University Place

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in WWII

[Jerald Podair, Associate Professor of History, Lawrence University]

Professor Reynolds is considered our most eminent historian of the World War II era. And, of course, this is a very crowded field. Now, my use of the word “era” is deliberate because David Reynolds’ books all give us more than military history, more than political history, more than diplomatic history, although, of course, they give us these as well.

They offer an understanding of the World War II years as an era, one that uprooted cultures and perceptions and ideologies and boundaries, states, peoples, lives and made a world anew with a new political, geographic, and moral landscape that continues to shape and challenge the world that we inhabit today.

David Reynolds is also the model of the publicly engaged historian. He does what I think every historian should do, and that is to bring history, which is the best subject of all

[laughter]

out of the academy and into the broader public dialog.

I’d also like to acknowledge Dr. Monroe Trout for his assistance in making Professor Reynolds’ visit possible. Here to speak to us on Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, the Big Three in World War II, is Professor David Reynolds.

[applause]

[David Reynolds, Professor of International History, University of Cambridge]

Thank you, Jerry, for that very gracious introduction. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to see such a large crowd of people. It’s also a pleasure to come to heartland parts of the United States.

My wife is American. She grew up in southern Illinois, and over the years I have particularly enjoyed – enjoyed traveling in the Midwest, the Plains, states that are often neglected by foreign visitors. But I always say to my students: “If you want to understand America, you have to come to towns and cities like these.” And my sense of Appleton from a very brief visit is it’s a very powerful civic culture and a very strong sense of community, and – and it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a particular pleasure to be the guests of Monroe and Sandy Trout. And I’m very grateful to them for their generous hospitality.

So, on to the – on to the business at hand. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin.

I come from Cambridge, England, as Jerry said. The original Cambridge, as I like to say to my friends from Harvard.

[laughter]

They don’t like that, but anyway.

[laughter]

And one of the things that is very special about Cambridge is that, in a sense, it is at the heart of studies about Winston Churchill because we have, at Churchill College, the archive of Winston Churchill and his papers. We also have other prime ministers’ papers, Margaret Thatcher for example, but the heart of it is Churchill himself. And we think of that, in a sense, as the center of a hub.

And here’s a picture I think is a very wonderful picture. Its Sarah Lewery, who is one of the conservators at the archive, right in the middle of those boxes, and, in a sense, because of the – the – the way that the – the – the lenses worked, you have a sense of something radiating out from that center. History is in those boxes.

And what I want to do and what we want to do in Cambridge is to communicate those treasures to a wider audience, to link them up with scholarship within our history department. Here is the archive center, and there’s the history department, a wonderful modernist building. I say wonderful with an element of incredulity about it.

[laughter]

Having been chairman of the building and trying to work out how the glass can ever be insulated and – and prevented from letting the rain in. But anyway, we’ll leave that aside.

[laughter]

A wonderful modernist building. But this is the center of the hub. And the idea of the communication between those archives and the communicating and scholarly skills of historians is part of what we mean by the Churchill hub and what we want to – to promote.

But it’s also, of course, a center of Churchill studies in other parts of the world, particularly in the United States, where there is an incredible interest in Winston Churchill. And here are two other eminent centers of Churchill studies. The National Churchill Museum at Fulton, Missouri, and also the National Churchill Center and Library in Washington, DC.

So, I think there is a sense of the need to bring those riches of the archives to a wider audience. And that’s part of what I want to do this evening.

And I want to talk particularly about a project that I’m involved in, which is I would say evidence of this Churchill hub at work. The synergy of archives and scholars in an international framework.

And it’s a project I’m involved in with a Russian colleague. Stalin’s correspondence with Roosevelt and Churchill during the Second World War. And I’m engaged in this with a colleague in Moscow, Vladimir Pechatnov. Here we are together at the Russian embassy in London a year ago. And, essentially, this is to do a full edition of the correspondence between these three leaders during the war, drawing on the material in the Churchill archive, the Roosevelt library, but particularly on new material that’s been made available in Moscow from the Stalin archive, which is now in the public domain. And Vladimir has been able to get access to it. He has a team of people working with him.

And it’s absolutely fascinating to put the three sides of this correspondence together. These men exchanged 750 messages during the war. And what we’re doing is writing, producing those messages, but also writing a – a commentary about what’s going on behind the scenes, what they’re thinking about, how they’re reacting to each other. It’s a very striking human story. And I want to convey just a tiny bit of it tonight.

The book was published in Russian in Russia a year ago. We did a presentation at the embassy in London. I’m not actually asleep. I’m listening intently to – to what Vladimir is saying.

[laughter]

I want to make that clear now, on the record.

What we’re doing now is – is writing a completely new edition for an English-speaking audience for publication in the United States and Britain in two- or three-years time, depending on how fast I work. And the commentary is, particularly as I’m rewriting it, bringing out, as I say, more of that human detail, the human story, which is deeply fascinating.

So, that’s what I want to talk about a little bit as an example of what the Churchill hub that we imagine, the synergy of – of archive and scholars, can be about.

So, let’s start with the three men. You know something about them, but I want to just say a little more.

