Moscow was in a festive mood, and the blessings of peace seemed wonderful under the
wise leadership of Comrade Stalin. No doubt, not all was well—least of all in a great number of kolkhozes—but conditions had certainly become easier in the last five years.
The Exhibition teemed with lemonade and ice-cream stalls and eating places, and, in their light summer clothes, people looked cheerful, contented and even superficially
prosperous. War seemed a long way away, whatever the papers said about "more Nazi provocations in Danzig".
At last, on August 12, Pravda announced the arrival in Moscow of the British and French Military Missions:
The Missions, headed by Admiral Drax and General Doumenc, were met yesterday
morning at the Leningrad Station by a number of Soviet personalities... Later in the day, Comrade V. M. Molotov received the leaders of the Missions. Present at the
meeting were also Sir William Seeds, M. Naggiar, and the Deputy Foreign
Commissar V. P. Potemkin... Later they were received by Defence Commissar
Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Army Commander
of the 1st rank, B. M. Shaposhnikov.
In the evening a banquet was given in honour of the British and French Military
Missions, and all the Soviet top brass were there— Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Budienny, Timoshenko, heads of the Kiev and Belorussian Military Districts and leaders of the
Navy and Air Force. "Friendly toasts were exchanged between Comrade Voroshilov and the heads of the British and French Military Missions."
[ Pravda, August 12, 1939.]
That was as much as the Soviet public were allowed to learn at that stage about the
Anglo-French visit. What did it really amount to? The visit had been announced more
than three weeks before; but the British and French had obviously been in no great hurry to come, having travelled by slow boat to Leningrad. Needless to say, nobody had ever heard of Admiral Drax or General Doumenc. Why had nobody of note come to Moscow
—Halifax or Daladier?—not Chamberlain, of course, for who would want to see him! All the same, there was obviously "something in it" if all the top army and navy and air-force leaders were attending the banquet... These were the kind of confused impressions people had in Moscow at the time. Certainly nothing had been done in London or Paris to fire the Soviet public's imagination.
Present-day Soviet historians treat this Anglo-French Military Mission with the utmost severity. "Here were generals and admirals who had either reached the retiring age, or were holding only secondary posts... The British Government's attitude to the Mission was so frivolous that it had not even given them any powers. Only towards the end of the talks, after a lot of insisting by the Soviet side, did Drax produce some sort of credentials, but even these did not allow him to sign any kind of agreement with the USSR. The
credentials of the French general were no better. All they had been empowered to do was to conduct negotiations with us." The History recalls that after the Soviet Government had proposed that Britain and France send military missions to Moscow, these people
"had taken eleven days to prepare for their departure, and had then taken six more days to travel by slow cargo-passenger boat to Leningrad, and thence to Moscow".
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 168. In Maisky's Memoirs Admiral Drax is made to look like
someone straight out of P. G. Wodehouse]
The principle underlying the Soviet proposals was not only reciprocity, but also equality in the war effort to be put into this mutual assistance by the two sides. But even before Shaposhnikov outlined his proposals in detail, he had already been taken aback by the British reaction to his first mention of the "respective contributions":
When B. M. Shaposhnikov said that the Soviet Union was ready to make available
against the aggressor 120 infantry divisions, sixteen cavalry divisions, 5,000 medium and heavy guns, 9,000 to 10,000 tanks, and 5,000 to 5,500 bomber and fighter
planes, General Heywood, a member of the British Mission, talked about five
infantry and one mechanised divisions. This in itself was enough to suggest a
frivolous British attitude to the talks with the Soviet Union.
[IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 169, quoting from AVP SSSR (Foreign Policy Archives), Anglo-
French-Soviet Negotiations in 1939, v. Ill, f. 138.]
The History does not, however, mention the suggestions of the French, who had a numerically far larger army than the British.
The military convention the Russians proposed was to be based on three eventualities: 1) IF THE BLOC OF AGGRESSORS ATTACK FRANCE AND BRITAIN. In this
case the Soviet Union will make available seventy per cent of the armed forces that France and Britain will direct against the "main aggressor", i.e. Germany. Thus, if they use ninety divisions, the Soviet Union will use sixty-three infantry divisions and six cavalry divisions, with the appropriate number of guns, tanks and planes—
altogether about two million men.
In this case Poland must participate with all her armed forces, in view of her
agreements with Britain and France. Poland must concentrate forty to forty-five
divisions on her Western borders and against East Prussia. The British and French Governments must obtain Poland's undertaking to let the Soviet armed forces pass
through the Vilno Bulge and, if possible, through Lithuania to the borders of East Prussia, and also, if necessary, through Galicia.
2) IF THE AGGRESSION IS DIRECTED AGAINST POLAND AND RUMANIA.
In this case, Poland and Rumania must make
use of all their armed forces, and the Soviet Union will participate by as much as 100 per cent of the forces employed against Germany by Britain and France... In
this case, an indispensable condition of the Soviet Union's participation is that Britain and France should immediately declare war on the aggressor. Moreover, the Soviet Union can take part in such a war only if the British and French
Governments come to a clear understanding with Poland and Rumania (and, if
possible, with Lithuania) about the free passage of the Soviet armed forces through the Vilno Bulge, Galicia and Rumania.
3) IF THE AGGRESSOR ATTACKS THE SOVIET UNION BY MAKING USE
OF THE TERRITORIES OF FINLAND, ESTONIA OR LATVIA. In this case
France and Britain must not
only declare war on the aggressor (or the bloc of aggressors) "but must also start active and immediate military operations against the main aggressor", putting into operation seventy per cent of the forces employed by the Soviet Union (the Soviet Union would put into operation 136 divisions). "Since Poland is bound by her agreements with Britain and France, she must intervene against Germany, and