal question raised by
the Soviet government until August 21, which had been fixed in advance for the
next session of talks by the military delegations of the Three Powers.
Moreover, the British and French missions attempted to get the session
postponed again. And at the time when Hitler Germany’s attack on 250Poland was
scheduled for August 25–26 about which the British government had "a good
deal of information".”138”
Nonetheless the Soviet military mission did not agree
to the session being postponed, so it did take place. Voroshilov addressed it
with a statement that, in the absence of any reply from Britain and France to
the cardinal question he had raised, "there is every reason to doubt their
desire for real and serious military co-operation with the USSR. In view of the
foregoing, the responsibility for the procrastination of the military
conversations as well as for the suspension of these negotiations lies,
naturally, with the French and British sides."
In view of the situation that had shaped up at the
talks, the head of the Soviet delegation had to admit that there was, indeed,
no more practical reason to meet again before the replies from the British and
French governments wore available. In case they would be affirmative, he
declared, "we would have to call our conference as soon as possi
ble". “139” That was the last session because the British and French
missions never received any affirmative reply from their governments to the
Soviet question.
Yet there was an epilogue on August 22 to the
negotiations arising from the earlier-stated pretext regarding the position of
Poland. Doumenc sent a letter to Voroshilov informing him that he had received
from the French government "permission to give the affirmative answer to
the question put by the Soviet delegation".”140”
Still when he called on Voroshilov on the same day,
Doumenc turned out to be unable to say anything reasonable either about the
position of France or about Poland or Romania. He could not even say whether or
not his own communication had been agreed with the Polish government.
Voroshilov pointed out in this context that if the Polish government had given
its consent to the passage of Soviet troops through the territory of Poland, it
must have certainly wished to take part in the negotiations. He stressed that
what was required was an answer from Britain and France in agreement with the
governments of Poland and Romania. ’When complete clarity has been established
and all the replies have been received, then we will work,” “141” Voroshilov
concluded.
The governments of Britain and France, as well as of
Poland were, therefore, responsible for the failure of the 251military
conversations in Moscow. Both the very course of the talks and the attitude of
the governments of the Western powers to them quite clearly demonstrated that
even within a few days of the outbreak of the war, Britain and France were
still building their policies on the hope that they could reach an
understanding with Berlin.
The U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes,
describing Britain’s political course at the time, pointed out in his Diaries
that Britain could have come to agreement with the USSR long before that, but
she "kept hoping against hope that she could embroil Russia and Germany
with each other and thus escape scot-free herself”. “142”
The Western powers could not, however, make the events
take the course they wanted. The aggressive powers— Germany, Japan and
Italy—had thrown the gauntlet to them and openly set out to redraw the map of
the world to their advantage. Co-operation of Britain and France with the USSR
could have stopped the aggressors. But the West rejected the Soviet proposals
for such co-operation. The policy of the ruling circles of the Western powers
was built on shaky ground. The peoples had to pay dear for that policy.”143”
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