Hitler and Stalin in cahoots, the First Ally had been effectively marginalized; but with Hitler and Stalin at war, she became an important player. As the Wehrmacht pressed on towards Moscow, Stalin desperately needed help. The result was a Soviet–Polish treaty signed on 30 July, and a corresponding military agreement. In essence, the USSR agreed to annul the German–Soviet treaties of 1939, torestore diplomatic relations, and to permit the formation of an army drawn from the millions of the First Ally’s subjects who were being held as Soviet prisoners. For its part, the First Ally agreed to cooperate with the USSR in the prosecution of the war. The British were delighted. For the first time in the war, they had two eastern allies. 20
The military agreement followed on 14 August. It stated that the First Ally’s new army should be organized on Soviet soil, that it would owe allegiance to the exiled Government in London, and that it would operate on the Eastern Front under Soviet command. The army’s commander was to be appointed by the exiled Government, but with Soviet approval.
Unfortunately, the frontier question was left in a state of considerable inprecision. Despite the desperate plight of the Soviets, no one on their side would accept the formula that the First Ally’s eastern frontiers should return to pre-war positions. A clause in the treaty of 30 July seemed to point in that direction. The Soviet Government recognized that ‘the Soviet–German treaties of 1939 relative to territorial changes . . . have lost their validity.’ The British Foreign Office confirmed in a note that it did not recognize any territorial changes after August 1939. Yet that same day, when pressed in Parliament, the Foreign Secretary replied that the note ‘does not involve any guarantee of frontiers by HMG.’ In the midst of the double negatives and the contorted diplomatic verbiage, nothing had been properly agreed.
On 11 December 1941, in an act of supreme folly, Hitler announced in the Reichstag that Germany had declared war on the USA. He was reacting to the news from Pearl Harbor. At the time, having already caught sight of the gleaming spires of the Kremlin, a German panzer group was fighting on the outskirts of Moscow. Hitler was counting on the chance that the critical phase of the European war would be finished before the Americans could intervene effectively.
The creation of the Grand Alliance inevitably handed precedence to the dealings of the ‘Big Three’. On the other hand, if the Red Army could avoid defeat, and if Britain could keep the Atlantic lines of communication open, there was now a real chance of constructing a winning coalition. And, as the First Ally well knew, the comprehensive defeat of Germany, which now occupied all parts of her territory, was the sine qua non for the restoration of the country’s independence.
What is more, the Americans, unlike the British, could be expected tokeep the Soviet Union’s expansionist ambitions in check. They appeared to be resolutely opposed, as their spokesmen repeatedly stated, to ‘all forms of expansion by conquest.’ They were ruled by a Democratic president, whose party was specially sensitive to a large block of immigrant voters with close ethnic ties to the First Ally. Most importantly, since they produced a large part of the war material on which Soviet survival depended, they possessed the most powerful instrument for ensuring Stalin’s good conduct.
From the psychological point of view, however, the entry of the Americans recoloured the emotional climate of the Alliance. They had none of the cynical, world-weary reserve of the British imperialists, and they had an infectious, childlike desire to see the Alliance as one great happy family. Churchill, the old anti-Bolshevik, was well aware that he had been obliged to make ‘a pact with the Devil’. The British socialists, whose influence was growing, knew all about the incompatibility of
The military agreement followed on 14 August. It stated that the First Ally’s new army should be organized on Soviet soil, that it would owe allegiance to the exiled Government in London, and that it would operate on the Eastern Front under Soviet command. The army’s commander was to be appointed by the exiled Government, but with Soviet approval.
Unfortunately, the frontier question was left in a state of considerable inprecision. Despite the desperate plight of the Soviets, no one on their side would accept the formula that the First Ally’s eastern frontiers should return to pre-war positions. A clause in the treaty of 30 July seemed to point in that direction. The Soviet Government recognized that ‘the Soviet–German treaties of 1939 relative to territorial changes . . . have lost their validity.’ The British Foreign Office confirmed in a note that it did not recognize any territorial changes after August 1939. Yet that same day, when pressed in Parliament, the Foreign Secretary replied that the note ‘does not involve any guarantee of frontiers by HMG.’ In the midst of the double negatives and the contorted diplomatic verbiage, nothing had been properly agreed.
On 11 December 1941, in an act of supreme folly, Hitler announced in the Reichstag that Germany had declared war on the USA. He was reacting to the news from Pearl Harbor. At the time, having already caught sight of the gleaming spires of the Kremlin, a German panzer group was fighting on the outskirts of Moscow. Hitler was counting on the chance that the critical phase of the European war would be finished before the Americans could intervene effectively.
The creation of the Grand Alliance inevitably handed precedence to the dealings of the ‘Big Three’. On the other hand, if the Red Army could avoid defeat, and if Britain could keep the Atlantic lines of communication open, there was now a real chance of constructing a winning coalition. And, as the First Ally well knew, the comprehensive defeat of Germany, which now occupied all parts of her territory, was the sine qua non for the restoration of the country’s independence.
What is more, the Americans, unlike the British, could be expected tokeep the Soviet Union’s expansionist ambitions in check. They appeared to be resolutely opposed, as their spokesmen repeatedly stated, to ‘all forms of expansion by conquest.’ They were ruled by a Democratic president, whose party was specially sensitive to a large block of immigrant voters with close ethnic ties to the First Ally. Most importantly, since they produced a large part of the war material on which Soviet survival depended, they possessed the most powerful instrument for ensuring Stalin’s good conduct.
From the psychological point of view, however, the entry of the Americans recoloured the emotional climate of the Alliance. They had none of the cynical, world-weary reserve of the British imperialists, and they had an infectious, childlike desire to see the Alliance as one great happy family. Churchill, the old anti-Bolshevik, was well aware that he had been obliged to make ‘a pact with the Devil’. The British socialists, whose influence was growing, knew all about the incompatibility of
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