Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955. Barbara Leaming

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СКАЧАТЬ off to the White House to meet Truman for the first time since Potsdam.

      When Churchill last saw him, Truman had recently inherited Roosevelt’s unrealistic perception of Stalin, as well as his predecessor’s tactic of dissociating himself from Churchill in an effort to win the Soviet leader’s confidence. Accordingly, Truman had had little use for Churchill’s perspective or advice. By early 1946, however, Moscow had given the President reason to reconsider. A series of speeches in January and February by Molotov and other of Stalin’s lieutenants warning of the peril of an attack from the West had culminated, the previous day, in a bellicose address by Stalin himself. A translation appeared in American newspapers on 9 February, the day Churchill flew into Washington. Stalin’s enunciation of a tough new anti-West policy was a throwback to prewar Soviet attitudes. Immediately, as Halifax pointed out, the speech had the effect of ‘an electric shock’ on the nerves of a good many people in Washington. Could this possibly be the wartime ally with whom they had been looking forward to close future cooperation?

      In part, Stalin’s confrontational tone had its origins in a two-month holiday he had taken starting in early October 1945. While the ailing, exhausted Stalin rested near Sochi at the Black Sea, he had left Molotov in charge of daily affairs at the Kremlin. The arrangement set off a chain reaction of rumour and gossip in the international press. By turns, Stalin was reported to be contemplating retirement, about to hand over to Molotov, and nearly or already dead. There were news profiles of Molotov and some of the other possible contenders should a fully-fledged succession struggle erupt on Stalin’s demise. Though he was supposed to be resting, Stalin obsessively pored over a dossier collected under the title ‘Rumors in Foreign Press on the State of Health of Comrade Stalin’. References to the second-in-command’s ever-expanding prestige both at home and abroad fired Stalin’s suspicions. Was Molotov behind the reports? Why had he not censored such material? Was the anointed heir using Stalin’s absence to con -solidate his position?

      The rumours about Stalin’s health had also distressed Churchill, who continued to hope that he might one day face him across the conference table and pick up where they had left off at Potsdam. Churchill therefore had been greatly relieved when the US Ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, announced that he had visited Stalin’s seaside retreat and found the Soviet leader in good health. In the House of Commons on 7 November 1945, Churchill had expressed gratitude that Stalin was well, offered some kind words about his leadership, and voiced a wish that the bond that had developed between their two peoples during the war be allowed to continue in peacetime. On the face of it, Churchill’s remarks were innocuous. Nonetheless, when Molotov directed that they be published in Pravda, Stalin breathed fire and fury. Such praise would have been welcome during the war, but now Stalin insisted that it was simply a cover for Churchill’s hostile intentions and that Molotov should have recognized it as such.

      Soon, it was reported in the British press that, according to high-level sources in Moscow, Stalin’s power was not as great as many outsiders believed and government affairs were perfectly capable of being carried on without him. Incensed, Stalin lashed out at his designated heir, who, even if he were not the actual source of such statements, should have undertaken to suppress them. Stalin set his other satellites, Georgi Malenkov, Lavrenti Beria, and Anastas Mikoyan, against Molotov. They vied to denounce him for, among other outrages, consenting to an interview with the journalist Randolph Churchill. (‘The appointment with Churchill’s son was cancelled because we spoke against it.’) At length Molotov managed to stay afloat by tearfully admitting his mistakes to his rivals and penning a cringing letter to Stalin. Molotov kept his job, but from then on Stalin refrained from speaking of him as his successor.

      Thus Stalin had put Molotov and the others on notice that he was always watching and that they ought not to grow too lax or too ambitious. Now, he had to dispel the rumours and to leave the world in no doubt that he, Stalin, was still number one and that he meant to keep things that way. By insisting to the Soviet people that their wartime allies in the West had already become their postwar adversaries, Stalin set himself up as the warrior whose duty it would be to drive back the enemy and save the Communist motherland – again. Under the circumstances, he simply could not contemplate retirement.

      In this speech, Stalin bore no resemblance to the man Roosevelt had mistaken him for. Truman was beginning to recognize the need for a new approach to Soviet relations, one based on facts rather than on wishful thinking. Analysis of Stalin’s presentation having yet to arrive from the US Embassy in Moscow, Churchill’s take on what was going on at the Kremlin was suddenly of particular interest. And the visitor had something even more important to offer. At a time when Truman had yet to emerge from Roosevelt’s shadow, it might be difficult politically to depart from his predecessor’s Soviet policy. The Fulton speech, delivered by a private citizen who also happened to be a master of the spoken word, as well as a figure of exceptional appeal to Americans, would allow Truman, at no political cost to himself, to see if the public was ready to accept a change.

      After he met with Truman, Churchill spent the night at the British Embassy. He had planned to return to Florida the next day, but snow-bound airfields caused him to stay an additional night. Besides, the difficult trip north had left him feeling bilious and unsteady on his feet. His condition persisted in the days that followed. Back in Miami Beach, he remained in bed when he received James Byrnes, the US Secretary of State, for two hours of talks. Following Churchill’s White House visit, an announcement had gone out that he and Truman would fly to Missouri together on 4 March. In view of his health, it was later quietly agreed that they would travel by train instead. Less than forty-eight hours before he and Clementine Churchill left for Washington on the first leg of his trip, he was coughing and complained on the phone to a friend that he was unwell.

      Again, the timing of Churchill’s appearance in the capital was fortunate. Again, actions taken by Stalin the day before Churchill arrived gave point to the visitor’s argument. On 2 March, the Churchills were en route from Florida when Stalin failed to heed the deadline by which it had long been agreed that all Red Army troops would be withdrawn from Iran. It was the first flagrant violation of a treaty obligation since Hitler, and commentators in the US and Britain were soon anxiously comparing it to the Führer’s march into the demilitarized Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles a decade before. The Rhineland episode had been only the first of many such unilateral violations. Would Iran prove to be the same?

      In the fortnight since Churchill’s visit, the State Department had received an eye-opening message from the US Embassy in Moscow. US chargé d’affaires George Kennan had long been frustrated by his government’s naive view of Stalin. He used the present opportunity to put his considerable literary skills to work limning the postwar Soviet mind-set. Widely distributed and much read within the administration, the 8,000-word cable known as the Long Telegram did much to alter attitudes left over from the Roosevelt era. It fell to Churchill, however, to test the waters publicly. When Truman reviewed the final draft of the Fulton speech as they travelled on the ten-car presidential special to Missouri on the 5th, he called it admirable, said it would do nothing but good, and predicted it would cause a stir. Nevertheless, Churchill understood from the outset that he could count on White House support only if his presentation was well received. If he sparked off a controversy, he was on his own.

      Resplendent in red robes that prompted some spectators to remark that he resembled a well-fed cardinal, Churchill made his case about time, the bomb, and the Soviet menace to an audience of 2,600 in the college gymnasium. Billed as the opinions of a private individual with no official mission or status of any kind, his comments were broadcast on radio across the US and reported around the world. As he talked on, he alternated between holding the chubby fingers of his left hand splayed across his round torso and using that hand to drive home a point.

      He spoke again (though most listeners would be hearing that arresting phrase for the first time) of an ‘iron curtain’ that had descended across the continent from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic. As he had done with Stalin at Potsdam, he ticked off the names of the Eastern and Central European capitals now under Soviet control. СКАЧАТЬ