It also made sense from an American point of view. It would have been foolhardy to send out arms and other supplies to the Soviet Union if it was about to be overrun. This was very much on the cards according to many officials both in Washington and London.16

  Roosevelt quickly gave Hopkins the green light, and Churchill wrote to Stalin that Hopkins was on his way.17

  However, a hastily arranged trip over such a great distance, part of it passing within striking distance of the enemy, was challenging to say the least. The Soviet Union’s Ambassador Maisky has described how on Sunday 27 July, he received an urgent summons to meet up with John Gilbert (Gil) Winant, the American ambassador in London. They met at the Soviet Union’s embassy. There Maisky was told that Hopkins and two colleagues needed visas stamped in their passports immediately. Hopkins was already on the way to Euston station with his companions so that they would be in time to catch a flight from Invergordon, Scotland to Archangel.

  Maisky did not have the necessary visa stamps, which were kept in the consulate, so instead he improvised, and wrote a message in the passports authorizing Hopkins and his team to pass any Soviet frontier without examination of luggage as diplomatic persons. The passports were then rushed to the station and thrust into Hopkins’ hands just as the train began to move.18

  The journey to Scotland was just the first stage of their journey. It was followed by a gruelling 24-hour flight in a Catalina flying boat which had to pass within a hundred miles of occupied Norway. It was a risky venture. Even if not intercepted by the Luftwaffe, there was no guarantee that the sickly Hopkins would arrive in a fit state to talk to anyone, let alone the Soviet Union’s premier. Partly as a result of having survived stomach cancer, Hopkins was emaciated, and in normal circumstances would have been judged to be in no fit state to undertake such an arduous flight.

  He was freezing cold for much of the journey and when he became too exhausted to sit beside the machine gun near the back of the plane usually operated by the observer, he lay shivering on a stretcher laid out on the aircraft’s floor. Not surprisingly he was a wreck by the time the plane touched down in the Soviet Union. But after flying on to Moscow, he summoned up the strength to meet Stalin.19

  They met for the first time on 30 July 1941, and then again the following day. The Soviet leader evidently captivated him. Hopkins would later describe Stalin as ‘an austere, rugged determined figure in boots that shone like mirrors, stout baggy trousers and snug-fitting blouse. He has no ornament, military or civilian. He’s built close to the ground… He’s about five feet six, about a hundred and ninety pounds (13 stone 8 pounds)… There is no small talk in him… He speaks no English but as he shot rapid Russian at me, he ignored the interpreter, looking straight into my eyes as though I understood every word that he uttered… If he wants to soften an abrupt answer… he does it with that quick, managed smile that can be cold but friendly’.20

  Whatever the truth behind this apparently hagiographic pen portrait, or Stalin’s concluding throwaway comment: ‘Give us anti-aircraft guns and the aluminium (to be used for constructing tanks and aircraft), and we can fight for three or four years’, Hopkins in his subsequent report, written after the long journey back to Scapa Flow, warned Roosevelt: ‘No information given [by Stalin]… was confirmed by any other source.’21

  Such confirmation appeared to be neither here nor there as far as Hopkins was concerned, who was prepared to give Stalin’s word about the numbers and staying power of his forces and equipment the benefit of the doubt. He wrapped up his report to the President with Stalin’s overriding message: ‘He asked me to tell the President that, while he was confident that the Russian Army could withstand the German Army, the problem of supply by next spring would be a serious one and that he needed our help.’22

  Hopkins arrived back just in time to join Churchill in the battleship Prince of Wales, which on 4 August set out for Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, where the meetings between the British prime minister and Roosevelt were to take place.23

  It was in the course of these meetings that the two leaders not only accepted the wording of what became known as the Atlantic Declaration, a statement of general principles regulating their conduct in the war, and decided that America would take over the escorting of Atlantic convoys between America and Iceland, but they also agreed in principle that Britain and America really should support the Soviet Union.24

  Convinced by Hopkins’ report that the Soviet Union was not a lost cause, a joint telegram was sent to Stalin on 14 August 1941 confirming their wish to sign up to a long-term commitment to give him the supplies that he craved. It was proposed the details should be hammered out in a conference to be convened in Moscow.25

  Stalin wrote back to confirm that he would be happy to host the conference. But as days passed without any concrete action having been taken on the Western allies’ side to firm up the conference dates, it became clear that a protest was in order.

