Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [270]
On October 11, Churchill sought to resolve such matters in a long missive to Stalin which he drafted, then showed to Averell Harriman, now U.S. ambassador in Moscow. Harriman said that Roosevelt and Cordell Hull would certainly repudiate the letter, if it was sent. Instead, the prime minister telegraphed to the president, urging the importance of acting swiftly to prevent an eruption of civil wars in the Balkans. Already, Communist partisans in Albania had rejected the return of King Zog, exiled from the country since 1941.
Then Churchill’s delegation set forth for the British embassy, to host a dinner for Stalin and Molotov. There, Stalin told his host that it had not been policy, but military realities, which had prevented the Red Army from succouring the Warsaw Poles. The prime minister asked Lazar Kaganovich, the commissar for railways, how he made his nation’s transport trains run on time. When an engine driver failed in his duty, said Kaganovich with a wolfish grin … then he drew his hand across his throat. Churchill rarely displayed anxiety about his own safety, but in Moscow he was furious to discover that his plane was left overnight in the hands of Russian guards. He insisted that thereafter a member of its RAF crew must remain aboard the aircraft around the clock. It is hard to suggest that this represented paranoia.
As always at these meetings, talking continued into the small hours. The Russian mood seemed unreservedly benign. Churchill cabled to Roosevelt about “an extraordinary atmosphere of goodwill.” To Clementine, he wrote on October 13: “The affairs go well987. We have settled a lot of things about the Balkans & prevented hosts of squabbles that were maturing. The two sets of Poles have arrived & are being kept for the night in separate cages … I have had v[er]y nice talks with the Old Bear. I like him the more I see him. Now they respect us here & I am sure they wish to work with us. I have to keep the President in constant touch & this is the delicate side.”
In almost all of this Churchill was mistaken. Unaccustomed Russian civility, even warmth, was inspired by a new self-confidence, born of battlefield triumph. Virtually none of the assurances Stalin offered had substance. He had no intention of honouring them. What he wanted in the Balkans, he would take. Stalin could always raise a laugh from his obeisant courtiers by saying, as he often did: “We fucked this England!”988 The prime minister could claim only one success which proved enduring: Greece. Stalin recognised the strength of British sentiment about the country, together with the reality of Western Allied dominance of its airspace and surrounding seas. All the rest of the Balkans was within the Soviets’ grasp. Though strife lay ahead in Greece, the Russians made no attempt to promote Communist victory. Thus far, and thus far only, Churchill may have accomplished something useful in Moscow.
His most notable failure was the attempt to save Poland. He summoned from London a Polish exile delegation, led by Prime Minister Mikolajczyk, who attended under threat from Churchill. Days of icy roundtable discussion followed, with the Russians half amused and half embarrassed by the slavish puppet show put on by their own “Lublin Poles.” Churchill wrote to the king from Moscow, “Our lot from London are, as Your Majesty knows989, a decent but feeble lot of fools,