Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (17 page)

I gave Stalin my views on these events.

Prime

Minister

to

11 July 44

Marshal Stalin

Some weeks ago it was suggested by Eden to your
Ambassador that the Soviet Government should take
the lead in Rumania, and the British should do the
same in Greece. This was only a working arrangement
to avoid as much as possible the awful business of
triangular telegrams, which paralyses action. Molotov
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then suggested very properly that I should tell the
United States, which I did, and always meant to, and
after some discussion the President agreed to a three-months trial being made. These may be three very
important months, Marshal Stalin, July, August, and
September. Now however I see that you find some
difficulty in this. I would ask whether you should not tell
us that the plan may be allowed to have its chance for
three months. No one can say it affects the future of
Europe or divides it into spheres. But we can get a
clear-headed policy in each theatre, and we will all
report to the others what we are doing. However, if you
tell me it is hopeless I shall not take it amiss.

2. There is another matter I should like to put to you.

Turkey is willing to break relations immediately with the
Axis Powers. I agree with you that she ought to declare
war, but I fear that if we tell her to do so she will defend
herself by asking both for aircraft to protect her towns,
which we shall find it hard to spare or put there at the
present moment, and also for joint military operations in
Bulgaria and the Ægean, for which we have not at
present the means. And in addition to all this she will
demand once again all sorts of munitions, which we
cannot spare because the stocks we had ready for her
at the beginning of the year have been drawn off in
other directions. It seems to me therefore wiser to take
this breaking off relations with Germany as a first
instalment. We can then push a few things in to help
her against a vengeance attack from the air, and out of
this, while we are together, her entry into the war might
come. The Turkish alliance in the last war was very
dear to the Germans, and the fact that Turkey had
broken off relations would be a knell to the German
soul. This seems to be a pretty good time to strike such
a knell.

3. I am only putting to you my personal thoughts on
these matters, which are also being transmitted by
Eden to M. Molotov.

4. We have about a million and fifty thousand men in
Normandy, with a vast mass of equipment, and rising
by 25,000 a day. The fighting is very hard, and before
the recent battles, for which casualties have not yet
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come in, we and the Americans had lost 64,000 men.

However, there is every evidence that the enemy has
lost at least as many, and we have besides 51,000

prisoners in the bag. Considering that we have been on
the offensive and had the landing from the sea to
manage, I consider that the enemy has been severely
mauled. The front will continue to broaden and the
fighting will be unceasing.

5. Alexander is pushing very hard in Italy also. He
hopes to force the Pisa-Rimini line and break into the
Po valley. This will either draw further German divisions
on to him or yield up valuable strategic ground.

6. The Londoners are standing up well to the
bombing, which has amounted to 22,000 casualties so
far and looks like becoming chronic.

7. Once more, congratulations on your glorious
advance to Wilna.

His reply was non-committal.

Marshal

Stalin

to

15 July 44

Prime Minister

As regards the question of Rumania and Greece….

One thing is clear to me: it is that the American
Government have some doubts regarding this question,
and that it would be better to revert to this matter when
we receive the American reply to our inquiry. As soon
as the observations of the American Government are
known I shall not fail to write to you further on this
question.

2. The question of Turkey should be considered in
the light of those facts which have been well known to
the Governments of Great Britain, the Soviet Union,
and the U.S.A. from the time of the last negotiations
with the Turkish Government at the end of last year.

You of course will remember how insistently the
Governments of our three countries proposed to Turkey
that she should enter the war against Hitlerite Germany
on the side of the Allies as long ago as in November
and December of 1943. Nothing came of this. As you
know, on the initiative of the Turkish Government in

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May-June of this year we again entered into negotiations with the Turkish Government, and twice we
proposed to them the same thing that the three Allied
Governments had proposed to them at the end of last
year. Nothing came of this either. As regards these or
other half-measures on the part of Turkey, at the
present time I see no benefit in them for the Allies. In
view of the evasive and vague attitude with regard to
Germany adopted by the Turkish Government, it is
better to leave Turkey in peace and to her own free will
and not to exert fresh pressure on Turkey. This of
course means that the claims of Turkey, who has
evaded war with Germany, to special rights in post-war
matters also lapse….

We were thus unable to reach any final agreement about dividing responsibilities in the Balkan peninsula. Early in August the Russians dispatched from Italy by a subterfuge a mission to E.L.A.S. in Northern Greece. In the light of American official reluctance and of this instance of Russian bad faith, we abandoned our efforts to reach a major understanding until I met Stalin in Moscow two months later. By then much had happened on the Eastern Front.