  It was in these circumstances that Maisky, alarmed by the complacency that still held sway in Britain, evidenced by the crowds of British workers who he had seen setting out for a day at the beach during the 2 August 1941 bank holiday, and the dearth of instructions from Moscow, decided he must take matters into his own hands.

  During his meeting on 26 August 1941 with Eden, he gathered that while there was no chance of Britain complying with the Soviet Union’s request to open up a second front in the near future, it was still sensible to carry on requesting it since the British foreign secretary was evidently so embarrassed by not being able to take the requested action that he was all the keener to be seen to offer assistance by way of supplying weapons. He realized that was all the more the case if Churchill and Eden were led to believe that if the Soviet Union did not get such support, they might become demoralized and enter into peace negotiations with Germany.

  Maisky passed on these impressions to Moscow. This was the catalyst for what happened next. Stalin, egged on by Maisky, wrote on 3 September to Churchill and told him that since Hopkins’ visit ‘the position of the Soviet troops has deteriorated… We have lost the greater part of the Ukraine, and the enemy is now at the gates of Leningrad’. The ‘unpleasant consequences’ listed by the Soviet leader included the loss of aluminium works and motor and aircraft factories which he said ‘weakened our power of defence capacity and placed the Soviet Union in a position of mortal peril’.

  He went on to say that the position could only be remedied if the Western allies opened up a: ‘second front… in the Balkans or France which would be able to divert from the Eastern Front some 30 to 40 German divisions’, and if the Soviet Union was given ‘30,000 tons of aluminium at the beginning of October, and a minimum monthly delivery of some 400 aircraft and 500 tanks… Without these two forms of help the Soviet Union may either be defeated or weakened to such an extent that for a long period, it may not be in a position to help its allies by active operations’.26

  This telegram was to have electrifying results. Although nothing would have induced Churchill to order the operations mentioned by Stalin while his chiefs of staff were saying they were not viable, which was the case at the beginning of September 1941, the British prime minister’s suspicion that the Russians might be thinking about throwing in the towel helped to persuade him that he had to come up with a positive response. This was in spite of his initially telling Maisky, in the course of a passionate debate when they met on 4 September, that it would be impossible to supply what was being demanded. Churchill’s negative attitude was in part fuelled by resentment. ‘Don’t forget that only four months ago we stood alone against Germany, and didn’t know whose side you were on,’ was the substance of what the British prime minister blurted out. But it was also prompted by the realization that Britain had to keep back a sufficient supply of weapons for her own forces (see Chapter 44 for how British forces lost out through arms being demanded by and supplied to the Soviet Union). Stalin was in effect asking for every single tank that Britain was manufacturing, Churchill told the Soviet ambassador.27

  In Churchill’s 5 September reply, he stated that Britain could manage to send half of the tanks and aircraft requested without expecting any payment, and he hoped America would provide the other half. He also promised to ask Roosevelt to expedite the arrival in London of the American representatives so that the conference in Moscow could be rapidly convened.28

  Roosevelt was more than happy to comply with this request once he heard talk of the Russians giving in. And so it was that during the evening of 28 September 1941, Roosevelt’s 50-year-old envoy Averell Harriman, a very rich American banker turned politician, and the equally prosperous 62-year-old press baron Max Aitken, better known as Lord Beaverbrook, Britain’s Minister of Supply, ended up sitting down with the Communist Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, the 51-year-old People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, in the Kremlin. Harriman later recalled Stalin as being shorter and broader than anticipated, wearing a heavy black moustache shot with grey, and dressed in a simple mottled brown tunic without decorations.29