Winston Churchill, there he is as a young officer, cadet at Sandhurst. A man who, shall we put it politely in American parlance, is a high school dropout. Goes into the army, never really has his father’s approval, and that’s something that always nags at him. In a sense, he’s always wanting to prove himself to his father, his long-dead father. But he develops his skills as a soldier, and it matters that Churchill was a soldier. He knew war. That was tremendously important in the Second World War as a leader. But also, of course, a man of many skills. A writer, a journalist, using his journalistic skills to get into politics and move on and move fast up the ladder of politics.

Very able.

Deeply ambitious.

The ability and the ambition coming together in 1940 when, against all expectations, he becomes the leader of his country at a time of great peril, and he sees it through five years of war with words, with deeds, and, of course, symbolic actions. There’s the famous ‘V’ for victory sign. So, Churchill, a war leader who knew war.

Move on to somebody very different: Joseph Stalin. Here’s a propaganda picture of him 19 – from the 1930s. But, of course, basically, where if Churchill is a high school dropout, Stalin is a revolutionary and a criminal on the run. That’s his police file for the Tsarist secret police. A man who maneuvers his way into the top jobs in Moscow, not playing a big part in the revolution but behind the scenes, the backroom boy. The General Secretary of the Party. The man who looks after the card indexes. Sounds very boring and a lot of people looked down on him, but, actually, managing the card indexes is really important because you have the dope on all the party members. And Stalin knew about all of them. He had an encyclopedic memory. He was very sharp and also had a very dry sense of humor. What was striking, if you met him and I’ve talked to people who did, was one of the British diplomats said to me, he said he wasn’t like the other dictators. He didn’t rant like Hitler. He didn’t flounce around in fancy dress like Mussolini. At a conference, Stalin would not really look at you. He would look down at his notes. He would doodle. And then, occasionally, he would look up and he would ask a very pointed question. Short, to the point, sometimes quite abrupt, quite rude, but you had a sense that this was a man you could do business with, to use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase about Mikhail Gorbachev. And both Roosevelt and Churchill definitely believed that they could do business with Stalin. It’s an interesting story; I’ll come back to it more.

So, here’s a complex man. Someone we think of as a, kind of, two-dimensional dictator, but, I think, a man who needs to be understood and explored in his own right. And I think it’s particularly important to do this at a time when, of course, relations with Russia today are extremely bad.

And I’m not getting into the politics of that and the diplomacy about that tonight, but I think that at those times it’s particularly important for scholars and educators to talk across national boundaries. Vladimir and I talk a lot. We don’t always agree on things, but we are engaged in a dialog. And when I go to, as I did in the summer, to Moscow and St. Petersburg and talk to students there, I find a real interest in what’s going on in the West, in how the West views its history, and I think it’s really important to do that at a time when governments aren’t, for good reasons and bad reasons, not – they’re not talking to each other.

So, there’s Stalin.

I come on then to the third and perhaps the most familiar of these three for you: Franklin Roosevelt. There he is as a young politician, New York politician before the First World War. Here is a campaign poster for Roosevelt and Harry Truman in 1944. And there’s probably one other thing that’s important about Roosevelt, but I’m not sure I’ve got your attention properly. Maybe we should – sometimes people get sort of tired at this time in the evening. Could I just ask you to get up and just – just stretch your legs for a moment?

[laughter]

Just kind of – no, please. Just humor the mad professor, okay? The mad Englishman. Just shake your legs, shake your arms and so on. Now, that’s fine. Thank you very much. Sit down.

[laughter]

You have just done something that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could never do on any day of his 12-year presidency. To stand up and sit down unaided.

Whatever you think of Roosevelt’s politics, this was a man, in purely human terms, who had climbed a mountain.

He could not dress himself unaided. He had to be put into, heaved into bed. Got up in the morning, frankly, he had to be sat on the toilet. Every day Roosevelt went through a hundred petty humiliations that any paraplegic suffers. But he always managed to come up looking like he was positive and smiling. And that was something that struck both his interlocutors, his colleagues, as it were, in the Big Three.

Churchill’s daughter, Lady Soames, who died, sadly, a year or so ago, she went to one of the wartime conferences, and she was very struck that long before the Big Three, the other two leaders arrived, Roosevelt had to be wheeled in and heaved out of his wheelchair, put in the seat, and then his legs arranged properly because he was, as Joseph Stilwell nastily said, rubber legs. There was nothing there.

And Mary Soames said that was something you never forgot, watching that man, as it were, being prepared for – for the public. And when I was writing the book “In Command of History” about Churchill and his war memoirs, I came across a couple of references in the – in the papers, of actually “Life” magazine who funded a lot of the – the book project, where Churchill was talking about Roosevelt after his death. So, 1947, something like that. And Churchill would talk for a minute or two, and then he would – his eyes would go off into the – he’d look away into the garden or something, and he’d say: “I really loved that man.”

And what he meant by that was he really warmed to the courage of this person. Churchill, I think, if he’d really wanted to do any one thing in life, he would have liked to have won a Victoria Cross, which is the highest Medal of Honor for combat in – in – in Britain. He admired men of courage. Roosevelt was not a man who fought in war, but Churchill admired the courage. And strange enough, Stalin did as well. It’s a very moving moment when Averell Harriman, the ambassador in Moscow, goes to tell Stalin of – of Roosevelt’s death. And Stalin has – has two reactions. The first is, who poisoned him?

