The Grand Alliance (92 page)

2. The information at my disposal gives me the
impression that the culminating violence of the German
invasion is already over, and that winter will give your
heroic armies a breathing-space. This however is a
personal opinion.

3. About supplies. We are well aware of the grievous
losses which Russian industry has sustained, and
every effort has been and will be made by us to help
you. I am cabling President Roosevelt to expedite the
arrival here in London of Mr. Harriman’s Mission, and
we shall try even before the Moscow Conference to tell
you the numbers of aircraft and tanks we can jointly
promise to send each month, together with supplies of
rubber, aluminium, cloth, etc. For our part we are now
prepared to send you, from British production,one-half
of the monthly total for which you ask in aircraft and
tanks. We hope the United States will supply the other
half of your requirements. We shall use every endeavour to start the flow of equipment to you immediately.

4. We have given already the orders for supplying
the Persian Railway with rolling-stock to raise it from its
present capacity of two trains a day each way up to its
full capacity, namely, twelve trains a day each way.

This should be reached by the spring of 1942, and
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meanwhile will be steadily improving. Locomotives and
rolling-stock have to be sent round the Cape from this
country after being converted to oil-burners, and the
water supply along the railway has to be developed.

The first forty-eight locomotives and four hundred steel
trucks are about to start.

5. We are ready to make joint plans with you now.

Whether British armies will be strong enough to invade
the mainland of Europe during 1942 must depend on
unforeseeable events. It may be possible however to
assist you in the extreme North when there is more
darkness. We are hoping to raise our armies in the
Middle East to a strength of three-quarters of a million
before the end of the present year, and thereafter to a
million by the summer of 1942. Once the German-Italian forces in Libya have been destroyed, all these
forces will be available to come into line on your southern flank, and it is hoped to encourage Turkey to
maintain at the least a faithful neutrality. Meanwhile we
shall continue to batter Germany from the air with
increasing severity and to keep the seas open and
ourselves alive.

6. In your first paragraph you used the word “sell.”

We had not viewed the matter in such terms and have
never thought of payment. Any assistance we can give
you would better be upon the same basis of comradeship as the American Lend-Lease Bill, of which no
formal account is kept in money.

7. We are willing to put any pressure upon Finland in
our power, including immediate notification that we will
declare war upon her should she continue beyond the
old frontiers. We are asking the United States to take all
possible steps to influence Finland.

I thought the whole matter so important that I sent simultaneously the following telegram to the President while the impression was fresh in my mind: The Grand Alliance

564

Former Naval Person

5 Sept. 41

to

President

Roosevelt

The Soviet Ambassador brought the subjoined
message to me and Eden last night, and used
language of vague import about the gravity of the
occasion and the turning-point character which would
attach to our reply. Although nothing in his language
warranted the assumption, we could not exclude the
impression that they might be thinking of separate
terms. The Cabinet have thought it right to send the
attached reply. Hope you will not object to our references to possible American aid. I feel that the moment
may be decisive. We can but do our best.

With kindest regards …

The Soviet appeal was very naturally supported by our Ambassador in Moscow in the strongest terms. To this also I sent what I deemed a reply which would arm him in future arguments.

Prime Minister to Sir

5 Sept. 41

Stafford Cripps

If it were possible to make any successful diversion
upon the French or Low Countries shore which would
bring back German troops from Russia, we should
order it even at the heaviest cost. All our generals are
convinced that a bloody repulse is all that would be
sustained, or, if small lodgments were effected, that
they would have to be withdrawn after a few days. The
French coast is fortified to the limit, and the Germans
still have more divisions in the West than we have in
Great Britain,
2
and formidable air support. The
shipping available to transport a large army to the
Continent does not exist, unless the process were
spread over many months. The diversion of our flotillas
to such an operation would entail paralysis of the
support of the Middle Eastern armies and a breakdown
of the whole Atlantic traffic. It might mean the loss of
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the Battle of the Atlantic and the starvation and ruin of
the British Isles. Nothing that we could do or could have
done would affect the struggle on the Eastern front.

From the first day when Russia was attacked I have not
ceased to press the Chiefs of Staff to examine every
form of action. They are united in the views here
expressed.

