The famous journalist Sinclair Mackay shows the legendary British politician Sir Winston Churchill through the eyes of those people with whom the great Prime Minister met over the course of nine decades of his life, in the book „Meet Churchill. 90 meetings with the man behind the legend“.
On the morning of June 22, 1941, the people of Leningrad, like the residents of a number of other cities and villages in the USSR, could not believe their ears when they heard the news from the loudspeakers about the beginning of the German invasion. Soon, distant terrible rumbles were heard, which, alas, they would not be thunderous. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was violated. Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. The operation was called “Barbarossa“. In distant England, Churchill, whose hatred of Bolshevism had somewhat weakened in the last few years for pragmatic reasons, spoke on the radio.
“The cause of every Russian who fights for his home and hearth is the cause of all free people and peoples in all parts of the globe,“ he declared.
Great Britain and the USSR were allies. In the face of the bloody Nazi offensive (the siege of Leningrad alone led to the deaths of more than a million people), Joseph Stalin wanted Britain, and then the United States, to open a second front against the Hitlerite coalition.
He and Churchill first met in Moscow in August 1942 d.
"Both were very sharp at times", wrote the diplomat Sir Archibald Clark Kerr of Churchill and Stalin's early meetings, "as if each was constantly looking for an opportunity to hurt the other by being rude. I think they were both very good at it".
On Wednesday, August 12, 1942, Churchill took off from Tehran for Moscow, the plane soaring over endless collective farm fields. To Churchill, this was still a "dark, sinister" communist state. But this was diplomacy, and he had a difficult task ahead of him: to tell Stalin that the Allies were not yet ready to land in France. In return, he would try to "sell" the Soviet leader Operation Torch, which involved an Allied landing in North Africa: it was thought is that the troops in the Mediterranean would weaken the German-Italian axis.
At the first dinner, Churchill took out a piece of paper, drew a crocodile on it, and showed the drawing to Stalin. In this way, he tried to explain the Allied strategy without interpreters: first an attack aimed at the soft belly of the monster, and only then an attack from the side of its hard, toothy mouth.
Churchill and his entourage stayed at the state dacha No. 7, which was probably bugged by the Soviet secret services. All important conversations were held outside or near a running fountain. At first glance, the meeting of the leaders went well. But the next day, Stalin was furious: he declared that by refusing to open a second front in Europe, Churchill and the British had shown cowardice.
According to Colonel Ian Jacob, who was present at this regular meeting, an exchange of very unpleasant phrases ensued, with Churchill finding himself in the middle of diplomatic nightmare. One can only imagine the strain that the translators were under at that time.
Stalin declared:
"We are making great sacrifices. We are losing ten thousand men every day at the front... The Russians do not complain about the sacrifices they are making, but their scale must be recognized".
Churchill replied that he envied the will of the Soviet people and hoped that "very soon we will show by our actions that democracies are not sluggish and not cowardly and that they too are ready to shed their blood". He also noted that "the existence of oceans and the necessity of sailing them by ships" "these are factors for which [Britain] can hardly be reproached".
Churchill reproached Stalin for "There was no friendly note in his position," and he noted that he knew well what the Soviet citizens were going through: "We ourselves fought alone for a whole year... He came a long way in the hope of receiving a hand of comradeship, of being trusted as a friend... and he is bitter because the Russians do not believe that the British are doing everything possible for the common cause."
Stalin replied that "it is not a question of distrust, but only of differences of opinion." According to him, "if you try to fight like the Russians, you will find that it does not turn out so badly. The Red Army, and indeed the Royal Air Force, had already shown that the Germans can be defeated. The British infantry can do the same if they act together."
The accusation of cowardice was truly outrageous, and Churchill said he excused the remark "only in view of the bravery of the Soviet troops." He later described the meeting as extremely unpleasant, writing that Stalin "said many insulting words: I rejected all his claims without hesitation, but without sarcasm. I suppose he was not used to being constantly opposed, but he was not at all angry and even animated... His eyes remained half-closed; delivering another round of insults after pauses, he stubbornly avoided meeting my gaze...“.
In addition to such high-level meetings, Churchill also had to participate in reviews of Red Army troops and attend banquets.
Usually he loved to eat, but this time the sight of a huge amount of vodka and roast pigs left him indifferent.
Stalin asked if the British Prime Minister could not stay longer in Moscow. Churchill replied that he had done the maximum he was capable of through diplomacy. Then an interesting moment occurred - as Churchill headed for the door, Stalin beat him to it to detain him. He managed to persuade Churchill, who stayed another day.
This secret meeting ended in Stalin's private apartments in the Kremlin, where his daughter cooked more pork and served more vodka.
Stalin, like Churchill, was a night owl. This more private meeting, attended by the diplomat Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, was striking in its outward friendliness.
“The interaction between the two men was extremely interesting to watch. Clashes, retreats, clashes again, and then a slow but steady rapprochement until each began to understand the caliber of the other and eventually they warmed up. For me, who was partly responsible for the meeting, it involved some very anxious moments. But at the end of it I was quite satisfied and thought it was conducted with extraordinary wisdom”.
Both were unusually restless and nervous. Stalin kept getting up and walking across the large room to the desk, where he looked for cigarettes. When he found them, he tore them to pieces and stuffed his absurdly curved pipe with tobacco. And Churchill, when it was his turn to "retaliate," got up and walked around, brushing off his trousers, which had evidently stuck to his legs while he was sitting... And there was something about that stupid figure scratching his ass that suggested enormous strength and complete indifference to rank... The Prime Minister was in a great mood, he felt that he had succeeded."
Churchill had to catch up somehow with Stalin in his truly colossal consumption of alcohol, and he could not drink that much vodka.
He found a good compromise. When the diplomat Lord Cadogan joined them at dawn, they were still sitting at the table. Stalin, as usual, began to insist that Cadogan, as a latecomer, drink a whole glass of the same thing he was drinking. According to Cadogan, this was “wild”. The diplomat noted that Churchill, who had already complained of a slight headache, had wisely limited himself to a relatively harmless sparkling Caucasian red wine.
“Everything“, adds Cadogan, “looked like a wedding”.
Source: lenta.ru