[laughter]

That’s what you think about, you know? He didn’t imagine for a moment that a president of the United States would be allowed to die of normal causes. Or, possibly, inadequate medical treatment. It was – somebody must have done it to him. But the other was that he held Harriman’s hand for 30 seconds or so in silence. Even Stalin, a mass murderer, was conscious of that person and that magnetism.

So, here are three quite remarkable men in their own way, each of whom is an egomaniac, if you like, focused on himself and his projects, and they now have to work together in an unlikely alliance in a war. And that’s what I want to talk about.

The catalyst for the war, and, of course, something that hung over the wartime alliance, is that in 1939 Hitler and Stalin signed a pact, a – a neutrality pact, a treaty of friendship, which also carved up Poland and gave Stalin control of the Baltic States.

This is an issue that continues to be debated amongst historians. The Russian line, which has some validity, is that after Munich, after the British unwillingness to do anything for Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe, Stalin recognized the writing on the wall and made the best deal he could for the moment, not expecting it would last but at least buying himself time.

From the Western point of view, it is, of course, a sign of Stalin’s essential perfidy, his – his willingness to change sides, and it always hangs over the alliance. The feeling that Stalin’s done this once, he might do it again. But anyway.

So just to remind you, I’m sure you have all these dates at your fingertips, but just in case you don’t, let’s just run through a few things. Stuff happens, as Donald Rumsfeld said, and there’s a lot of stuff that happens in the Second World War, so here’s a few highlights. Hitler/Stalin pact, August ’39, which in a sense makes it possible to have a war in the West. Hitler to go to war against France and Britain. Invades Poland. Britain and France go to war with Germany. June 1940, France collapses, seeks an armistice. Battle of Britain. June 1941, Hitler invades Soviet Union. What’s happened to the United States? Oh, yes, neutrality. That’s right. Now then.

[laughter]

Okay, so there’s the stuff. Amongst those events, the one that seems to me to be particularly important in this phase that I call Alliance Emerging is this: this utterly shocking picture to most people in France or Britain of Hitler gloating in triumph, doing a bit of tourism in Paris in June 1940.

Now, our narrative of the Second World War tends to be a very familiar stereotypical one. Hitler conquers France in 1940, invaded Russia in 1941. Now, wait a minute. This is a scene stopper.

In four weeks, a jumped-up Austrian corporal has done something that the Kaiser’s best generals could never do in four years of fighting from 1914-18. He has knocked France out of the war.

The fall of France makes the Second World War fundamentally different from the First World War. It opens up a global struggle, as we’ll see, which is all-consuming for the British and the Americans and, in a different way, for the Russians.

And, of course, it leaves Britain in an absolutely precarious position. There are the Beaches of Dunkirk on the coast of France, British troops and French troops lining up impotently, waiting for evacuation to Britain. On the 28th of May 1940, the best estimate is that the British will get 40,000 troops off those beaches. By the 3rd of June, a week later, they get 330,000. No wonder that it is described as a miracle, a miracle of Dunkirk. Thankfully, Hitler left the Luftwaffe to try and finish the British off. His tanks needed to be refitted and so on. But it was a – a turning point moment.

So Britain is alone, it has an army of sorts but no equipment, and that is a fundamental part of the story of the Second World War because if Britain had folded in 1940, it’s very difficult to see what the United States would have done, except to retreat to a hemisphere – a policy of hemisphere defense, or isolationism, if you want, building up the defensive of the Western hemisphere, as many people in the United States wanted to do in 1940.

The fact that Britain hangs on means that there is always a base from which to attack Hitler’s Europe later on. It takes four years. June 1944, D-Day. But nevertheless, that’s fundamental.

But what this victory does – in France – is to enable Hitler to go east much earlier than he had expected. This is a rather crude map. It’s slightly out of focus, I’m afraid, but it gives you a general sense of Operation Barbarossa, June 1941. Blasting out from Germany’s position in Poland into the Soviet Union, to Moscow, up to Leningrad in the north, down towards Kiev, an overwhelming offensive not helped by Stalin’s failure to anticipate it, not helped by his refusal to let his troops make strategic retreat. So, large numbers of them are simply surrounded by the Germans. It’s a disaster.

But it also brings Stalin into the war on the allied side with Britain. And Churchill, who, of course, had been a notorious anti-Bolshevik, who had complained or championed intervention in Russia during the Civil War, immediately declares British support for – for the Soviet cause. And one of his secretaries asks him why, given his track record, as it were, in attitude to Russia, and he said: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

[laughter]

But there’s not much the British can do at this stage and not much that the Americans can do. Remember, you have a draft from September 1940. It’s only just renewed a year later by the Congress. At this stage, America remains neutral, even as Roosevelt’s intentions are clearly not. In 19 – August ’41, there is a meeting, a first meeting between the President and the Prime Minister. There they are. Roosevelt characteristically standing erect, but with his braces on his legs, holding on hard to his – his son, Elliott, looking at Winston with great suspicion, as an old-fashioned Victorian imperialist, which Roosevelt at times also felt about Churchill.

But there they are meeting. And here is a very moving event, as part of that Atlantic meeting off the coast of Newfoundland on the British battleship Prince of Wales , the crews of American and British ships sitting side by side at a service of worship and singing, as Churchill said, the hymns that they had shared going back, if you like, to the – the early days of the American colonies.

