But I did remark that we were a little anxious about the upcoming talks in Berlin.

‘In this connection,’ I added, ‘I would like to express three wishes. First, that the British delegation should not make any binding promises in Berlin to Hitler (whether official or unofficial). Second, that it should not forget for a moment during its talks with Hitler that there can be no “European security” without the Eastern Pact of mutual assistance. Third, that in all its dealings with Hitler the British delegation should display firmness, firmness, and, once again, firmness.’

Eden and Vansittart assured me that we had nothing to worry about. The British ministers have not been authorized to decide or agree anything; their task is to elucidate and investigate. They understand the role of eastern security perfectly well. They will be firm with Hitler. I thought to myself: ‘May your words come true. Let’s see what comes of it…’

At 4 p.m. I saw Eden off at the Croydon Aerodrome. Kagan was with me. Strang

William Strang, member of the British embassy in Moscow, 1930–33; head of the Foreign Office department for the League of Nations, 1933–37; assistant undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, 1939–43.

and Hankey

Maurice Hankey (1st Baron Hankey), secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1912–38, and to the Cabinet, 1916–38; minister without portfolio, 1939–40, and paymaster general, 1941–42.

were accompanying Eden. Eden’s wife, a tall, nice-looking woman, was there. So was Hankey’s wife. We were photographed in various poses and combinations, and Eden rapidly ran through his plans: today he is flying to Paris, tomorrow he will confer with Laval and Suvich

Fulvio Suvich, Italian undersecretary for foreign affairs, 1932–36.

(about the Berlin talks), on the morning of the 24th he will fly from Paris to Amsterdam, he’ll meet Simon and his whole team there, and then they will all fly to Berlin. Talks with Hitler will begin in Berlin on the morning of the 25th (Monday) and end on the 26th in the evening. Simon will be back in London on the morning of the 27th, while Eden will meet me at the railway station in Berlin on the evening of the 26th, and from there we shall travel to Moscow through Poland…

As Eden’s aeroplane rose heavily into the air – roaring, buzzing and generating a furious wind all around – I couldn’t help thinking: ‘This is the beginning of an important flight that may become truly historic… Will it?’

We shall see. For the moment I must think about concrete practical things. The day after tomorrow I shall set off, too, on a long journey to Moscow!

But the highlight of his visit was clearly the meeting with Stalin on 29 March. Preliminary conversations with Litvinov had given the Russians an accurate and detailed picture of the forlorn talks in Berlin.

See Maisky’s detailed report of the meeting in DVP, 1935, XVIII, doc. 146, 28 March 1935. The British records (TNA FO 371 18833 C2726/55/18) and the circumstances which led to the Berlin and Moscow visits hardly sustain the idea that Stalin was subjected to a distorted account underlining a British desire to pacify Hitler. See C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London, 1999),

Page 416

pp. 71–2. Eden attests in his memoirs that his report of the talks was ‘rather fuller than that which Simon had given to the French’; Eden, Facing the Dictators, p. 145.

Indeed, on the way to Moscow, Eden had already cabled home his impression that Germany was unlikely to return to the League of Nations, but his recommendation to create a system of collective security under the umbrella of the League of Nations went unheeded.

Eden, Facing the Dictators, pp. 142–3. An excellent but forgotten source is D. Bardens, Portrait of a Statesman (London, 1955), pp. 125–9.

Maisky’s personal file, which is kept in the secret section of the Russian Foreign Ministry Archives, contains a record of Stalin’s meeting with Eden in his office in the Kremlin. The document bears some amendments made in Maisky’s hand.

It was published in DVP, 1935, XVIII, doc. 148. Part of it is reproduced here, since Maisky made no further entries until June.

The meeting lasted for an hour and a quarter. Eden resorted to flattering rhetoric, which was interrupted rather brusquely by Stalin, who demanded a clear and simple answer from Eden to the question of whether he believed the international situation was dangerous. In Eden’s earlier conversations with Litvinov it had transpired that Hitler had tried to lure Britain by raising an alarm about the Soviet military threat, but that Eden did not appear to have been convinced by this aggressiveness. Moreover, it emerged, as Eden was forced by Litvinov to admit, that the main difference between the British and the Soviet points of view was ‘that the former did not believe in the aggressiveness of German policy’.

TNA FO 371 18833 C2726/55/18.

‘Compared, say, to 1913,’ Stalin challenged Eden, ‘is the situation better or worse?’ He was hardly convinced by Eden’s assurance that it was better.

Once Eden became foreign secretary in early 1936, Maisky cabled Litvinov: ‘In March 1935 Eden still expressed doubts concerning the correctness of the Soviet judgement of Hitler as a potential aggressor. Today his sentiments are absolutely different … He is convinced that Hitler is a potential aggressor. Eden is uncertain and hesitant only about when Hitler will come out’; DVP, 1935, XIX, doc. 42.

The aggressive postures of both Japan and Germany, Stalin argued, now posed an acute danger of war which could only be forestalled by a mutual assistance pact. Maisky was surely not amused at the metaphor Stalin chose to illustrate his point, after dismissing Eden’s advocacy of bilateral agreements:

Despite the efforts invested by Maisky and Litvinov, the visit hardly advanced the idea of an Eastern Pact, and nor did it dramatically alter Eden’s views.

See the commentary following the diary entry for 31 January 1936.

He found Stalin to be ‘a man of strong oriental traits of character with unshakeable assurance and control whose courtesy in no way hid from us an implacable ruthlessness’.

