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are still vastly strong, and the propertied bourgeois, although a minority, have still an enormous influence on the conduct of our affairs and are terrified of the idea of Socialism. Socialism is inevitable.” Londoner Ethel Mattison wrote to her sister in California on August 1: “When the Anglo-Soviet Alliance was signed612, and … the Second Front was one of the main points … [it] rather tended to make people sit back and wait for it. However, the waiting has been so long and the Russians are suffering so terribly that it seems the idea must be pushed into realisation by the force of public opinion. Everywhere you go, in buses, trains and in lifts you hear fragments of conversation in connection with it.”

The Russian press, unsurprisingly, devoted much space to the Second Front lobby. Pravda carried a story reporting the mass rallies in Britain in support of early action under the headline: ENGLISH PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO HELP THEIR RUSSIAN COMRADES.613 It quoted Associated Press correspondent Drew Middleton declaring after a tour of Britain that there was overwhelming public support for an invasion; that shipping difficulties could be overcome; that bombing of Germany was recognised as an insufficient support to Russia. Pravda described Second Front demonstrations in Canada. Through the months that followed, there was much more Moscow press comment on the same theme. On August 9 Pravda headlined: NO TIME TO LOSE—BRITISH PRESS ON THE SECOND FRONT. On August 15: TIME HAS COME TO ACT, SAY AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS. The next day, a report described a deputation representing 105,000 British workers from seventy-eight companies calling at Downing Street to present a Second Front petition to Churchill. On the nineteenth, Pravda headlined: ENGLISH PUBLIC ORGANISATIONS DEMAND OFFENSIVE AGAINST GERMANY, and on the twenty-third: WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO WAIT—ENGLISH TRADE UNIONS DEMAND OPENING SECOND FRONT.

The narrative of the Second World War presented by most historians is distorted by the fact that it focuses upon what happened, rather than what did not. Until November 1942, weeks and sometimes months passed without much evidence of activity by British land forces. Between June 1941 and the end of the war, British newspapers and BBC broadcasts were often dominated by reports of the struggle on the Eastern Front, where action appeared continuous. Countless editorials paid tribute to the deeds of “our gallant Russian allies.” This goes far to explain why Russia commanded such admiration in contemporary Britain. Accounts of the eastern fighting were vague and often wildly inaccurate, but they coalesced to create a valid impression of vigorous, hideously costly and increasingly successful action by the Red Army. The battle for Stalingrad, which now began to receive massive coverage, intensified public dismay about the contrast between British and Russian achievements. “Every week of successful defence,”614 reported the Ministry of Information on October 9, 1942, “confirms the popularity of the Russians and there is much uneasiness and unhappiness at the spectacle of our apparent inaction.”

Ismay said that he admired Churchill as much for the courage with which he resisted a premature Second Front as for the vigour with which he promoted other projects. He observed that a lesser man might have given in to the vociferous lobbyists. He deplored the public’s ignorance of the fact that real partnership with the Russians was impossible, given their implacable secretiveness. To understand the British public temper in World War II, it is necessary to recognise how little people knew about anything beyond the visible movements of armies and the previous night’s bomber raids on Germany. Information which is commonplace in time of peace becomes the stuff of high secrecy in war: industrial production figures; weapons shortages; shipping movements and losses; details of aid to Russia or lack of it. Many reports in newspapers, especially those detailing Allied combat successes and enemy losses, were fanciful. The prime minister offered the nation only the