And it was a particularly moving event and a particularly moving picture for – for Churchill because a few months later the Prince of Wales went down with almost all hands, bombed by the Japanese in December 1941.

So, an Atlantic relationship, an Atlantic charter about values that we shared, the two countries, and we wanted promulgated in the post-war period. But not much in the way of support for the Soviet Union, which is fighting for its life in the west.

Now, I’m not going to bore you with a lot of documents, but here is one that I – is from our book and which I find particularly moving. You can see vague scribbles on the left, and then there’s a translation on the – the right. What’s striking about this is Stalin dictates this to his secretary, Poskrebyshev, and Poskrebyshev writes it down. This is a facsimile, on basically little sheets of almost telephone paper. It’s a ‘cri de Coeur’ from a man who is on the edge of panic, and he asks for help. He says: “I think the only way” He wanted a second front, somewhere in Western Europe. He said: “The only way to help us is to open a second front this year, somewhere in the Balkans or in France, one that would divert 30 or 40 German divisions from the Eastern front and simultaneously to supply the Soviet Union with nearly – with 30,000 tons of aluminum by the beginning of October and a minimum monthly aid of 400 airplanes and 500 tanks of small or medium size. Without these two kinds of aid, the Soviet Union will either be defeated or weakened to the extent that it will lose for a long time the ability to help its allies by active operations at the front against Hitler.” Which is a polite way to say: “We’re really in a mess, do something.”

But what’s striking about that, if one is thinking about the communication between these two leaders, is Churchill does not have anything like 30 divisions, combat divisions in the whole British army. The idea that he is going to make a landing sufficient to draw off German crack troops, to do it in the Balkans, which means a huge naval journey around the Mediterranean, or in France, which means a very dangerous crossing of the channel, shows that Stalin hasn’t begun to understand the British position in this war. Certainly, hasn’t begun to understand the challenge of amphibious operations, which, of course, is what Britain and America had to fight for most of the Second World War.

So, it’s an example here of something that comes out all through the correspondence, which is the difficulty of each of these leaders really putting himself in the other person’s shoes. Or, alternatively, also, cause Stalin does this a lot, the emotional blackmail that’s involved in saying: “Okay, come on, we’re fighting, what are you doing about it? And we’ll see later on that he’s quite ruthless about that in his dealings with Churchill.

But this is just one of the kind of messages that really bring to life the intensity of this relationship and also the difficulty of leaders communicating with each other.

Okay. So, this is a period in which the Alliance is emerging. Let’s move on now to another period. More stuff happens. I’m running through it again: May 1942, new German offensive in the Soviet Union. We often forget that there is another round for the Soviets in 1942 when the Germans attack again. This time not aimed at Moscow but down towards the Caucasus, the Battle of Stalingrad. So, there’s two massive blows in two years.

And when I’ve taught about the Second World War in Cambridge, one of the things that I – students often find the most striking is – is the Eastern front and the story of what the Russian people went through. Partly from the Germans, partly because of their own leadership and its – its – its failings. But I say, you know, you have to realize that in the Siege of Leningrad, which is nearly 900 days, from 1941 to 44, more Russians die than the whole British and American combat dead – dead of the war put together.

So, more Russians die in Leningrad in those years than your country and mine total war deaths.

And whatever you think about the Russians, Russian ideology of the Soviet people, that’s something that is- is – is important. It’s also important if we want to understand Russia today because that is the one thing about their 20th century history they can cling on to. What they call the Great Patriotic War. The sense of the suffering they went through and the sense of the way in which they managed to turn it around. And that’s the central part of a country’s feeling of patriotism. A country that has had a very difficult time in the last 20 years or so. That – none of that is to extenuate Putin and his government, but it’s to explain why the Russians have a sense of pride in that achievement which they cling on to, in – in – in particularly in hard times.

So, new German offensive. Molotov, the foreign minister, going to London and Washington, trying to get support for the second front. The British – the British/American response is defeat the Germans in North Africa, landings in Morocco and Algeria, come on to that in a moment. Stalingrad, the Red Army’s pincers close around the advancing Germans. And, in January 1943, the Germans surrender. And that is, for many Germans, the turning point in the war. A lot of Germans remembered two or three days of martial music on the German radio. This is a defeat that can’t be concealed. For months, Germans have received, from their loved ones in – in – in – in Russian – in Russia, letters saying, you know, indicating the growing threat to Stalingrad as their encircled.

Hitler can’t conceal this. The enthusiasm that Germans felt about the victory in 1940 is long gone. From now on there is a sense that the clock is ticking for them.

Okay, so, what we’ve got now, Alliance Emerging ’39 to ’42 – 41, is an Alliance that’s diverging in crucial ways.

There is the bombed-out center of Stalingrad on the Volga River. Stalin’s demands for a second front have become more and more insistent. Churchill knows that there is no way he can cross the channel, the English Channel, in 1942. It’s sometimes forgotten that if there had been a second front in 1942, it would have been mostly British and Canadian divisions that would have done it, because the American army, not yet fully mobilized and, of course, engaged in a very substantial war in the Pacific, would have been able to put in maybe one or one-and-a-half trained combat divisions.

