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By Root 707 0

day and all night to produce for Russia innumerable Tanks—all dud Tanks.” The Russians valued the Valentine, which coped with the conditions of the Eastern Front much better than the Matilda, which was also shipped in quantity. But they quickly grasped that most of the weapons dispatched from Britain were those its own forces least wanted. They scarcely helped themselves by contemptuously dismissing British offers of technical instruction. The new users’ unfamiliarity caused much equipment to be damaged or destroyed. Several Russian pilots killed themselves by attempting to take off without releasing their Tomahawks’ brakes.

When large-scale American supplies reached Russia in 1943–44, these exercised a dramatic influence on the feeding and transport of the Red Army. The Russians soon lost interest in tanks and planes, which they preferred to build for themselves, seeking instead American trucks, boots, technical equipment, aluminium and canned meat. It is arguable that food deliveries narrowly averted starvation in Russia in the winter of 1942–43. U.S. shipments eventually totalled £2.5 billion, against Britain’s £45.6 million. Allied aid is thought to have contributed 10 percent to the Soviet war effort in 1943–44—but only 5 percent in 1942, and a negligible proportion in 1941. Chris Bellamy, among the best-informed Western historians307 of the Soviet Union’s war, suggests that while such a contribution seems marginal, when the Soviet Union hung close to defeat it may have been decisive.

In 1941–42 the British and Americans cannot realistically be blamed for dispatching so little to Russia, because both weapons production and shipping were inadequate to meet their own needs. The relevant point is merely that there was a chasm between Anglo-American rhetoric and the real Western contribution. In the first year after Barbarossa was launched, of 2,443 tanks promised by the Western powers only 1,442 arrived on time, together with 1,323 of 1,800 aircraft. During this period, the Russians were themselves producing two thousand tanks a month—most of notably higher quality than those shipped to Murmansk and Archangel. The Red Army sometimes lost a thousand tanks a week on the battlefield.

By the autumn of 1941, the tension between popular enthusiasm in Britain for Stalin’s people and contempt for the Russians in some parts of the war machine was imposing intense pressure on the prime minister. An Observer columnist suggested that Russia’s entry into the war fed Britain’s instinctive complacency: “The effect upon us psychologically308 is unhealthy. We have found a short cut to victory … We settle back to read with satisfaction how our air offensive against Germany is helping our great Soviet ally. With Russia and U.S.A. on our side, now surely all will be well.” Edward Stebbing, discharged from the army and working as a laboratory technician, wrote in October: “My main feeling is one of bitter309, flaming anger at the inertia of our government … our help to Russia has been almost negligible.”

Even as Stebbing was penning his angry reflections, the prime minister warned Middle East Command of “the rising temper of the British people310 against what they consider our inactivity.” To his son, Randolph, in the Middle East, he described on October 31 the sniping of his critics in Parliament and Beaverbrook’s frequent threats of resignation: “Things are pretty hard here311 … The Communists are posing as the only patriots in the country. The Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals chant their stately hymn of ‘Safety First.’ … In the midst of this I have to restrain my natural pugnacity by sitting on my own head. How bloody!” Gen. John Kennedy wrote in his diary in September: “The fundamental difficulty is that altho312 we want the Germans to be knocked out above all, most of us feel … that it would not be a bad thing if the Russians were to be finished as a military power too … The CIGS constantly expresses his dislike of the Russians … The Russians on their side doubtless feel the same about us.”

Pownall, Dill’s vice chief, wrote in