Group A broke into the Caucasus. On 4 and 5 August, Stalin, Beria and Molotov spent most of the nights in the office as the Germans took Voroshilovsk (Stravropol), racing towards Grozny and Ordzhonikidze (Vladikavkaz) in the Caucasus and, on the Volga, approached Stalingrad. Paulus’s Sixth Army was poised to take the city and split Russia in two.9
On 12 August, amid the calamitous stirrings of the decisive battle of the entire war, Winston Churchill arrived in Moscow to tell Stalin that there would be no Second Front soon, a mission he compared to “carrying a lump of ice to the North Pole.” Molotov met him at the airport and then escorted him to the residence he had been assigned. On the way, Churchill noticed that the Packard’s windows were over two inches thick.
“It’s more prudent,” said Molotov. Stalin and Beria took Churchill’s visit very seriously, assigning him a bodyguard of 120. The defences around the Kremlin were redoubled. Stalin gave up his own house, Kuntsevo, dacha No. 7. It is a mark of Soviet obscurity that the British were never told and it has taken sixty years to emerge. Perhaps Stalin was repaying Churchill in kind for lending
37. CHURCHILL VISITS STALIN
Astrapping aide-de-camp of a princely family, according to Churchill, acted as his host at Kuntsevo. Churchill was shown into Stalin’s dining room, where the long table was laden with “every delicacy and stimulant that supreme power can command.” The British curiously explored.[204] Without realizing it, Churchill described Stalin’s home: surrounded by a stockade, fifteen feet high, guarded on both sides, it was a “fine large house standing in its own extensive lawns and gardens in a fir wood of about twenty acres. There were agreeable walks… fountains… and a large glass tank with… goldfish. I was conducted through a spacious reception room to a bedroom and bathroom[205] of almost equal size. Blazing almost dazzling electric lights displayed the spotless cleanliness.”
Within three hours, Churchill, Harriman, and the British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr were driven into the Kremlin to meet with Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov who, banned from front-line commands, now became the
Churchill growled that Britain had fought alone in 1940. Having got the worst bit out of the way, Churchill revealed that the British and Americans were about to launch Operation Torch to seize North Africa, which he illustrated with the drawing of a soft-bellied crocodile and the big globe that stood in the room adjacent to Stalin’s office. In an impressive demonstration of his geopolitical instincts, Stalin immediately rattled off the reasons that this operation made sense. This, wrote Churchill, “showed the Russian Dictator’s swift and complete mastery” of military strategy. Then Stalin surprised them more: “Let God help the success of this enterprise!”1
The next morning, Churchill met that “urbane, rigid diplomatist” Molotov alone to warn him: “Stalin will make a great mistake to treat us roughly when we have come so far.”
“Stalin’s a very wise man,” Molotov replied. “You may be sure that, however he argues, he understands all.”
At eleven, Stalin and Molotov, accompanied by the usual interpreter Pavlov, received Churchill in the Little Corner where the
“I pardon that remark only on account of the bravery of Russian troops,” replied the Prime Minister, who then launched into a magnificent Churchillian soliloquy on the Western commitment to the war. When Churchill poked his unsatisfactory interpreter Dunlop: “Did you tell him this? Did you tell him that?” Stalin finally smiled: “Your words are of no importance. What’s important is your spirit.” But the conviviality was ice-thin: Stalin’s insults infuriated Churchill, who afterwards stalked Kuntsevo, no stranger to gloom and malice, threatening to go home.2
Still angry and sullen, Churchill had to appear at the Catherine Hall for the Bacchanalian banquet Stalin held in his honour. Stalin sat in the centre with Churchill on his right, Harriman on his left, then an interpreter followed by General Alan Brooke, Chief of Imperial General Staff, and Voroshilov. Molotov kept the toasts coming for over three hours as nineteen courses were piled onto the table, which was “groaning with every description of hors d’oeuvre and fish etc.,” wrote Brooke, “a complete orgy… Among the many fish dishes was a small suckling pig… He was never eaten and, as the evening slipped by, his black eye remained fixed on me, and the orange peel mouth developed a sardonic smile!”
Stalin was at his most charming, making it clear that “he wanted to make amends,” thought Clark Kerr, “but the PM… cold-shouldered him.”
Stalin tried backhanded flattery: “Some years ago, we had a visit from Lady Astor,” Stalin recounted mischievously. When she suggested inviting Lloyd George to Russia, Stalin had replied: “Why should we invite… the head of the Intervention?” Lady Astor corrected him: “That’s not true… It was Churchill.” Stalin told Astor: “If a great crisis comes, the English… might turn to the old warhorse.” Besides, he added, “we like a downright enemy better than a false friend.”
“Have you forgiven me?” asked Churchill.
“All that is in the past,” replied the ex-seminarian, “and the past belongs to God. History will judge us.” There was then a crash as Churchill’s bodyguard, Commander Thompson, slumped backwards knocking the ice cream out of a waiter’s hand, which then narrowly missed Stalin himself.
“Then,” recorded the Soviet interpreter Pavlov portentously in his notes, “Stalin spoke.” During the Supremo’s toasts, Voroshilov, whom Brooke thought “a fine hearty old soul, willing to talk about anything with great vivacity” though with the military expertise of a “child,” spotted the Ulsterman was drinking water instead of vodka. Voroshilov ordered yellow pepper vodka, with an ominous chilli floating in it, with which he filled both their glasses: “No heel taps,” he said—but Brooke managed to sip his glass. Voroshilov then downed two glasses of this firewater: “The result did not take long to show itself. His forehead broke out in beads of perspiration which soon started to flow down his face. He became sullen and quiet sitting with a fixed stare straight to his front and I wondered whether the moment had arrived for him to slip under the table. No, he retained his seat…” But just as this cherubic inebriate subsided into peppery oblivion, Stalin, who noticed everything, “descended straight on him” with a toast the irony of which was missed by the Westerners.
“One of the main organizers of the Red Army was Marshal Voroshilov and he, Stalin, would like to raise a toast to Marshal Voroshilov.” Stalin grinned roguishly like a wicked old satyr because, as Molotov and the others knew well, it was only three months since he had denounced Voroshilov’s “bankruptcy.” Voroshilov struggled to his feet, holding on tightly to the table with both hands, “swaying gently backwards and forwards with a distant and vacant look in his eyes.” When Stalin raised his toast, Voroshilov tried to focus and then lurched forward, just managing to clink glasses. As Stalin swaggered off to toast Shaposhnikov, “Voroshilov, with a deep sigh, sank back onto his chair.”
After dinner, Stalin invited Churchill to watch a film—
Churchill awoke as sulky as “a spoilt child” according to Clark Kerr who arrived at the dacha to discover that “the PM had decided to pack up and go.” Sporting “a preposterous ten-gallon hat,” surely the most bizarre headgear ever seen at Kuntsevo, Churchill stomped into the garden and turned his back on Clark Kerr who found himself addressing “a pink and swollen neck.” The Ambassador explained that Churchill “was an aristocrat and a man of the world and he expected these people to be like him. They weren’t. They were straight from the plough or the lathe.”
“This man has insulted me,” retorted Churchill. “From now on, he can fight his battles alone.” Finally he