So, if there’s going to be a bloodbath, it’s going to be a British/Canadian one. I keep emphasizing Canadian because they’re often forgotten in this war. There’s two Canadian divisions defending London in 1940, if the Germans had invaded.

So, Churchill’s idea is we go for the Mediterranean. We gradually close the ring on Germany. And that is not a palatable message to Stalin. So rather than write it, Churchill goes to see him in August 1942. Now, this is not, as it were, you know, an easy trip you can do kind of on British Airways for a few hours, as you might today. You know, in club class. He has to fly through North Africa where he sacks a few generals and tries to shape up the war there, and then he flies on through Persia, Iran, up to – to Moscow. It’s a pretty hazardous flight. And, in fact, Douglas MacArthur, who was no great friend of the British, said that Churchill deserved a Victoria Cross for that flight alone.

[laughter]

So, here he is, as it were, cozying on the sofa up with Averell Harriman, American, in the middle, Stalin, and Molotov on the right. They’re all buddy-buddy. It’s not an easy meeting. Stalin does his usual trick with visitors. Business-like first meeting. And Churchill feels: “Well, he’s got the message about the second front. – that this is actually going to relieve the pressure on Russia from the – the Mediterranean. Second meeting abrupt and very direct and rude. Stalin says: “You British, you’re cowards. You’re not willing to fight. We fight. You don’t.” Churchill is livid. It takes all the efforts of the British ambassador in Moscow to make him stay. He says: “I’ve never been talked like that before. I’m just getting out of here.” And he’s forced to stay and at least have another meeting the following day to say goodbye to Stalin.

So, he goes to Stalin’s office about six o’clock. It’s rather a cool meeting. Stalin says a few words. Churchill says his and is getting up to go, and Stalin says: “You haven’t seen my apartment. You must come and see my apartment.” And so, they go across the – the Kremlin Square to Stalin’s apartment. And then there is this amazing surreal rolling buffet for the next six hours or so, where bits of food come out. You know, small stuff, savories, meats, and so on, fish. And then around 1:00 AM, a huge sucking pig, as Churchill describes it, which Stalin hacks into with great gusto.

[laughter]

And Churchill – and then – then while he does this, they get on to talk about, get off the war and get on to, oh, the collectivization of the farms and the – the problems that – the problems that Stalin had with the – the kulaks, the peasants in Ukraine, and the need to get rid of them. It was just really – it was a necessary thing to do. Hack, hack, hack away.

[laughter]

And Churchill has this surreal sense that, you know, he is talking to a mass murderer, but he’s got to work with this man. Anyway, I think Churchill leaves the Kremlin about 3:00 AM. He’s got to fly home about 4:30. He – he doesn’t talk about this very directly in his memoirs, but I think it’s pretty clear that this was one of the few times that he had a serious hangover. And Churchill’s capacity for drink was quite considerable, as you know. He said: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” But on this occasion, alcohol had taken quite a lot out of him, but there was, from this, a – a sense it’s not easy talking to Stalin, but, you know, somehow, we bonded. This was a kind of man-to-man macho boys session, as it were.

So, Churchill leaves Moscow with a feeling that if he can talk to Stalin, he can probably get through to him in the end. Not clear that he can do that with the rest of the Politburo. There’s this feeling that maybe there’s shadowy forces around Stalin that are pressing upon him. Amazing underestimation by Roosevelt and Churchill of just how far Stalin is an autocrat.

Their belief, well, you know, he’s a relative moderate compared to those other dark forces. Fascinating. Anyway.

This is a – a profoundly important moment. And, of course, the fact that Churchill has met Stalin makes Roosevelt more keen to meet Stalin as well to forge his own relationship.

So, what we have then, as a result, is the landings in – in the northwest Africa, in Morocco and Algeria, in 19 – November 1942, at the same time as the British army in the – in Egypt is finally defeating the Germans at Alamein so that there’s a gradual convergence on the central German power in North Africa, Germany/Italian power in Tunis.

It’s a second front of sorts. It draws off troops that Stalin would otherwise have sent – Hitler would otherwise have sent to Stalingrad, but it is certainly not the frontal attack that Stalin had asked for. So that what the Russians have to do, in 1941 and 42, is win that war with the Germans alone. They are, by now, beginning to get some significant aid from Lend-Lease in America, from British supplies, but those – that – those – that aid doesn’t really kick in until the later part of the war. And that’s partly why the Russians believe that they won the war themselves.

The crucial battles on the – in the land war in Europe were decided on the Eastern front in 1941, 42, and 43.

Finally, the – the Big Three do meet at Tehran in 1943. I think this is a – a very striking picture. And remember what I said about Roosevelt earlier on. Those legs had to be arranged. This image of a man almost lion-like in his command is a very contrived image.

And what these countries agree is a commitment to British-American, I should have said American-British, invasion of France in the spring of 1944. Churchill finally pinned down to crossing the channel, outvoted 2-1. But by this time, the Red Army has turned the tide on Germany. It’s regained the Ukraine. So, it’s already rolling towards Eastern Europe. And one of the issues that is striking here, if we think about the post-war period, is that, of course, there are many good reasons why it was not possible for America and Britain to cross the channel in 1942 or 43. But by doing so, we, in a sense, forfeited the initiative to the Russians. If they were able to defeat Hitler, then it was almost certain that they were going to have a strong position in Europe at the end of the war. That doesn’t mean that there was going to be an argument, rivalry, friction, whatever, but it certainly meant they had to be dealt with as facto.

