When Churchill got into the habit of referring to him as “Bruin”, he was thinking not only of the traditional image of the Russian Bear, but also of one with a very sore head. His whole technique of negotiating with his international allies reflected the way that he ruled his own cowering courtiers in Moscow: constant but unpredictable pressure, with menacing silences, occasional disconcerting friendliness and all-too-frequent explosions of resentment. It took much persuasion by Churchill to get them to accept his “Mediterranean strategy” (first North Africa, then Italy) – something carped at by American generals, and bitterly resented by Stalin.īut the biggest problems were always with Stalin, and it’s not hard to see why. But while the Americans were slow to send those troops, they also criticised the British for foot-dragging on the promised second front. That meant waiting for a build-up of US divisions in England. After the disaster of the British Expeditionary Force in 1939-40, Churchill was reluctant to send any army across the Channel unless it was so powerful that it had a strong chance of success. From almost the moment that Hitler invaded Russia, Stalin was demanding a “second front” in Western Europe to take pressure off his own forces. Real disagreements on strategy also played their part. In 1943 he even tried to set up a personal meeting with the Russian leader (at the Bering Straits, to make it as difficult as possible for Churchill to attend), and then lied to Churchill about the idea, saying that it was Stalin’s initiative.
He was hostile to the very existence of the British Empire, and when he pushed for self-government in India, he made the Prime Minister explode with rage.īecause of his own socially progressive policies, Roosevelt imagined that he was better placed to form a good working relationship with Stalin. Yet at times there was a real three-way dynamic, as Roosevelt’s vision of the world conflicted sharply with Churchill’s. On one side you have democratic values and a shared culture on the other you have what Churchill himself had called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. So you might expect this book to tell the story of a relationship between two parties: Britain and America on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other. They had formed a close rapport the flow of American armaments under the “Lend-Lease” scheme had already begun and when, six months later, Pearl Harbor was followed by Hitler’s crazy declaration of war on the US, the sense of Anglo-American fellow-feeling could not have been stronger. In reality, this is by far the best study ever written of policymaking between the three Great Powers during those crucial years.īy the starting-date of the book in the summer of 1941, Churchill’s relationship with Roosevelt was already well established he had been sweet-talking and cajoling the President for nearly two years. They modestly call this just an “edition”, but it is much, much more than that. Two eminent historians, David Reynolds in Cambridge and Vladimir Pechatnov in Moscow, have had the brilliant idea of publishing the bulk of this correspondence (excluding only routine bureaucratic items) with a detailed running commentary. Most business was conducted in the old-fashioned way, through ambassadors and by means of letters.Īltogether, 682 letters were exchanged between the Big Three political leaders between Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941 and Roosevelt’s untimely death in April 1945. But those face-to-face encounters were exceptional, reflecting both the extraordinary situation Britain was in and Winston’s unusual enthusiasm for personal jaw-jaw.
So much modern history depends on personal relationships forged, for better or worse, in face-to-face meetings – think of Reagan and Gorbachev – that it is now hard to recognise just how recent this whole phenomenon is.ĭuring the Second World War Churchill did clock up more than 100,000 miles of travel, much of it to visit his two most important counterparts, Roosevelt and Stalin. When we talk about political summits and summitry, we are using a term invented by Winston Churchill, who thought that all sorts of problems could be solved by what he called “a parley at the summit”.
Noel Malcolm reviews The Kremlin Letters by David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov
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