The Russian summer campaign was a tale of sweeping success. I can but summarise it here.
1

The advance opened with a secondary offensive against the Finns. Between Lake Ladoga and the sea they had deepened and strengthened the original Mannerheim Line into a formidable defensive system. However, the Russian troops, very different in quality and armament from those who had fought here in 1940, broke through after twelve days of hard fighting and captured Viborg on June 21.

Operations were begun the same day to clear the north Triumph and Tragedy

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shore of Lake Ladoga, and at the end of the month they had thrown their opponents back and reopened the railway from Leningrad to Murmansk, the terminal of our Arctic convoys. The Finns struggled on for a while, supported by German troops, but they had had enough, and on August 25 sued for an armistice.

The attack on the German front between Vitebsk and Gomel began on June 23. These, with Bobruisk, Mogilev, and many other towns and villages, had been turned into strong positions, with all-round defence, but they were successively surrounded and disposed of, while the Russian armies poured through the gaps between. Within a week they had broken through to a depth of eighty miles.

Taking swift advantage of their success, they captured Minsk on July 6, and closed the retreating enemy along a hastily organised line running southward from Vilna to the Pripet Marshes from which the Germans were soon swept by the irresistible Russian flood. At the end of July the Red armies had reached the Niemen at Kovno and Grodno.

Here, after an advance of 250 miles in five weeks, they were brought to a temporary halt to replenish. The German losses had been crushing. Twenty-five divisions had ceased to exist, and an equal number were cut off in Courland.
2
On July 17 alone 57,000 German prisoners were marched through Moscow — who knows whither?

South of the Pripet Marshes the Russian successes were no less magnificent. On July 13 a series of attacks were launched on the front between Kovel and Stanislav. In ten days the whole German front was broken and the Russians had reached Jaroslav, on the San river, 120 miles farther west. Stanislav, Lemberg, and Przemysl, isolated by this advance, were soon accounted for, and on July 30 the triumphant Russians crossed the Vistula south of Sandomir.

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Here supply imposed a halt. The crossing of the Vistula was taken by the Polish Resistance Movement in Warsaw as a signal for the ill-fated rising which is recorded in another chapter.

There was still a further far-reaching Russian success in this great campaign. To the southward of their victories lay Rumania: till August was far advanced the German line from Cernowitz to the Black Sea barred the way to Rumania, the Ploesti oilfields, and the Balkans. It had been weakened by withdrawal of troops to sustain the sagging line farther north, and under violent attacks, beginning on August 22, it rapidly distintegrated. Aided by landings on the coast, the Russians made short work of the enemy.

Sixteen German divisions were lost. On August 23 a
coup
d’état
in Bucharest, organised by the young King Michael and his close advisers, led to a complete reversal of the whole military position. The Rumanian armies followed their King to a man. Within three days before the arrival of the Soviet troops the German forces had been disarmed or had retired over the northern frontiers. By September 1

Bucharest had been evacuated by the Germans. The Rumanian armies disintegrated and the country was overrun. The Rumanian Government capitulated. Bulgaria, after a last-minute attempt to declare war on Germany, was overwhelmed. Wheeling to the west, the Russian armies drove up the valley of the Danube and through the Transylvanian Alps to the Hungarian border, while their left flank, south of the Danube, lined up on the frontier of Yugoslavia. Here they prepared for the great westerly drive which in due time was to carry them to Vienna.

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6

Italy and the Riviera Landing

The Allied Pursuit Beyond Rome — The Toll of

“Anvil”— The Gothic Line — The Fifth Army
Reduced by Seven Divisions — The Advance to
the Arno — I Fly to Naples and Meet Tito —

Balkan Strategy and the Istrian Peninsula
—
Tito,
Communism, and King Peter — Allied Military
Government in Istria — My Second Meeting with
Tito — I Report to the President — A Sunshine
Holiday — I Fly to Corsica — The Landings on the
French Riviera — My Telegram to the King,
August
17 —
And to General Eisenhower, August
18 —
An Outline of the “Dragoon” Operation — My
Summing Up of The “Anvil-Dragoon” Story —

Correspondence with Smuts
—
The Vienna Hope.

A
FTER ROME FELL on June 4 Kesselring’s broken armies streamed northward in disorder, harassed and disorganised by continuous air attacks and closely pursued on land.