And that’s already being discussed at – at Tehran.

Now, what we have in the last year of the war, I think, is Alliance Converging. The two, the British and Americans on one side, the Russians on the other, beginning to converge on the heartland of Hitler’s Reich. And this is a period in which the Germans are now facing massive defeat. Here’s a very striking picture. The crowd in the middle there are German prisoners of war being marched through the center of Moscow. And boy did the Russians enjoy that. They turned out all along the route to revile the – the – the German prisoners, spit on them, whatever, because this had been a bestial war on the Eastern front, and this was a time for revenge. The tables had been turned.

So, what we have here is an alliance converging. Overlord landings in Normandy. Many of you perhaps have been to Omaha Beach to see the – the – the moving venue – of – of that attack and those other Allied beaches along the coast. Others of you will have seen the first 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” which is an attempt to try and give you a sense of just how horrific that was.

But we’ve often forgotten that there is another equally important D-Day in 1944, June ’44, which is the Bagration offensive by the Russians into Byelorussia. Bagration was the name of a Russian general from the Napoleonic Wars. This was the big Russian offensive. It was timed deliberately in collaboration with the Allies to be the double whammy, if you like, against – against Hitler. The Allies land in Normandy, two weeks later the Russians go for, you know, the hard – hard punch into Eastern Europe. Hitler is being hit from two sides. This is the point at which the alliance is converging. They’re talking to each other. They’re working together, and that’s really important, as I’ll mention at the end.

And then you have, during July – July, August, September, October, you have Red Army offenses into Southeastern Europe, into the Balkans.

We, again, we tend to focus, understandably, on the war that we are familiar with. What our armies, British and American, were doing in Normandy and in France in those months. The Battle for the Hedgerows, the final breakout, the rush to Paris, it’s a familiar and very moving story. But there’s a massive story on the Eastern Front which is not told. I mean, this is a map that you can’t, you don’t need to have the detail of, but essentially these are – this is the moving Red Army front in the summer of 1944.

Bagration, just to give you a sense of it, in five weeks, the Red Army moves 500 miles to the outskirts of Warsaw. It takes out 20 German divisions. Just removes them from the German order of battle. Now, 20 divisions is more than the German – the number of German divisions that British and American armies are holding down in Italy. And they’ve just been eliminated by the Russians from the – the German order of battle. But then you have these offenses up into the Baltic states, down in Romania, Bulgaria, into the edge of Hungary. This is a real transformation of the map of Europe. The Red Army is moving much faster at that point than the Allied armies under Eisenhower are doing. Later on, it speeds up. In August and September, of course, rapid advance. But in this period, the Red Army is changing the map of Europe. And that’s what I mean by the consequences of the delayed second front. That’s going to be, as it were, facts on the ground, boots on the ground, for the post-war period.

Now, Churchill’s response to this again is to do diplomacy. Is to go and see Stalin to try and do business with him. In January 1944, Churchill actually says to a British journalist: “If Stalin and I could have dinner once a week, we could sort out most of the problems.” It’s interesting. It’s interesting.

So, he goes to Stalin. He wants to see him. And they have this meeting in the Kremlin on the 9th of October 1944, which is vividly recorded in Churchill’s memoirs. Colorfully, but I think, essentially, accurately. And what he says is that he pushes across the table what he calls a naughty document. This is a rather naughty document, he says. And he sketched out a sort of spheres of influence, division of influence, agreement for this area of Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe that the Russians and the – have – have now acquired.

So, Romania: 90% Russian, 10% the others. Greece: Britain 90%, and then he adds States

[laughter]

as an afterthought, 10% Russian. Yugoslavia: 50/50, Hungary: 50/50, Bulgaria: Russia 75%, others 25%. These figures change a bit later on. What’s interesting is nobody really knows what Churchill means by them. What exactly – it doesn’t mean 25% of the territory. It doesn’t mean 25% of the control commission. It – Churchill was, I think, was worried at this point. And what he was trying to do was pin down, in a broad way, Stalin to say, look, some areas, some parts of – of – of Southeastern Europe, you know, fall more generally into your area of interest and some would you mind leaving for us? Particularly Greece. And that’s what he was particularly concerned about.

So, this is a deal that he’s trying to cut with Stalin before it’s too late.

And here we are now in the last months of the war. Again, the – the actual detail doesn’t matter, but you get the general color scheme of the advancing blues and blacks and reds moving into the heartland of Germany from both sides. This is an Alliance which, for all its misunderstandings and limitations, is working in the sense that it is converging on the same target. Hitler, Berlin, the elimination of the Nazi regime, the full, unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Franklin Roosevelt, in particular, very keen on conditional surrender, taking Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War mantra. Because Roosevelt is concerned that in the Second – First World War, the Germans had not surrendered. There was an armistice. This time Roosevelt wants to be sure there is no German whindging about a stab in the back. No German complaints. They have been defeated. Nazi Germany has been defeated, utterly. They’ve got to understand that.

So, closing the ring on Germany.

But, of course, in the moment of victory a growing sense of an alliance that’s fragmenting.