  Given that the Allies’ wealthy negotiators represented everything communists were supposed to revile, Beaverbrook and Harriman appear to have been a strange choice. Although Beaverbrook had burnished his pro-Soviet credentials by organizing a ‘Tanks for Russia Week’ in British armament factories the week before the Moscow conference (workers were told all tanks produced during the week would be sent to Russia), the talks had some sticky moments.30 After being disarmed by Stalin’s frank disclosure of the Soviet Union’s vulnerabilities during the first meeting – Stalin admitted Moscow ‘certainly would have fallen’ if Hitler had concentrated his attack on the Russian capital rather than attacking on three fronts – the next evening, according to Harriman: ‘Stalin gave the impression that he was much dissatisfied with what we were offering. He appeared to question our good faith… “The paucity of your offers clearly shows that you want to see the Soviet Union defeated”… he said.’31

  Harriman noted afterwards: ‘It was deeply discouraging’, although his diagnosis concerning what had led to such an abrupt volte-face was questionable. He believed Stalin was hostile because he was ‘trying to trade’ or ‘to smoke us out’. It was just as likely that the cause of the hostility was the Soviet leader’s plunging morale in the wake of yet more defeats on the battlefield.

  Moscow may have been temporarily spared following Hitler’s inexplicable decision at the end of July 1941 to stop his Army Group Centre’s advance towards the Russian capital so it could assist the attacks to its north and south. However, during the last half of September 1941 the Red Army had to regroup because of another disaster. Kiev in the Ukraine, to the south, was encircled by German forces. Some 665,000 Soviet prisoners were taken. Stalin was to blame since he only permitted Soviet forces to retreat after it was too late. Coming as it did barely a month after around 300,000 Soviet prisoners were taken following the fighting in the Smolensk region, it would not have been surprising if this latest episode had pushed Stalin near to the edge.32

  The suspicion that the Russian leader’s bitterness was prompted by natural desperation would certainly have lined up with other available evidence. Harriman’s account reveals that when reporting on the second meeting, Beaverbrook wrote to Churchill: ‘Stalin was very restless, walking about and smoking continuously, and appeared to both of us to be under an intense strain.’33

  The situation cannot have been helped by the fact that Stalin, who spoke to Harriman and Beaverbrook in Russian via an interpreter, had this unnerving habit of not looking them in the eye when talking to them.34

  Fortunately for the Allies, whatever the cause of Stalin’s sullen, resentful comments on 29 September 1941, the next evening (30 September) friendly relations were re-established. Stalin proceeded to graciously accept what he was being offered even though by then he had yet another reason to be distracted.35 On the morning of 30 September 1941 the German Army Group Centre forces had resumed their advance towards Moscow as part of Operation Typhoon.36 The final terms confirming what Harriman and Beaverbrook had offered Stalin and Molotov were included in what was referred to as the First or Moscow Protocol. It was signed on 2 October 1941.37

  The Protocol included a clause promising that Britain and America would each supply 200 aircraft and 250 tanks per month during the period 1 October 1941 to 30 June 1942, a huge commitment particularly for Britain, who until American factories increased their output, would have to make up for any shortfall coming from America. In some cases, supplies from America originally earmarked for Britain were to be diverted so that they could instead be sent to the Soviet Union. But it answered Stalin’s plea that he be given this armour to add to the 1,400 tanks he stated the Soviet Union could manufacture each month.38 The Protocol also provided for other military equipment to be supplied such as anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns and lorries in addition to raw materials. The latter included steel and aluminium.

  But it was a provision in the Protocol confirming what was finally agreed on 1 October 1941, the day after the last meeting with Stalin, which was to impose what would become the biggest obligation of all. Beaverbrook and Harriman had both insisted that Britain and America would only be obliged to make the supplies available at centres of production in their own countries. But when Molotov asked whether that meant Britain and America would not help with transportation to Russia, Beaverbrook chipped in: ‘We will help, but we can’t guarantee delivery.’39

  Thus with a stroke of the pen, the starting gun was fired on a commitment which would in time result in Britain and America being sucked into a series of naval skirmishes, designated by some the Battle of the Arctic. Apart from its location, it was little different to the much better-known Battle of the Atlantic, only this battle was designed to provide a lifeline for the Soviet Union.

