must also, by agreement between herself on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, give free passage to our troops through the Vilno Bulge and Galicia...
Should Rumania be drawn into the war, a similar agreement should be made
between Rumania, France and Britain concerning the free passage of Soviet troops
across Rumanian territory."
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, pp. 169-70, quoting AVP SSSR (Soviet Foreign Policy Archives).]
According to the Soviet version Admiral Drax thanked General Shaposhnikov for
outlining his plan, but it was not accepted by the British and French, and there were no serious British or French counter-proposals. Instead, both the French and the British made the most of the "Polish obstacle". The British had, indeed, no intention of bringing pressure to bear on the Polish Government.
The attitude of General Doumenc, head of the French Mission, was rather different:
"Twice he cabled the French War Ministry saying he intended to send General Valin, a member of the Mission, to Warsaw, in order to obtain the Polish Government's consent.
But the result was only a telegram from the French War Ministry to the French Military Attaché in Moscow proposing to postpone Valin's visit to Warsaw."
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 170 quoting a French document originally captured by the Germans, and found in the German Foreign Office archives by the Russians. This episode is
confirmed by Paul Reynaud in La France a sauvé l'Europe (Paris, 1947), vol. I, p. 580.]
All that the French and British found to propose, according to the Soviet History, was that the Soviet Union should declare war on Germany in the event of a German attack on Poland, but should take no military action before the German troops reached the Soviet borders. "All this shows that they were much less interested in helping Poland than in getting the Soviet Union involved in a war against Germany."
[Ibid., p. 170. ]
Already in June 1939 the governments of Latvia and Estonia, frightened of both Germany and Russia, had, under German pressure, concluded "friendship pacts" with Germany.
But Poland's position presented by far the most urgent problem since by August 15 the Germans were poised to invade her at any moment. Even in these conditions no progress was made in the Anglo-Franco-Soviet military talks in Moscow. On August 17, says the Soviet History, the talks were postponed until August 21, so that the British and French Missions could be given time to discover the real attitude of their respective governments to the passage of Soviet troops through Poland. The Admiral was still not in a hurry, whereas General Doumenc held that nothing was lost yet, but that there was no time to lose. He considered that, on that day, the Russians were still in dead earnest about the military convention. In his dispatch to Paris on August 17 he wired "There is a definite will on the part of the Russians not to stay outside as spectators, and a clear desire to commit themselves right up to the hilt. There is no doubt that the USSR wants a military pact; but she does not want from us a meaningless scrap of paper; Marshal Voroshilov assured me that all questions of mutual help, communications, etc., would be discussed without any difficulty, once what the Russians call 'the cardinal question'—the Russian access to Polish territory—has been satisfactorily solved."
[Paul Reynaud, op. cit., vol. I, p. 587.]
That day, in desperation Doumenc even sent one of his aides, Captain Beauffre, to
Warsaw to see Marshal Rydz-Smigly, but to no avail; his reply was a repetition of his remark to the French Ambassador: "With the Germans we may lose our freedom, with the Russians we shall lose our soul."
[ Paul Reynaud, op. cit., vol. I, p. 587.]
Finally, on August 21 Admiral Drax said that he had received no further information
from London, and proposed that the next meeting take place in three or four days.
[IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 172, quoting AVP SSSR, Anglo-Franco-Soviet
Negotiations, f. 204.]
At this point the Russians asked for a clear answer as to how the British and French visualised Soviet participation in mutual assistance in view of the Polish attitude; no reply was received.
In his conversation with the French Military Attaché on August 23—the day of
Ribbentrop's arrival in Moscow—Voroshilov said: "We could not wait for the Germans to smash the Polish Army, after which they would have attacked us... Meantime, you
would be stationed at your frontier, tying up perhaps ten German divisions. We needed a springboard from which to attack the Germans; without it, we could not help you."
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 172, quoting Archives of Ministry of Defence of the USSR.]
It was with a touch of melancholy that Voroshilov said about the same time to General Doumenc, who had informed him of Daladier's latest telegram ordering him—without
anything having been settled about Poland—to sign "the best possible military
convention, with the Ambassador's consent, and subject to the French Government's
subsequent approval": "We have wasted eleven days for nothing. We raised the question of military collaboration with France many years ago [an allusion to the abortive offer already made in 1935 by Soviet Ambassador Potemkin to M. Jean Fabry, then French
Minister of War]. Last year, when Czechoslovakia was on the edge of the abyss, we
waited for a signal from France; our Red Army was ready to strike. But the signal never came. Our government, and the whole of the Soviet people wanted to rush to the help of Czechoslovakia and to fulfil the obligations arising from the treaties. Now the British and French governments have dragged out these political and military talks far too long.
Therefore other political events are not to be ruled out. It was necessary to have a definite reply from Poland and Rumania about our troops' right of passage. If the Poles had given an affirmative answer, they would have asked to be represented at these talks."
[ Paul Reynaud, op. cit., vol. I, p. 588.]
Although, in the Russian view, France was at least as much to blame for Munich as
Britain, the breakdown of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet military talks in 1939 is attributed much more to Britain than to France. At the root of the trouble there was, among other things, that inept "guarantee" to Poland, which had only encouraged the Poles in their suicidal anti-Soviet policy—a guarantee the dangers of which the French Government
had seen at once. In Russian eyes, the inconclusive talks with Admiral Drax
demonstrated Chamberlain's continued resistance to a firm military alliance with the Soviet Union, as well as his determination not to overcome the Polish Government's
objections to direct Russian aid. On the other hand, it seems obvious that Stalin and Molotov had been extremely distrustful of Britain and France throughout and had never been really enthusiastic about the alliance. Even if concluded, it might still have produced a "phoney war" in the west, and have helped Russia no more than the British "guarantee"
helped Poland when it came to the test. Without the strongest military commitments by France, Britain and Poland, the alliance offered no attraction to them. Short of such commitments, a last-minute deal with Hitler was almost certainly at the back of Stalin's mind from April or May onwards.
Chapter II THE SOVIET-GERMAN PACT
It is customary to look for turning points in history. Much has, of course, been read into Stalin's speech of March 10 with its phrase about the "chestnuts", suggesting a "curse on both your houses" and a desire to keep out of any military entanglements. Even more has been made of Hitler's speech of April 28, 1939, in which both the Polish-German non-aggression pact and the Anglo-German naval agreement were denounced, and in which