Yalta Conference, February 1945. The race for Berlin in March, April, where the British and the Americans, Churchill, and particularly, Eisenhower, are of different minds. Churchill being determined and anxious to get to Berlin as quickly as possible. Eisenhower saying what matters is actually rounding up the German army, making sure they don’t consolidate down in Bavaria and fight a last-ditch battle there that will cost many lives.

Roosevelt’s death, a complete surprise to all – all three, despite Roosevelt’s ailing situation. Truman, the new president. Victory in Europe. 8th and 9th, and I say 9th of May deliberately because that’s the day that the Russians celebrate victory day. And then, of course, the atomic bombs, the Soviet Union entry in the Asian war, the Japanese surrender.

Now, I’m not going through this in detail, but in terms of the relationship, let’s just concentrate on Yalta for a moment. And, of course, look there at – at the image of Roosevelt. Very different from Tehran in 1945. This is a dying president. Churchill’s physician, in particular, Charles Moran, is quite clear this man has only weeks to live.

Now, Yalta, of course, has a really bad name in the United States, I think, also in France for different reasons. And he’s often depicted here as a sellout by Roosevelt, in particular, of Eastern Europe to Stalin.

When I’ve looked at this, and I wrote about it in a book called “Summit,” I was struck by the fact that this is actually a complicated conference. And one that does show alliance diplomacy at – at work, if you like.

On Poland, yes, Stalin gets his way. Essentially, the government in Poland is going to be a Soviet dominated Communist government. Stalin makes a few token concessions about some non-Communists. He doesn’t really intend to keep it. For Stalin, this is a gut issue. Poland, part of Poland was in the Russian empire before the war. Poland is the corridor through which Germany has attacked Russia twice. You – you get a sense of the importance of this from Stalin’s body language. I mentioned he mostly sits down, keeps quiet. Poland is an issue he gets up and walks around on. He gets agitated about the conference.

And, on the whole, he wins that.

So, if you simply look at the Polish question at Yalta, yeah, it’s a sellout. But then it’s a sellout on which the British and the Americans can do very little. The Red Army is already there. What are you going to do? Drive them out? Roosevelt goes to Yalta and he sees, before he leaves on the 31st of January, he talks to various U.S. senators, and he says, look, on Poland, all I can do is try to ameliorate the situation. Ameliorate it. Make it a bit better. And that’s what he and Churchill do in different ways.

If you move on to Germany, which is as big an issue, if not more, at the conference, there the question, the balance is very different. Churchill digs in on this. This is an issue that matters for him. He’s the one who ensures that France will get an occupation zone in Germany. Up until now it’s been basically the idea the British, the Americans, the Russians will divide up Germany. Roosevelt gets – Roosevelt and Stalin agree to this under pressure. They think France is a broken reed, a failed path from 1940, but they will do it to humor Churchill or whatever.

What Churchill wants is to ensure that if he has to face a difficult relationship with Russia after the war and if the United States does not involve itself in the affairs of Europe after the Second World War, then he has another European power on his side.

Now, you need to remember that at Yalta and at earlier conferences, Roosevelt has said very clearly: “I’m not going to be able to keep American troops in Europe for more than a year or so.” And if calls for any European, there is the shadow of the Woodrow Wilson era. The feeling that America had committed itself to Europe in 1918-1919 and then, for various reasons, had pulled back. So, a lot of people are saying that’s going to happen again. So, this zone for France is reflective of how the British saw the future at that point. And one of the things that I think is really important, I say this particularly to students here, is that when we write history, we tend to write it – of course, we can only write it retrospectively with hindsight. We know what happened, so we tend to tell a story that illuminates or takes us forward to where we are now and pretends that, if you like, the story was inevitable.

As historians, we also have to put ourselves back in the shoes of people at the time and say: “How did they see it? How did they imagine the future when it was open and unclear?” In a year or so’s time, you will be clear cut about how, you know, you predicted the result of the American election. I wasn’t going to mention it but, anyway, the American election

[laughter]

you know, all the way through. But, actually, nobody in this room has a clue what that vote is going to be like now. We have to remember that events, now long in the past, were once in the future. And that was something that, you know, is clear from that. Churchill had emphasis on France in 1945.

The other thing that really riled Stalin is Churchill’s refusal to agree on reparations for Russia from Germany. Stalin comes there very carefully prepared papers on how much they want in the way of payback from Germany for the damage that – that the Germans have caused to Russia. Detailed inventory figures, all the rest of it. Churchill keeps refusing to make a decision on this. He says we’ll discuss it at the next conference. Stalin’s really cross about this.

And he, basically, his perception of it is that Churchill’s won at Yalta because he has blocked a decision on Germany, which is, of course, even more important for Stalin than Poland.

Now, for the Americans, the two things that Roosevelt wants, the American delegation want, is an agreement on the United Nations, the U.N., the new United Nations organization, which is going to have its founding conference, all being well, in San Francisco in April. And, in fact, Roosevelt’s last speech that he’s preparing at the time he dies at Warm Springs is what he’s going to say to that conference.

Roosevelt himself doesn’t believe fundamentally in the principle or the organization of the United Nations. What he believes is really important about it is that Russia is going to be part of that. That the Soviet Union, estranged, marginalized, after the First World War, is at least going to be brought into what Roosevelt calls the Family of Nations. That’s a part of what he believes is important about creating a new world order that he’s more inclusive.