2. When Stalin speaks of a front in the Balkans you
should remember that even with the shipping then
available in the Mediterranean it took us seven weeks
to place two divisions and one armoured brigade in
Greece, and that since we were driven out the whole of
the Greek and many of the island airfields have been
occupied by the German and Italian Air Force and lie
wholly outside the range of our fighter protection. I
wonder that the losses sustained by our shipping and
the Fleet in the evacuations of Greece and Crete have
been forgotten. The conditions are far more adverse
now than then, and our naval strength is reduced.

3. When you speak of “a superhuman effort” you
mean, I presume, an effort rising superior to space,
time, and geography. Unfortunately these attributes are
denied us.

4. The situation in the West would be entirely
different if the French front were in being, for then I
have no doubt the invasion of Russia would have been
impossible because of the enormous counter-attacks
that could be immediately launched. No one wants to
recriminate, but it is not our fault that Hitler was enabled
to destroy Poland before turning his forces against
France, or to destroy France before turning them
against Russia.

5. The four hundred and forty fighter aircraft which
we have taken from our seriously diminished reserve
are no doubt petty compared with the losses sustained
by the Russian Air Force. They constitute however a
painful and dangerous sacrifice on our part. The attacks
by the Royal Air Force both by day and by night are
maintained with our utmost strength, and the even
character of the fighting above the French coast shows
the high degree of air power still possessed by the
Germans in the West.

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6. Nothing that we could do or could have done can
affect the terrible battle proceeding on the Russian
front. Arrangements can still be made to provide for the
campaign of 1942. The route established through
Persia will be opened to the full, and whatever can be
found and shipped from British resources, and from
American resources which would otherwise have come
to Britain, will be sent as fast as possible. I am pressing
President Roosevelt to send Mr. Harriman here at the
earliest moment in order that the Russians may know
what aid they may expect in 1942 to compensate for
the losses sustained by their munitions industry and
make their plans accordingly. Meanwhile I am sending
a reply to Stalin’s telegram today, and this present
message is solely for your own guidance. I sympathise
keenly with your feelings as you watch the agony of
Russia at close quarters, but neither sympathy nor
emotion will overcome the kind of facts we have to face.

In response to one of Stalin’s requests I sent on September 9 the following telegram to our Ambassador in Moscow:
Prime Minister to Sir

15 Sept. 41

Stafford

Cripps

(Moscow)

Please inform M. Stalin from Prime Minister that we
are arranging to supply five thousand tons of aluminium
from Canada as soon as arrangements for shipment
are completed, and two thousand tons monthly thereafter. First shipments will be via Vladivostok, unless
Persian route would be preferable to Russian Government.

On September 15 I received another telegram from Stalin:
Premier

Stalin

to

15 Sept. 41

Prime

Minister

Churchill

In my last message I stated the viewpoint of the
Soviet Government that the establishment of a second
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front is the most fundamental remedy for improvement
of the situation with regard to our common cause. In
reply to your message, in which you stress once more
the impossibility of a second front at the present moment, I can only reiterate that the absence of a second
front simply favours the designs of our common enemy.

I have no doubt that the British Government desires
to see the Soviet Union victorious and is looking for
ways and means to attain this end. If, as they think, the
establishment of a second front in the West is at
present impossible, perhaps another method could be
found to render to the Soviet Union an active military
help?

It seems to me that Great Britain could without risk
land in Archangel twenty-five to thirty divisions, or
transport them across Iran to the southern regions of
the U.S.S.R. In this way there could be established
military collaboration between the Soviet and British
troops on the territory of the U.S.S.R. A similar situation
existed during the last war in France. The arrangement
mentioned would constitute a great help. It would be a
serious blow against the Hitler aggression.

It is almost incredible that the head of the Russian Government with all the advice of their military experts could have committed himself to such absurdities. It seemed hopeless to argue with a man thinking in terms of utter unreality. He continued:

I thank you very much for your promise to render us
assistance by the monthly deliveries of aluminium,
tanks, and aircraft.

I can only welcome the intention of the British
Government to render this assistance in aluminium,
tanks, and aircraft not on the usual commercial basis

[but] of comradeship and collaboration. I hope the
British Government will have ample opportunity of
being convinced that the Soviet Government understands how to appreciate the help received from its ally.

One remark in connection with the memorandum
delivered on September 12 to M. Molotov by the British
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Ambassador in Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps. In this
memorandum it is said: “If the Soviet Government were
compelled to destroy its naval vessels at Leningrad in
order to prevent their falling into the enemy hands, His
Majesty’s Government would recognise after the war
claims of the Soviet Government to a certain compensation from His Majesty’s Government for the restoration
of the vessels destroyed.”