Quoted in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, p. 135. In retrospect, Eden would form a more positive impression of Stalin. ‘His personality,’ he recalled, ‘made itself felt without effort or exaggeration. He had natural good manners … I respected the quality of his mind … perhaps this was because of Stalin’s pragmatic approach. It was easy to forget that I was talking to a Party man, certainly no one could have been less doctrinaire … I have never known a man handle himself better in conference. Well-informed at all points that were of concern to him, Stalin was prudent but not slow. Seldom raising his voice, a good listener, prone to doodling, he was the quietest dictator I have ever known’; Eden, Facing the Dictators, p. 155.

In their memoirs, both Maisky and Eden hailed the visit to Moscow as the pinnacle of the diplomatic efforts to bring about a shift in Anglo-Soviet relations and to lay the foundations for an effective anti-Nazi coalition.

Maisky, Who Helped Hitler?, pp. 50–2. It was already discernible in his briefings from Moscow to the correspondent of The Times, 29 and 30 March. A well-informed evaluation of the talks is in Manne, ‘The failure of Anglo-Soviet rapprochement’, pp. 735–7.

Maisky’s expectations of Eden, however, were clearly too high. He was neither the first nor the last politician to be beguiled by Eden’s lofty demeanour, his charm and the respect which he seemed to command, as well as by his ability to convey authority and power (which he completely lacked). The ‘Welsh wizard’, Lloyd George, who formerly had great faith in Eden and in his courage, now came to regard him as ‘a funk’. His verdict was harsh: ‘They all call him a darling, they say his heart is in the right place but I doubt if his spine is!’

Sylvester papers, diary, A32 & A40, 6 July 1936 & 15 Oct. 1937.

‘Anthony,’ Cadogan mused, ‘was unlucky with his Chiefs: Baldwin could not be induced to take any interest in foreign affairs, Chamberlain took too much, Winston was a rather too oppressive thundercloud overhead!’

Cadogan papers, ACAD 4/4, letter to Lord Birkenhead, 12 Oct. 1964. The gap between Eden’s expectations and his ability to deliver would be accentuated during his famous second summit with Stalin in December 1941. See commentary at the end of the year 1941.

While the negotiations were still in progress at the Kremlin, Litvinov received numerous reports that the British government demanded from the French that the Eastern Pact would conform with the statutes of the League of Nations, as well as with the Locarno Agreement. The French were discouraged from making any tangible commitments in their pact of mutual assistance, signed with the Russians on 2 May 1935, which left the nature of military assistance wide open.

DVP, 1935, XVIII, doc. 201, Litvinov to Maisky, 29 March 1935. A well-documented discussion of the rather neglected history of the agreement is in M.J. Carley ‘“A fearful concatenation of circumstances”: The Anglo-Soviet rapprochement, 1934–6’, Contemporary European History, 5 (1996). See also his ‘Prelude to defeat: Franco-Soviet relations, 1919–39’, Historical Reflections, 22/1 (1996).

Suspicion in Moscow was further aroused by the exclusion of Russia from the Stresa meeting in mid-April, when measures to check Germany were discussed by the Italians, the French and the British. An extraordinary session of the Council of the League of Nations on 17 April 1935 ended with a feeble denouncement of Germany’s unilateral withdrawal from its international obligations. Even the sympathetic Vansittart told Maisky that it would be ‘unwise not to pursue negotiations simultaneously with Germany on the basis of the German draft’.

TNA FO 371 18838 C3523/55/18, 30 April 1935.

Maisky did not write in his diary until early June, or possibly excised the entries when his position became precarious. He tried in vain to convince Litvinov that British public opinion, as well as government opinion, was slowly shifting against Germany. Litvinov in fact reprimanded him for failing to glean from Vansittart and Eden information vital for the progress of negotiations with the French.

DVP, 1935, XVIII, doc. 195. See also Manne, ‘Failure of Anglo-Soviet rapprochement’, pp. 738–41.

The credibility of his reports that the British government did not object to the Treaty was shaken when demands by the ever-suspicious Litvinov for such written assurances from Vansittart failed to materialize.

TNA FO 371 18838 C3554/55/18.

Rather than turning against Germany (as Maisky predicted), the hardliners in the Foreign Office, led by Sargent,

Sir Orme Sargent, deputy undersecretary of state, 1939–46.

were effectively prevailing on Cabinet to make further concessions to Germany. In his speech to the Reichstag on 21 May, Hitler rejected the Anglo-French proposals for disarmament and an eastern bloc, and countered with fresh proposals for the German fleet to be allowed to reach 35 per cent of Britain’s naval strength. His offer to conclude mutual non-aggression pacts with each of Germany’s neighbours was received positively. At the same time, he demanded ‘a free hand’ in Eastern Europe. Maisky, ‘distinctly pessimistic’, even found it difficult to convince Vansittart that Hitler had no intention whatsoever of signing any such agreement with Russia, and that the speech was merely an attempt to sow dissent among the ‘peace-loving’ powers. Worse still, from Maisky’s point of view, Vansittart chose the moment to raise again the bogey of Soviet propaganda as the obstacle to improved relations between the two countries. Maisky would have been further upset had he been privy to Eden’s approval of the way Vansittart spoke. During the meeting of the General Council of the League in Geneva, Eden deliberately avoided Litvinov, who came to realize the success of the strident and persistent Nazi campaign concerning the ‘Bolshevik danger’. Maisky was instructed by Litvinov to acquaint the British government with the Russian belief that, pursuing Mein Kampf to the letter, Hitler’s speech disclosed his determination to expand eastwards and to frustrate the attempts by Russia and France to create a system of collective security. He was further to ascertain from Vansittart whether the British government went along with this by no longer pressing for the Eastern Pact to be part and parcel of any future agreement with the Germans.

TNA FO 371 19467 N2761/998/38, 28 May 1935; DVP, 1935, XVIII, docs. 247 & 250, 2 & 3 June 1935.

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