So, for him, the fact that the Soviets agree to this is a real achievement. The other one that matters is a commitment from Stalin that after Germany’s defeated, the Soviet Union will declare war in Japan three months later.

Now, again, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people at the time. At that stage, the atomic bomb had not been tested. The first test in Alamogordo is in – in July. There’s a lot of evidence that this is a significant device, and there are some who are already saying: Look, actually we don’t need the Russians in this war, we can finish it ourselves. But the prospect of an invasion of the Japanese home islands with heavy American casualties is not one that a U.S. president or a chief of – chief of staff, army chief of staff, like George Marshall, can easily accept because in your country and in mine, for Roosevelt and for Churchill as democratic leaders responsible to an electorate and to a representative assembly, it’s very difficult to justify mass death on that sort of scale. Stalin never has to do that to a Russian assembly. Stalin is cavalier with human life in a way that Roosevelt and Churchill cannot be. So, a prospect of ending a war and saving tens of thousands of lives, the figure was exaggerated after all, but tens of thousands of lives is something that cannot be turned away.

So, that those two agreements, on the U.N. and on declaration of war in Japan, are very fundamental for the American side as well. It was not an easy conference, Yalta. They – the accommodation was pretty primitive. The Germans had only just been kicked out of the Crimea. There were a little – a lot of problems like shortage of – of – of bathrooms for senior officers. Bedbugs were everywhere. And somebody said to George Marshall just before he was leaving, they said: You know, we’re very glad to get back to Washington, and Marshall said in his very grave way as usual, he said: Well, you know, for what we have got here, I would happily have stayed two months.

[laughter]

So, the agreement on the U.N., the agreement in Japanese war. So, what I’m trying to say is at Yalta everybody gets something. That’s the nature of diplomatic bargaining. And, of course, none of them assume that this was the last serious conference they would have. They had one more at Potsdam, but this was, as it were, a holding place for a continued relationship. That was the expectation on Britain’s side, American’s side, and on the Russian side.

It doesn’t work out like that. And, in a sense, we are still living with a world where the Cold War, the legacies of the Second World War are still with us. But if one is doing a balance sheet, on the negative side you could say about this alliance, as Churchill wrote in 19 – January 1945, “The only bond of the victors is their common hate.” In other words, what held our three countries together is that we all wanted to defeat Nazi Germany. And that is often quoted. That line is often quoted, and you’ll find it in Martin Gilbert’s biography of Churchill. What is interesting is that Gilbert does not quote the other line that Churchill wrote. He scribbled this down. “We have to think of something better than this.” Churchill, even in January 1945, was – was looking for still other things that could hold the Alliance together in a more positive way. He, like the others, never, and he, like Stalin, never wanted the Cold War that actually happened.

Clearly, there is mutual mistrust. I’ve mentioned the Nazi-Soviet pact for the Allied, for Britain, America. The delays in the second front, ’42 and ’43, certainly increased Stalin’s dissatisfaction and anxiety about his allies. Are they actually delaying the second front because they’re going to make a deal with Hitler?

In many ways, they’re fighting different wars. Britain and the United States are fighting a global war. The Soviet Union concentrates on a continental war in Europe against Hitler. There’s only one front. It’s the Western front for the Soviet Union. In other words, what we see as the Eastern front in the battle against Germany. Not until Germany’s defeated, as I said, does Stalin enter the war in – against Japan, whereas, as you know, the United States, in 1941 – at the end of ’41, is plunged into a huge conflict in the Pacific on a – a massive scale, absorbing huge amounts of shipping and supplies because it’s a war of islands and island hopping.

The British engaged in North Africa, also in Southeast Asia. This is a global war, and one of the main reasons why we cannot invade the continent of Europe as early as we want is just the shortage of shipping. Shortage of shipping and supplies to move troops and – and equipment around.

There’s also different peace aims, as I say. Different attitudes to Germany and to Poland.

But there is also mutual support. Britain, as I said, holds on in 1940. That’s fundamental for the future of the war. That’s the base from which the liberation of Europe can be launched in June 1944.

The Soviet Union bears the brunt of the land war against Hitler. And the United States is essential in many ways, but certainly as the arsenal of democracy, as Roosevelt said. 10% of Russian supplies in the course of the war comes from the United States from Lend-Lease aid. U.S.A. covers 50% of Britain’s balance of payments deficit during the war. In other words, if that aid hadn’t come, the British would have had to spend a huge amount of effort and time and money producing goods that otherwise would have gone, the – the energies could have gone into war effort.

So, mutual support.

And, of course, war – war efforts are relative. We have to think of the other side. They converge on Nazi Germany in June 1944 at a time when the Axis never works together. It never cooperates together. In 19 – early 1942, if Germany and Japan had chosen to focus their energies on, say, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, as the German and Japanese navies wanted to do, it could have changed the balance of the war even though the potential resources of Britain, America, and Russia are much greater. But these countries never cooperate together. Germany and Italy do cooperate, but essentially Germany’s bailing out Italy.

So, what I’m saying about this relationship is that it’s a difficult one, it’s a problematic one, but that’s the nature of all alliances. As Churchill said: “The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them.” And I think for all its faults, the Grand Alliance of the Second World War is an example of that.

So, thank you very much for your attention.

[applause]