Download - Winston Churchill

TROUBLED TRIUMVIRATE...MoscowAfter Teheran my next close encounter with Mr.Churchill was almost a year later in October 1944, hissecond and final visit to Moscow (codenamed “Tolstoy”),where he was accompanied by Eden. Talks with Stalinand Molotov mainly concerned Eastern Europe, the “percentage”agreement over Soviet and British influence invarious countries, and Poland. Representatives of theLondon Polish Government in exile in London were alsoinvited. The mischievous “percentages” more or less evaporatedand did not figure formally again in any tripartiteor even bilateral talks, though you’d not know it from theattention devoted to them by modern historians andChurchill himself. Our Military Mission officers, includingmyself, were on duty looking after the PrimeMinister and Foreign Secretary in the Soviet hospitalitytown house in Ostrovskiy Street (formerly and today theAustrian Embassy).YaltaThe following February, I watched Churchill’s aircraftland, after its seven-hour flight from Malta, at theCrimean airport of Saki, where I had been working formuch of the past fortnight. It touched down shortlyafter Roosevelt’s aircraft. The President, waxen cheeked,looked ghastly, his familiar black naval cloak over hisshoulders, hat-brim turned up in front, being helpedinto a jeep which Churchill solicitously followed on footas they inspected the Guard of Honour together.We had a five-hour drive to our respective destinations.Ours was the slightly odd Moorish-Scottish baronialstyle Vorontsov Palace/Villa overlooking the BlackSea at Alupka. Twelve miles away just outside Yalta wasthe last Czar’s Palace, Livadia, the American quarters andvenue of the plenary sessions. Stalin, the generous host,was in between, in the Yusupov Villa in Koreis, six milesfrom Livadia. It was there in Stalin’s headquarters thatwe held the Chiefs of Staff military meetings.The opening session of the Yalta Conference wasone of the most dramatic and fateful. It was there thatDresden’s destiny was sealed. Among many omissionsand misrepresentations put about by revisionist historiansand others in recent years is that either Churchill orAir Marshal Harris or the RAF in general were directlyand personally responsible for the deliberate annihilationof Dresden’s population and its art treasures. This is howI witnessed the matter at that first session.Among other requests and questions of militaryliaison, Stalin, with his Deputy Chief of Staff, GeneralAntonov—I watched and heard them both—asked usand the Americans to bomb lines of communication—roads and railways. They wanted to stop Hitler transferringdivisions from the west to reinforce his troops inSilesia who were blocking the Russian advance onBerlin. We ourselves had passed intelligence about thetroop movements to the Russians. They claimed theyhad it from their own sources.The road and rail network, against which contingencyplans had already been discussed by the RAFmonths previously, was the target—not the city, and notcivilians as such. One of the intended consequenceswould be the jamming of road and rail communicationsby refugees. Together with other towns, Antonov stressedthe importance of Dresden as a rail junction.The following day at the Chiefs of Staff meeting inStalin’s Yusupov Villa, which our Chief of Staff, by thenField Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, was asked to chair, thequestion of liaison for “bomb lines” was discussed.Antonov again pressed the subject of lines of communicationand entrainment, specifically via Berlin, Leipzigand Dresden. The latter he again referred to as animportant rail junction. The Soviet Air MarshalKhudyakov added his expertise to the same requests. Iinterpreted our assent. The USAAF Major-GeneralKuter also agreed. The bombing mission by the RAFand the U.S. Army Air Corps was a military success, buttragically inflicted great loss of civilian refugee life whichChurchill later deeply deplored.*Here in the Crimea, Stalin looked exultant, wethought—after all, he held the trump cards. His armieswere already in occupation of most of Eastern Europe.The myth that it was carved up at Yalta is patently inaccurate.There was no need: the Red Army already heldit. After the war one of Stalin’s favourite jokes suggestedhe deserved the whole bear, and he got it!As I saw him, Roosevelt displayed indifference toEastern Europe. I thought the President—and he wasnot the only one—hopelessly misperceived the realitiesof the Soviet Union, completely misjudging Stalin, as toan extent did Churchill and Eden. It was “a pleasure towork with Stalin...there is nothing devious about him,”Churchill said. Because of his paranoia, I believe Stalin*At the Fifth Churchill Lecture, in Washington in 2005, SirMartin Gilbert stated that the first Soviet request on Dresdenarrived before Yalta, and that at Yalta, Stalin and Antonovasked Churchill why it hadn’t already been bombed. Churchill,perplexed, cabled Attlee in London, who responded that theattack had been ordered. This was actually confirmed by Gen.Antonov’s deputy, who was among the audience when Gilbertlectured on the subject in Moscow. It was undoubtedly thisconversation which Mr. Lunghi observed. Sir Martin writes:“It is curious that when the request came…Churchill and AirMarshal Portal were in flight on their way to the Yalta conference.So the request was dealt with by Churchill’s excellentdeputy Clement Attlee, later the Labour Prime Minister, andby the deputy chiefs of staff and approved. It was the 16th or17th item of the things that they had to approve that day.”FINEST HOUR 135 / 20