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By Root 719 0

MPs and senior officers. Repugnance towards the bloodstained Soviets ran deep through the upper echelons of British society. Leo Amery, the India secretary, recoiled from making common cause with Communists. Col. John Moore-Brabazon, minister of aircraft production, was rash enough to publicly assert a desire to see the Germans and Russians exterminate each other. Jock Colville described this as “a sentiment widely felt.”285 Lieutenant General Pownall complained about the limp-wristed attitude which he perceived in approaches towards the Russians by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the diplomats of his department. “They think they are dealing with normal people286. They are not. Russians are orientals and need treating quite differently and far more roughly. They are not Old Etonians …” Tory MP Cuthbert Headlam observed with curious detachment: “I don’t suppose that the ‘conquest’287 of Russia will take very long. And what then—presumably either Hitler will make some kind of peace offer based upon our acceptance of the ‘New Order,’” or he will try his hand at an invasion here or push on in the [Middle] Eastern theatre.” Headlam thought Churchill’s posture tactically sensible, but like many other people found himself unable to anticipate a happy ending without the Americans. He fell back upon hopes of loftier assistance: “One feels that God is on our side288—that’s the great thing.”

Among the British left, however, and the public at large, enthusiasm for Churchill’s declaration of support for Russia was overwhelming. Independent Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, an almost unflagging critic of Churchill’s leadership, nonetheless congratulated him on his welcome to the Russians as comrades in arms: “It was an exceedingly clever statement, a very difficult one to make, but made with great wisdom and strength.” Surrey court reporter George King wrote: “I glory in all this289. I have always had a soft spot for the Russians, and never blamed them for their dislike of us. We gave them good cause in the years after the last war … Thank God for Russia. They have saved us from invasion this year.” Londoner Vere Hodgson wrote on June 22: “The Russians have not been too nice290 to us in the past, but now we have to be friends and help one another … So we have got one fighting ally left in Europe. I felt my morale rising.” She added in the following month, with notable sagacity: “Somehow I think Stalin291 is more a match for Hitler than any of us … he looks such an unpleasant kind of individual.” It was never plausible that, in order to defeat Hitler, British people would have been willing to eat one another, but the Russians did so during the siege of Leningrad. Indeed, they endured incomparable horrors between 1941 and 1945, which spared the Western Allies from sacrifices such as Britain’s prime minister might not flinch from, but his people certainly would have.

British Communists, many of whom had hitherto been indifferent to the war, now changed tune dramatically. Some, like Mrs. Elizabeth Belsey, henceforward matched impassioned admiration for Mother Russia’s struggle with unremitting scorn for Britain’s leaders. She wrote to her soldier husband:

I was agreeably surprised … that Churchill received Russia292 so promptly into the circle of our gallant allies. I had thought he might either continue his own war, ignoring Russia’s, or clear out & let Russia hold the baby. On mature reflection, I realise that the course he took was for him the only realistic one. His speech disgusted me … The damnably sloppy picture he drew of the Russians “defending their soil,” and the even-atheists-pray-sometimes attitude towards Soviet women! And the way in which every single speaker on the subject makes it quite frankly clear that whereas we supported Greece for the Greeks, Norway for the Norwegians, Abyssinia for the Abyssinians and so on, we are now supporting Russia solely for ourselves … And as for Churchill’s personal record! Who’s going to remind him of his statement that if he had to choose between communism & fascism he wasn’t sure he’d choose