  Beaverbrook’s concession cannot have been unexpected in London. Even as Stalin and Molotov during the night of 1–2 October celebrated what had been agreed, at a huge banquet thrown in their visitors’ honour in the Kremlin’s Catherine the Great room, ten of the Western allies’ merchant ships, which with an oiler constituted the core of the first of the Arctic convoys given the prefix ‘PQ’ (PQ1), were sailing from Iceland to Archangel with, amongst other aid, 193 fighter aircraft on board (see Note 40 for the origin of the prefix PQ – and of the linked prefix QP).40

  Churchill, all the keener to stress that he was going to make the aid count because he knew Stalin would still be disappointed he was not getting the second front he really wanted, wrote to the Soviet leader on 6 October, four days before Beaverbrook and Harriman’s return to London: ‘We intend to run a continuous cycle of convoys leaving every ten days.’41 There was to be no suggestion that the bulk of the aid should at this early stage be sent to the Soviet Union via the much safer, but much longer and therefore slower route which, if selected, would have involved merchant ships going round the Cape of Good Hope, up the east coast of Africa, and ending up at ports at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. Even had the 12,000-mile journey by ship from the American east coast to the Persian Gulf been an option notwithstanding the availability of the much shorter northern route which involved sailing around 2,800 miles from the US to Britain and then 3,000 miles from Britain via Iceland to the nearest of the northern Russian ports, there was the additional obstacle that road and railway connections between the Persian Gulf ports and the Soviet Union had yet to be developed sufficiently to make the transport of aid using them viable Stalin, who had first pointed this out during his July 1941 meetings with Harry Hopkins, had at the same time ruled out the bulk of the supplies being shipped to Vladivostok. One objection to that route being used was that it was likely to be opposed by the Japanese. It was also much too far away from the front to be practicable, Stalin had said.42

  The undertaking to send what amounted to no less than three convoys per month was not the only positive news Churchill made known to Stalin. It was eventually agreed that Britain would not charge the Soviet Union for the military aid it was supplying, such as arms, tanks and aircraft, unless Britain had paid a third party for the items in question. That apart, the Soviet Union only had to pay Britain for non-military aid, such as raw materials and machine tools, after credit was given for the materials which the Soviet Union in her turn gave to Britain (the materials given to Britain would be loaded into the Allies’ merchant ships, which were it not for such supplies, would be returning to Iceland empty apart from the ballast necessary to weigh the vessels down to give them stability).43 Roosevelt likewise ruled that no immediate payment would be payable for American aid; it was said to be supplied under so-called ‘lend-lease’ terms, although the President would eventually state he would decide what that meant in the Soviet Union’s case when the war ended (see Note 44 for financial arrangements at the end of the war, and see explanation of lend-lease in the Glossary).44

  It is highly likely that Churchill’s desire to support Russia with such an open hand was partly boosted by a wish to hold together his cabinet as well as to satisfy the public. There had been a groundswell of public opinion in favour of Britain supporting Russia. Fired up by articles in the press, including in Lord Beaverbrook’s newspapers such as the Daily and Sunday Express, and demonstrations around the country, there was for a time mounting pressure on the government to save Russia by opening a second front, as requested by Stalin.45

  This pressure reached its zenith during the early stages of the Germans’ renewed advance towards Moscow during October 1941. It prompted Lord Beaverbrook, in the course of a stormy meeting of Britain’s War Cabinet’s Defence Committee on 20 October 1941, to allege that the country’s Chiefs of Staff were insisting they must ‘wait until the last button has been sewn on the last gaiter before we launch an attack’, and he attacked Churchill for not standing up to them.

  The secretary of the meeting reported Lord Beaverbrook’s outburst thus: ‘He wished to take advantage of the rising temper in the country for helping Russia. Others didn’t. He wanted to make a supreme effort to raise production so as to help Russia. Others didn’t… He wished the Army to act in support of Russia. The Chiefs of Staff didn’t. The line of cleavage between himself and his colleagues and the Chiefs of Staff was complete.’46